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5 Healthcare marketing strategies to get you started!
To start, what is a marketing strategy? A marketing strategy is a long-term plan set in place to reach your business goals. It is usually a combination of all the touchpoints of your customer journey.
This insight is going to focus on five components in your healthcare digital marketing strategy. Although to learn more about the basics of marketing strategies, read this essential guide published by Hurree, here.
This diagram will help you understand how all the different components of your digital marketing plan fit together.
Messaging Apps
95% of texts messages sent will be read within the first 3 minutes of being received. With so much chatter on digital platforms, you want to reach your customers without getting lost in the digital sea. Messages are a benefit to contact your clients to let them know they are due an appointment or details for an upcoming session.
Another use of messaging apps is to target a niche group of your audience with an instant message. For example, this could be to let over 70’s know about the latest on a new ‘flu jab, or a dentist could let its patients know how to prevent tooth decay.
Social Media
41% of consumers said that social media impacted their choice of healthcare. But not enough healthcare organisations are using social media as part of their marketing strategy. This statistic is not only including the younger generation. But 90% of the older generation using social media are reported to finding and sharing health information on social media.
Social media is a great way to engage and interact with current and potential customers, offering you that chance to create a long-term relationship with them.
Your healthcare could post about raising awareness to current health issues and clearing up any misinformation. Or similar sharing content on how-to guides, e.g., the NHS produced a video for children to learn to wash their hands correctly has over 1.5million views on YouTube.
A behind-the-scenes advantage is people post about everything, including when they have a cold or the ‘flu. If you followed the hashtags (#flu), you could get insight into when people are getting ill in your local area.
Email Marketing
99% of email users access their emails every day, and 59% of consumers say that emails influence their decision. On the majority of websites, the first thing to pop up will be a contact form trying to get your email address. Once you have your customers’ emails, they will receive all newsletters you send.
Now you have an email in their inbox you need to get them to open it. Having a personalised email leads to a 50% higher open rate. A simple way to do this is signing off with a person’s name and maybe include a picture. Or if you’re a global company, use the local time for your customers or a specific event in that location.
I have talked about the content in your emails, but what about the design? Your brain can register an image in 13 milliseconds which is 60,000 times faster than text. So, you need to start with a photo that instantly catches their eye. Another design aspect you need to consider is which platform consumers will see your email. With the mobile device becoming increasingly more popular than desktops, you need to ensure all designs are mobile-friendly.
Website
Although this is one of the last suggestions on this list, I think it is one of the most important. Your website is your virtual salesperson, with 75% of consumers admitting to judging a company based on their website design. To attract patients to your website, you need to consider: your layout, navigability, social media links, and visuals. As websites are not only viewed on computers, but your design also has to be transferable to all devices. So that’s the design aspect; your website would be nothing without content. Content includes blogs, videos, healthcare services, etc.
Behind-the-scenes of your website includes SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). SEO assists search engines on how high they should rank your site. It is scored based on your website design and content on your website. SEO looks for things like keyword density or ‘alt text’ on your images.
Content
This 1,026-word article your reading is content, the 95 million photos uploaded onto Instagram every day is content, the brochures you hand out at exhibition shows are content. Everywhere you turn both in the digital and the non-digital world, you see content, created by businesses to get there brand and organisations purpose over to you, the customer.
The healthcare industry is the same. Your GP surgery could have brochures out for patients to pick up and read. Or you might be at an exhibition and need a stand to attract potential customer, similar to what we designed for Lifestyle Checkpoint (Picture below). All this content promotes your business. Whether it is informing the patient about Braces or how to exercise your IT band, they will all be produced with a company’s logo and using their branding guidelines. It is imperative to ensure that all the content used for your businesses is an accurate representation of your healthcare.
In Conclusion
I have barely scratched the surface on what these five aspects of your marketing strategy could do for your healthcare company. If you need an agency that can help you build all your marketing strategy, ClearBrand can help. We are a design agency based in Reading, Berkshire, with years of experience helping out healthcare companies make the most out of their digital marketing strategy.
Click the links below to learn about the services we offer and to get in contact today to start your healthcare transformation.
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Article was written by ClearBrand, February 2021.
To get in contact about working with ClearBrand on a healthcare project,
please call +44 (0)118 959 9284 or email info@clearbrand.co.uk.
