The modern healthcare industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world today, given the fact that this sector consumes more than 10% of GDP in the most developed nations including of course the United Kingdom and the United States. In general, the healthcare industry is divided into mainly three kinds of activities such as — hospital activities, medical and dental practice activities, and other human health activities.
Considering the fact that we are running these activities in the current digital era, a sound digital marketing strategy, besides the other technological changes the healthcare industry has already witnessed, becomes essential for any healthcare unit to be established as a healthcare brand.
Why Digital Marketing Strategy is Essential for Healthcare Brands?
When it comes to deploying the most effective digital marketing strategy for healthcare brands in the USA, no one digital strategy can be said to work in isolation because of the increasing competitiveness in this sector and increased awareness of the patients as consumers. There is a threat of some healthcare companies offering better alternatives over your brand but there is also an underlying opportunity of making the patients lean towards your brand if the right digital marketing techniques are adopted.
The following are a few reasons that make digital marketing an essential aspect of healthcare marketing.
- Brands have the ability to create their own identity and reputation through the digital marketing strategy.
- Brands build a reputation through their previous customers in the form of reviews and ratings.
- Brands can instantly connect with their prospective patients and engage them to not only offer them better services but to retain their details for future use.
- Digital marketing allows you to see where your money is being invested and how much ROI is possible.
- Digital marketers for healthcare brands can track user behavior and suggest changes for a change in products or services without letting your budget out of control.
- A lot of paperwork can be avoided through digital marketing as patients can send their details online without visiting any healthcare facility.
- Digital marketing helps you rank higher in the search engines and so connecting with and acquiring new patients becomes much easier.
With the above basic information, it should be clear why every healthcare brand must make an effort to pursue a digital marketing strategy. Now, letās move on to the understanding of the five most effective digital marketing strategies for healthcare brands in the USA.
Five Effective Digital Marketing Strategies
The following five strategies can be adopted one at a time or as an assortment.
Social Media Marketing
Whether you are a giant healthcare company or healthcare startup, a social media marketing strategy can be a good digital marketing strategy for establishing your brand and yet keep your marketing budget low. This is because one can find an immensely large number of followers making use of social networking sites.
According to Statista.com, social media is one of the most popular online activities and almost 80% of the U.S. population has a social networking profile.
With the above information, one can make out how much potential any social networking site like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest holds when all one needs to do is engage in the most informative, attractive and sensuous manner.
Though paid social media campaigns have a better chance of attracting prospects, it is always advisable to engage in organic social media marketing, if you are starting out afresh. One of the main things that you should keep in mind then is increasing your visibility across different networks by posting good content and optimizing it.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization strategy is one big aspect of digital marketing that needs a careful approach. This is a technique that is deployed to gain visibility by attaining the top ranks in search engines.
In order to rank high in any search engine, for e.g., Google has its own algorithm and which it keeps updating from time to time. Each time Google updates its algorithm, it moves towards a better search engine experience by the users.
With the above in mind and as an SEO professional, one needs to adopt the SEO best practices. Some of those include insertion of keywords in the content, writing down unique titles, descriptions and content, optimization of the title tag and your healthcare websiteās loading speed, tracking of results with a Google Search Console, optimization of images, and many more.
As a healthcare startup or established brand, you will need to remember one thing and that is — no matter how good the content is on your website, you will need to optimize it to rank higher in the search engines.
Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click strategy is one another digital marketing strategy that involves running a paid ad campaign to help drive traffic through the paid clicks. The chances of getting higher clicks through such an ad campaign are generally very high because of the fact that these ads appear at the top of any search engine page in response to a userās query.
The pay per click strategy is based on the system of ābiddingā which is also called āad auctionā. Through this system, the search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo decide which kind of ads will be placed where.
In order to create a pay per click (PPC) campaign as a healthcare brand, you will need to search for those keywords which users are already searching for. Some examples of those keywords are āhealthā, āhealth insuranceā, āunited healthcareā, ānearby pharmacyā, ānursingā, āfirst aidā, etc.
For a healthcare company, PPC can be a good start towards acquiring new prospects and conversion of leads. In a nutshell, if nothing works, Google PPC will work and can be a stepping stone to the building of a great healthcare brand.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can be a good digital marketing strategy especially when known that there are about 250 million users in the USA alone with around 100 million at a global level.
Add to the above figure the number of accounts an average user may have. A user can have multiple email accounts and because of this, the number of active email accounts is 1.5 times higher than the actual number of users.
Because of the above fact, the strategy of sending emails in bulk to a vast majority of users around the world is never a bad idea, instead, it works in your favor.
The email users check their emails on a daily basis and if an email is crafted nicely with plenty of useful information, the chances of being read are very high. As a healthcare brand, you can send the email users emails that contain industry news, healthcare related blogs, or lucrative deals about any healthcare product or service.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing strategy is about optimizing your website content according to the responsiveness of the mobiles that a vast number of users carry with them all the time.
All you need to do is create a mobile-responsive ad campaign so that your healthcare ads can easily be seen on the mobile devices.
A market survey of the users reveals that mobile devices alone generate about half of the global website traffic and which means you must make an effort to create an educational and engaging content that can arouse an average mobile userās interest within the first few seconds of seeing the ad.
The Bottom Line
While the above strategies are the most effective digital marketing strategies for the markets in the USA, there are many other strategies such as video marketing, display advertising, et al. that can help create awareness in the minds of prospective patients and drive visitors to your healthcare website.
This blog has shown to you how as a healthcare brand you should go about branding yourself and if you think you need help with any digital marketing service, do contact Solvoguru. Remember, we always care for your feedback.
