Healthcare Marketing Ideas

Are you looking for healthcare marketing ideas for your practice?

In today’s world, everything revolves around the media and it is crucial for any type of company to keep up with the new media, but healthcare practice’s especially. It is more important today than ever before that healthcare practices market their company and know who they are marketing the company to. Healthcare is a fast evolving industry and it is extremely important to keep up with the industry by adapting to the changes and keeping patients informed. This is an essential step in the healthcare marketing process because keeping the information that is provided timely and relevant is essential for establishing credibility.

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Prescription PR, a Long Island based healthcare marketing company, understands the highly competitive nature of the healthcare industry. Most patients have a multitude of options when selecting a practitioner or deciding if an elective procedure is right for them. To succeed in the competitive healthcare environment, a one-size-fits-all marketing solution is too limiting for medical practices. We focus on providing custom-tailored marketing solutions that deliver results for our clients while helping them properly portray the care and services that their practice provides.

Marketing in the healthcare field is important for a number of different reasons, but it must be done correctly and patients, as well as possible future patients, must be able to trust it. How well your practice is marketed is a direct reflection on how well you know your practice. It is important to know your audience because strategies for healthcare marketing vary depending on who the target audience is.

Healthcare marketing allows your practice to experience sustainable growth, but initially, the audience needs to know why your specific practice differs from and is the best decision compared to the hundreds of other practices in their area that serve the exact same purpose.

Marketing is all about strategy. Strategy comes first and the tactics come second. Creating specific healthcare marketing to your target audience will lead to the likelihood of success as well as an increase in income and the best possible medical care to all of the patients.

In order for any medical practice to be successful at this point in time, they must take part in healthcare marketing so they are able to successfully build up the trustworthiness and reliability of medical practices, clinics, and hospitals.

Whether you are a physical therapist, orthopedist, or dentist, healthcare marketing tailored towards your specialty will help you maximize new patient digital referrals. There are a variety of tactics that can help you grow your practice. Below are some of the most important:

SEO

There are many different online opportunities to get your business noticed through search engine marketing. From Google to Instagram, there is no longer just one site needed to rely on as an advertising outlet for new customers. It is beneficial to have paid advertisements; however, the most beneficial search engine marketing is having and maintaining organic/natural search engine marketing.

What is great about organic results is certainly that it is free. It is also based on the customer’s awareness of your company as well as quantity and quality. We live in a world where people are actively searching for what they want rather than waiting to see what is being offered. The user is ultimately searching for you. Which also means the importance of customer service. If you provide a great job for the client, they will keep coming back and use word of mouth to let others know about your business. This is what increases your brand recognition and loyalty.

It is valuable to have a positive word of mouth and to keep up to date on any negative reviews of your business. Positive customer interaction is significant when responding to positive and negative reviews, whether it is on Facebook or Yelp. When there are harmful reviews, customers are seeking for satisfaction and improvement for next time. Your response will decide if they will come back.

How many times have you searched a business or practice in Google and looked beyond the first page? Chances are highly unlikely. Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the process by which websites are developed in order to yield higher results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These search engines use advanced algorithms to present the most useful websites as the top results.

The healthcare marketing team at Prescription PR uses proven “white hat” methods of search engine optimization through unique user generated content as well as strong, keyword friendly links and tags. We will make sure the layout of your website is well indexed as we strive to organically create a seamless user experience.

Our SEO strategy will increase traffic to your healthcare practice’s website by utilizing these strategies:

Content: Search engines favor websites with strong, continuously updated, and media-rich user generated content.
User Experience: Does your website run smoothly? Are the pages within your website seamlessly linked together? We make sure your website is operating at peak performance.
Tags and Keywords: We ensure these phrases are relevant to your practice as search engines use them to account for your overall web optimization.
Social Media: Keyword strategy must also extend to off-site platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we make sure they are consistent with your main web page.

Writing is a skill and writing blogs is no different. It’s easy to keep it interesting and fun, but not so easy to get the most attention for it. Many bloggers write without utilizing the full potential of their blogs. Making your blog search engine friendly is crucial. It is an important tactic for marketers but it can be hard to master. Writing an SEO friendly blog can be an intimidating task to conquer, but there are a few tips and tricks to keep in mind when writing to make the most of your blog.

