Exploring the Impact of Digital Marketing on the Healthcare Industry

Nowadays, medical products and services pop up on your digital screens before you hear about them from someone in person.

With technology rapidly advancing, conventional ways of promoting healthcare services are not as fruitful as they were before. Digital content or social media posts have become a new method of word-of-mouth marketing.

While several healthcare providers benefit from digital marketing tactics, many individuals are still wondering how digital marketing can contribute to the evolution of the healthcare industry.

The following sections will shed light on the importance of digital marketing for the healthcare industry and its effective strategies for successfully carrying out healthcare business.

What is Digital Marketing for the Healthcare Industry?

In this era of technological advancements, digital marketing plays a crucial role in promoting products and services.

Embracing digital marketing for the healthcare industry can help you know the industry trends and reach potential clients. With a strategic marketing plan, you can bring your healthcare organization digitally to the people in need of your services.

Digital marketing tactics through online forums and social media platforms can enhance your business awareness and patient engagement and retention.

Importance of Digital Marketing in the Healthcare Industry

At present, people looking for doctors or medical services increasingly rely on online searches.

According to Google Local Service Ads (LSA), more than 60% of consumers rely on search engines before scheduling a healthcare appointment.

Since the healthcare industry is extremely competitive, having a strong online presence is essential to draw patients’ attention toward your healthcare business.

So, let’s see various ways digital marketing can help the healthcare industry evolve.

• Enhances Visibility

77% of patients use search engines, such as Google, Bing, etc., to search for healthcare services.

Digital marketing activities enable healthcare providers to enhance online visibility, making it easier for patients to find relevant information about medical services, treatments, and practitioners.

Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and strategic content marketing, healthcare organizations can ensure that their websites rank higher in search engine results, increasing their visibility to potential patients.

• Helps Target Potential Clients

One of the significant advantages of digital marketing for the healthcare industry is its ability to target specific demographics and audiences.

Through targeted advertising campaigns on platforms, like Google Ads and social media channels, healthcare providers can reach potential clients who are actively seeking medical information or services. This targeted approach ensures that marketing efforts are providing a more personal experience to potential clients.

• Tracks the User’s Experience

Digital marketing allows healthcare organizations to track and analyze users’ online behavior and engagement across various online channels.

By leveraging tools like Google Analytics, healthcare businesses can gain insights into how users interact with their websites, which pages they visit most frequently, and what actions they take.

This valuable data enables healthcare businesses to optimize their digital strategies, improve user experience, and tailor content to meet the needs of their potential clients effectively.

• Drives Digital Referrals

In the contemporary digital landscape, word-of-mouth referrals have seamlessly transitioned into the digital realm. Today, patients often rely on online reviews and recommendations for choosing healthcare providers.

Digital marketing practices help healthcare organizations develop a positive online reputation through patient testimonials, reviews, and social proof.

By actively managing their online presence and engaging with patients on social media platforms, healthcare providers can build trust and credibility, ultimately driving digital referrals and attracting new patients.

Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Healthcare Industry

While digital marketing strategies hold significant potential for healthcare businesses, performing them strategically to make the most of your investment is important.

Here are some effective digital marketing strategies to follow for the healthcare industry:

1. Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands at the center of digital marketing. To enhance your healthcare business visibility, focusing on SEO practices is a must.

As per studies, Google receives 70,000 health-related searches per minute each day.

This indicates that users are more likely to rely on search engine results to find the right healthcare services. Strategic SEO practices can help boost your website’s ranking in organic search results, leading to increased traffic to your site.

Search engine traffic can help various healthcare services, ranging from doctors to pharmacies, medical recruiters, and equipment. However, the SEO strategies are unique for each type of healthcare service.

Here are some steps for successful SEO practices for your healthcare business:

• Optimize your website’s HTML meta title, meta description tags, and H1 tags with relevant keywords.
• Create quality blogs, articles, social media posts, and website content based on targeted keywords. Targeted keywords are the phrases your target audience uses to search.
• Enlist your business in Google Business Profile (GBP) by signing up, verifying ownership, and completing your profile with accurate information to initiate the local search. It helps make your business or organization easily found on Google Maps.
• Link your high-ranked page with another web page to lead readers smoothly to the other page, increasing its traffic.
• User Experience (UX) is an important factor in SEO ranking. Make sure your website is easily navigated and fast-loaded.
• Initiate off-page SEO activities, like social media marketing, guest posting, blog commenting, etc., to build quality backlinks, create brand awareness, and encourage user engagement.

