Medical Marketing Strategies for 2019
In 2019, things are likely to dramatically change within the world of health care and medical marketing strategies. Innovations like private equity acquisition, retailization in high demand and other fierce competition is beginning to emerge. It’s time to revamp your healthcare organization and treat it like a business entity.
These 10 medical marketing strategies can help you find and keep higher-paying cases. Using these strategies will allow you to thrive against the fierce competition you’ll face during 2019.
Review Your Current Medical Marketing Strategies:
First, you should check out how well your current medical marketing strategies are working. Don’t blindly rely on any processes that have not yielded any positive results! Measure and tweak the metrics that get you pointed in the right direction.
If you are currently doing your own marketing, ensure that your invested time, money and efforts are producing the results you expect. You should be results oriented by analyzing if your team is spending too much time on Social Media, over-relying on word of mouth marketing or they simply wait for more doctor referrals.
If you have hired a professional marketing company this is the time to demand data. Should they give you inconsistent ad copy, underperforming design and have no results to back it up, it’s time for you to find someone else who focuses on medical marketing strategies.
Change Your Message to be Customer Focused:
An excellent tip for you is to ensure that your message clearly articulates the benefit you provide your patients. Many organizations are overly focused on providing too much information without detailing what they can do for their customers.
Make sure that your message contains the information explaining why your business is the best choice compared to other organizations. Every form of content you provide should expressly explain that choice. Your Website, Digital Advertising, Social Media and all forms of medical marketing strategies should clearly state what you can do for the patient.
When you read your Ad copy, be sure to identify the unique benefits you have to offer. What can you expect to gain? Can you get back to work sooner? Recover faster? Live pain free?
Utilize Social Media Marketing:
You should seriously consider making Social Media a large part of your advertising budget. Most people depend on organic reach defined as a marketing strategy in which you don’t pay money for advertising. A large organic reach is a great thing , it simply is not the most effective way to get noticed.
Facebook is one of the most widely used Social Media platforms — by seniors and millennials alike. Build a business page and post for free but it is difficult to attract followers, thus you can expect very few followers to see your posts.
Be sure to treat Social Media like a paid advertising platform. Create a positive and powerful post that helps increase your brand recognition and clicks to your website. Always add images, text and videos that will reach the most people within your target demographic.
Retain Existing Customers In Your Medical Practice:
Most new or existing organizations will attempt to increase the flow of new patients. You should also laser focus on how you can retain existing clients. Most often it will cost more to acquire new patients than it will to maintain your current client base.
Acquiring new patients is only the beginning of your medical marketing strategies. It is extremely essential that you keep up with existing patients. Follow up with them all in order to remain on top of their minds. A simple strategy is to email monthly newsletters on new developments or topics within the practice.
Be Painfully Honest About Your Website Design:
Be honest with yourself about whether or not your website is delivering the message it was created for. Ask yourself tough questions regarding the customization and look of your website. Your primary purpose should be to “WOW” prospective patients, not just providing them with basic information.
It is not enough to compare your website with that of your competitors; you should also check if your website is up to date with current technology and innovation. If your website looks a bit archaic, your clients might not bother to check it out. They could feel that it is the same all over again.
Take Advantage of Facebook Live:
Facebook Live is an innovation that we’ve been learning more and more in the last couple of years. Sharing live videos on Facebook is an excellent way to help increase and improve brand recognition. With new algorithms such as “Friends and Family First,” your followers never see any carefully produced videos and edited recordings.
The algorithms on Facebook Live, prioritize videos. Followers are instantly notified about helpful information which will increase your viewership dramatically. Current and prospective patients might share this information, increasing brand awareness while helping you reach the community with useful health information.
Maximize Leverage of Existing Content:
More prominent healthcare organizations like hospitals and health systems usually create quality content that loses momentum after about a week. They post about it on Social Media, bank of a few “likes,” and move on the next piece of content.
However, existing content should serve a higher purpose. For instance, you can repurpose quality content for email purposes. You should create subscription form where interested applicants provide an email address and sign up for your newsletter. You can also repurpose beneficial information in paid advertisements.
Leverage eBooks and long form articles as Facebooks ads or even paid search depending on your medical marketing strategies.
Ask for Patient Referrals:
Restaurants, retail stores, boutiques, coffee shops, etc. and use this method. Healthcare organizations can seize this opportunity and ask for referrals also. Start by asking your patients to tell their friends and family of the high quality of your service. You can also refer them to online review sites to post their experience with your service.
Established organizations and companies looking to grow can adopt a simple and easy method. Reputation management systems help makes a process automatic. Happy patients will help spread the word online while the unhappy patients are given the opportunity to express their concerns.
Common among doctors and healthcare professionals is to gain recognition as a “thought leader” It doesn’t matter whether or not you wrote a book or were interviewed on television; you can earn fantastic recognition by sharing insightful information about specific topics. You need a good website, excellent medical marketing strategies and public relations, a camera and an active Social Media page.
Once you can share excellent content online, this is the first step to earn recognition and build your reputation. Add videos on topics and propose solutions through these videos. You will have much engagement through videos than you ever will with pictures and text.
Pick topics that are most important to your patients and those that your audience cares most about.
Improve Staff Training on Healthcare Marketing:
Most healthcare organizations are at their best making sure their team is polite; understand HIPAA, and stays organized. However, no matter how much you accomplish with advertisements and the like if your staffs are not trained well enough to help convert a call from a prospective then the efforts are wasted.
It takes more than an organized or friendly staff to help convert sales. Over the years in healthcare marketing, up to half the organizations fail because their teams lack the required professionalism and ability to make the “sale.”
Armed with the right information, professionalism, and counterarguments you’ll see a significant uptake in new patients.
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Source: https://krohn.media/medical-marketing-strategies-2019/