You should always do your research before you write. Discovering what you want to write about helps the planning process go a lot faster and easier. Keyword research is crucial if you want to optimize the sight of your page. Finding relevant keywords you can continuously use throughout can only help, and there are even a few online databases that can help find you relevant words to incorporate into your writing.

Once you have done your research on the topic, utilize the appropriate keywords. Using a word once isn’t going to increase your SEO. Carefully placing the keywords in the text in the right places will have the most impact for search engine who are searching for said topic. A few places to throw in your keywords are the title, headings, introductory sentence, conclusion paragraph, and anywhere else you see fit. Be careful to not overdue and confuse the reader.

Word count is crucial if you want your blog to hit the first page on Google so make sure you optimize the length. Contrary to popular belief, if your article is too long, no one will want to read it. SEO friendly blogs are usually between 300-700 words. There is also a general rule of thumb when writing SEO friendly posts to put your keyword or search term in about 1-2% of the text.

Keep up to date on your blogs as nobody wants to be re-reading the same material for months. People will get bored and stop searching your site if there is never anything new. New content is recognized by Google and it will show your website is alive and active. Google will begin to push your website further down the list of search results if it is never updated.

Writing SEO friendly blogs can be tricky, but with the right techniques and strategies, you can get your website to rank high on Google search results. As long as it’s good, consistent content, Google will notice and thus bringing more traffic to your page, so always make sure you’re maximizing your SEO friendliness!

Social Media Branding

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+ are now being fully embraced by all age groups and demographics, and as a healthcare provider, it is important to have a fully integrated social media campaign. The healthcare industry may be ripe with brilliant minds and state-of-the-art technology but many practices lack the time or manpower necessary to reach out to and build long-lasting relationships with their patients.

Prescription PR is concerned with more than just creating social media profiles for your practice. We are in the business of social media integration and our team of healthcare marketers looks to develop a deeper understanding of your practice, as well as your online goals and objectives.

Our strategy ensures your practice is fully equipped to achieve an integrated social media campaign:

Identify the best platforms for maintaining and promoting your brand.
Build relationships with patients.
Target updates and posts at the time of day when traffic is highest.
Inform patients of upcoming events or new products and services.
Monitor any online discussions and conversations.
Provide real-time customer service.

Prescription PR strives to create a unique personality for your practice that your patients can connect with on an authentic and intimate level. We believe a fully integrated social media presence can make a difference in the perception of your brand and can help to strengthen relationships with current patients while opening up new avenues for growing your practice.

If you would like to further discuss how an integrated social media presence can benefit your practice and help to grow your presence online, please contact us by phone or by e-mail and we will be happy to provide additional information or answer any questions you may have.

Reputation Management

The healthcare field is a reputation-driven market and in order to continue appealing to new potential patients and to keep current patients satisfied, reputation management is crucial.

Reputation management is the practice of shaping and maintaining the public perception of your practice through online information. The digital information about your practice serves as a “litmus test” to potential patients. Competition is fierce and one negative review could deter a potential new patient from calling your office. There are many different components of reputation management that work together to show how your company is doing and provide opportunities for improved patient satisfaction.

The first step in reputation management is monitoring references of your practice on strategic social media platforms as well as carefully made search queries. Processes as such, allow you to become aware of the public opinion of your business. Knowing something as crucial as what the public thinks and feels about your practice can help create a personalized campaign to grow your practice.

A great thing about communicating through reputation management is that it gives your practice the chance to communicate with its customers and vice versa. It spreads the positive effects of your practice and encourages others to publicize about it positively. It gives the customers you’ve had a chance to let the world know all about their positive experience with your company and why they recommend you to others.

Unfortunately not all reviews are positive, but those negative reviews are the ones that need to be addressed head on. There is nothing worse than leaving a negative review about your practice as is. A negative review can only persevere as truth unless you reply to it. This is NOT your opportunity to rip into the person who left it, but rather your chance to put a positive spin on a negative situation, forcing potential patients to still give you the benefit of the doubt.

Reputation management can be a heavy load to add to your daily responsibilities but is extremely important to the success of your practice and that’s what we are here for. Prescription PR uses a wide array of methods to not only encourage commendations online but helps filter out and respond correctly to negative criticism.