If you feel the mentioned SEO strategies are too technical to perform independently, our skillful SEO experts are always there to help you.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is an integral part of digital marketing and a vast area to work on. It helps healthcare businesses drive both local and international traffic, setting them apart from the competition.

A survey conducted by SemRush, states that 97% of their participant companies have generated positive results with their content.

Crafting quality content, especially blogs, helps healthcare organizations share valuable information and data about their products and services. By understanding what your target audience is searching for, you can create blogs comprising the answers to their queries.

For instance, if you’re a gastrologist, try to write informational articles educating the readers about how to take care of their digestive system, how to avoid various gastrointestinal issues, and other similar topics. Also, consider creating e-books and video content to showcase your expertise, which can help in building trust, and forming better relationships with your clients.

It will help you showcase your expertise on the subject or topic as well as enhance your business credibility.

Additionally, the integration of creative infographics will help you draw readers’ attention and better illustrate your point.

💡Expert’s Tip: Make sure that your content talks more about how your business can prove to be beneficial for the audience instead of focusing too much on branding. Also, avoid using complex medical terms and try writing in a way that is easy to understand for every kind of reader.

3. Email Marketing

Around 4.48 billion email users worldwide, 99% of them check their inboxes daily.

Therefore, email marketing is a great way to reach your target’s inbox directly. Also, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to keep your target audience connected with your business.

Creating an email list is the primary step to a constructive email marketing plan.

What’s an email list?

An email list is a collection of email addresses of your target audience that you can collect through surveys, contests, and other special offerings.

Read our blog to enhance your email marketing strategy Optimize Your Email Game: 7 Expert Tips for Success

Once you are done building your email list, start delivering your content consistently. Make sure to create engaging and informational content that’ll make the recipients trust your healthcare business.

💡 Expert’s Tip: Avoid sending generic emails to all your prospects. Consider customizing your email content as per your recipients’ demographics, online behavior, and interests.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising stands out as a powerful tool for businesses aiming to enhance online visibility and attract potential patients. This method significantly accelerates the process of reaching your target audience as you are paying the platform to facilitate the outreach.

With PPC, healthcare businesses can also target specific demographics, search terms, and geographical locations to reach individuals actively seeking healthcare services. PPC campaigns drive targeted traffic to healthcare business websites or landing pages.

For instance, Google Adwords is Google’s PPC advertising platform that offers:

• Text ads- appear on top of the Google search result page when users search for something relevant.
• Display ads- appear on websites, articles, and videos that users browse.
• Video ads- appear before, during, and after playing videos on YouTube and other apps and websites across the Google video partners network.
• Shopping ads- appear at the top of Google SERPs and throughout the Google Display Network, including YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps.

PPC provides measurable results, allowing healthcare businesses, like yours to track key performance metrics, like clicks, conversions, and return on investment (ROI). By harnessing the power of PPC, you stay on top of your game in the competitive healthcare industry while connecting with patients in need of your services.

5. Social Media Marketing

Over the past couple of years, social media marketing has become a great way to target potential clients and make them stay connected with your business. However, not all social media platforms are convenient for every healthcare business. It’s important to choose the right platform wisely based on your audience demographics and business goals.

Nearly 90% of adults in the USA use social media to find health information.

You can target health-conscious people on social media and craft preventive posts for them. For instance, you can share posts about self-care, precautions for some medical issues, health benefits of taking supplements, etc.

Additionally, sharing a success story of a doctor or a patient works effectively and can help you get more likes, comments, and shares.

Nowadays, doctors and medical practitioners receive much more attention and engagement by sharing short health awareness videos on platforms, like TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram reels. You can think about it too!

💡Expert’s Tip: Your social media account should not be boring and overwhelmed with conventional health-related content. Consider showing your followers what goes on behind the scenes, which helps build trust and gives them a break from the information they absorb each day.

Importance of Digital Marketing to Upgrade Healthcare Businesses

Digital marketing for the healthcare industry helps hospitals and healthcare providers increase their business awareness and enhance patient engagement.

The right SEO practices and content strategies can help your healthcare business appear on top whenever individuals search for products and services relevant to your business.

However, your healthcare business can achieve marketing success only when you efficiently implement the above-mentioned digital marketing strategies.

We understand that the healthcare industry is a sector that involves undivided focus and responsibilities. Medical professionals mostly stay busy serving patients and discovering potential treatment methods.

Marketing, especially digital marketing, might be a completely different subject from their area of interest. Therefore, B3NET Inc. is always there to help healthcare providers expand their business with robust digital marketing plans and strategies.

Our experienced digital marketers would be happy to assist you in your digital healthcare journey!