E-Newsletters

E-Newsletters may be one of the oldest online marketing tactics but it is still a popular and effective form of communication. Texting and instant messaging may be the preferred method of staying connected for the younger generation, but for many people, e-mail is still their main way of communicating with others online. Sending an email newsletter is still a great way to stay in touch with your current and former patients and should be a part of your healthcare marketing strategy.

The first thing most people do in the morning is to check their email, and studies have shown that e-Newsletters are still a viable and preferred source of news. Newsletters help to build relationships with patients and keep them engaged and informed about your practice while also increasing traffic to your website.

Prescription PR offers e-Newsletter services as a part of our comprehensive online healthcare marketing strategy. We help to announce practice updates and information, promote any upcoming events, and keep people in the know about what is going on in your field and within your practice. Please contact us by phone or through email if you have any additional questions or would like more information regarding our e-Newsletter service.

Physician Liaison

The physician liaison is a job title that is relatively new in the field of healthcare marketing. The word“physician” usually conjures up the image of a doctor in a white coat with a stethoscope around their neck and a clipboard in their hand. Throw the word “liaison” after “physician” and you have a completely new look and meaning.

So what is a physician liaison? Tiller-Hewitt Healthcare Strategies, a consulting firm that offers services to health systems, hospitals and providers, states that essentially, the job of a physician liaison relates to collaboration and communication to achieve maximum growth and loyalty of a health system. Physician liaisons focus on communication, retention, and growth of referrals within a health system, usually between a hospital and its physicians. They train, collaborate, and coach staff on continued referral management, develop and manage a “Hospital 101” course, and coordinate hospital and practice referral data.

Physician liaisons, most importantly, are the root of communication in any health system between the practitioners and the staff to (1) promote hospital services and (2) identify any barriers. Their goal is to maintain an open line of communication with physicians so that the hospital system can maintain and grow on their patient referral base. Customer service skills are a huge part of the job as well as being a salesperson and a consultant. Hospitals or medical facilities seeking a physician liaison look for someone with an advanced college degree, such as an MBA or a Master’s in Healthcare Administration.

In a blog written by Lori Waltz for Healthcaresuccess.com titled 7 Traits of a Highly Successful Physician Liaison, the author states that the 7 most desirable traits one who wishes to enter the field should possess are:

Extremely motivated and a self-starter.
Excellent communication skills.
Experiences or educated in a specialty.
A relationship builder.
Possess a professional appearance.
Be friendly and personable.
Be highly organized.

The role as a physician liaison can be difficult. The primary goal of the job is to make sure everyone within a healthcare system, such as doctors, nurses, and case managers, are all on the same page and understand that their functions individually have an effect on the overall status of their healthcare institution. The physician liaison is increasing in importance as more and more practices are healthcare systems seek someone to execute these roles.

Can we help you build your healthcare marketing strategy?

One of the internet’s greatest perks is the ability to reach others outside of your immediate network. When it comes to small businesses, reaching out to potential customers regardless of proximity breeds success through more possibilities. Utilizing the online marketing space is not an easy task as -with all forms of marketing- it becomes incredibly competitive. The internet is a big place and there are millions of companies vying for clicks and web page visits on a daily basis. Nowadays, it takes a well-designed strategy to truly harness the power of digital marketing while setting it apart from your rivals.

Whether you’re building a new business location or trying to expand your customer base at an existing one, there are plenty of strategies available to help grow your business to new heights. There are four major steps when it comes to processing a solid digital healthcare marketing campaign which can be used for both novices and experts alike:

Plan- Make sure the practice’s healthcare marketing strategy is thought out and written out. Organize which methods of online interaction is best suited for your company. If mobile friendly web pages are possible, explore it. Once everything is decided, build a schedule and a team to put everything into motion.
Execute- Launching your campaign can be time consuming and frantic. Stick to the schedule as best you can and be sure you have online tools in place to monitor activity. Otherwise, employ a marketing company to do it for you.
Analyze- Take advantage of the insights and analytics Google, Instagram, and Facebook provide. These could provide insights on the potential leads you are reaching through social media as well as your website traffic. Also, when a customer calls, ask how they found you! This can help propel the direction of your future marketing efforts.
Optimize- Compile the data and review it. Every metric should factor into manipulating your strategy in the future for maximum success.

These days, every business can benefit from a stronger presence online, especially when entering new markets. If assembling a team of digital marketing professionals seems out of reach for your company, look no further than Prescription PR.