The Top 5 Healthcare Marketing Strategies To Try In 2023
Marketing in the healthcare industry is complex and subject to various restrictions to protect patient’s privacy. Modern-day healthcare marketing involves using advanced automation solutions and a variety of communication channels.
You can implement new and innovative healthcare marketing strategies with the help of the latest tools and leveraging technologies, including automation. Below we discuss the most effective marketing strategies you can use for your healthcare organisation in 2023.
#1 Healthcare Marketing Via Direct Mail
Personalised direct mail is one of the most effective medical marketing strategies you can implement for your healthcare organisation in 2023. Every marketer knows the significance of personalisation and how much the audience appreciates it. The healthcare industry and its audience (or patients) are no different.
A personalised message resonates better with your audience. The best thing to enhance its impact is your communication medium. While online channels like email are convenient, they do not feel personal, like a printed or handwritten letter. Direct mail shows thoughtfulness and effort, which makes your healthcare marketing message more impactful.
But the best part is that you don’t have to put all your time and effort into sending personalised direct mail to your audience. PostGrid’s direct mail API can connect directly with your data management system to print personalised messages. You can use a template for printing your medical marketing mailer and bulk mail them within seconds.
And the best part is that your audience needs to realise how effortless it is for you to send a personalised letter using automation. From the audience’s perspective, you still put in the time and effort to send patient’s a personal message. But in reality, the healthcare marketing mail campaign takes care of itself once you create a template and set up the automation tool.
Below we discuss some of the best healthcare marketing ideas to implement for your hospital, clinic, or other healthcare organisation.
Boost Walk-In Traffic
The healthcare industry is constantly evolving; patients can access healthcare services through mobile phones. However, the priority of every hospital and clinic is always to create more walk-in traffic. And the best healthcare marketing idea to accomplish this is through personalised direct mail campaigns.
You can use an automated direct mail campaign to target people within the vicinity of your organisation. Consider providing incentives in your medical marketing campaigns to encourage more walk-in traffic. Most people only visit the hospital once and when they have to, and providing a great offer can help you encourage them to come back.
You can also conduct public healthcare events as part of your medical marketing efforts to encourage people to visit your hospital. Healthcare seminars and free consultations are excellent ways to attract people to your hospital and engage with them. Sending a printed invite to the event not only boosts the number of attendees but also lets you give a detailed account of the proposed event.
Pick A Direct Mail Format That Fits Your Goal
One of the reasons why direct mail is an ideal choice for healthcare advertising is its flexibility in choosing a format. You can use different postal direct mail formats for marketing your medical care services.
Some of the most effective direct mail formats you can use for your medical marketing campaigns include the following.
Letters:
They are ideal for confidential messages, which is perfect for healthcare marketing as they usually contain sensitive information. You can use (enveloped) letters to target your existing patients with a personalised message, which can often include their health history.
Postcards:
Postcards are not ideal if you want to use sensitive information in your direct mail campaigns. But they are perfect for your healthcare marketing campaigns because they offer concise and clear marketing messages. More importantly, it lets you incorporate attractive images and make your marketing message memorable.
Self-mailers:
You may need to become more familiar with the term self-mailer. Self-mailers are mailers that you can send without an envelope. It means you can not personalise these marketing mailers with sensitive information. But you can use more attractive images to attract the recipient’s attention in one glance, which is impossible in enveloped letters. For your healthcare marketing campaigns, you can use self-mailers like postcards, brochures, Etc.
Brochures:
It is an ideal direct mail marketing material for your organisation if you want a visually pleasing method to highlight your healthcare services. The scope for personalisation in brochures is relatively low because you can’t use the patient’s sensitive information. But, it is an excellent medical marketing strategy if you want to market special events, such as a healthcare seminar.
Catalogues:
Hospitals and other medical institutions can use catalogues to provide a detailed description of their healthcare services. For example, you can include the details of the specialist doctors and their areas of expertise. The healthcare marketing strategy should also provide detailed contact information so the patients can effortlessly get in touch with your organisation.
Personalised Design And Copy
Another reason direct mail earns a spot in 2023’s best healthcare marketing strategies is high customizability. The right design, copy, and colour palette can make all the difference between a successful and unsuccessful marketing campaign. You can customise the mailer any way you like, but you must avoid cluttering design elements and providing unnecessary information.
Cluttering and unnecessary information can distract (or worse, bore) the customer from your marketing message. Moreover, you must be careful about including the patient’s personal or sensitive information in your mailer. The best way to ensure your direct mail healthcare marketing campaign is to use an advanced automation solution for direct mail customisation.
PostGrid’s direct mail API comes with a free template gallery and editor to create custom direct mail templates. The solution lets you upload and print custom designs for your direct mail medical marketing campaign. PostGrid can connect directly with your website and database to quickly print customised marketing materials for your marketing campaigns.
And the best part is that you don’t have to worry about the safety of your patient data with PostGrid. Our direct mail solution comes with stringent security compliances, including the following.
- IRAP
- PCI DSS Level 1
- ISAE 3402
- ISO 9001
- ISO 27001
- And more.
Compliances such as these regulate the use of patient information and establish security standards to safeguard the data. It means you can hand over your patient’s sensitive data to automated solutions like PostGrid for healthcare marketing without a second thought.
Utilise Reviews And Testimonials
One of the best healthcare marketing ideas you can implement using direct mail involves highlighting positive reviews and testimonials. A whopping 88% of consumers go to online reviews before choosing a local business, and these statistics also apply to the healthcare industry. You can use direct mail campaigns to highlight your positive reviews and testimonials.
If your hospital or medical institution needs online reviews and testimonials, direct mail can help you get them. Consider sending a customised mailer to your patients and requesting a review. You can enhance the results of the medical marketing campaign by providing an incentive like a discounted consultation fee on their next hospital visit.
Include a QR code in the mailer that takes the customer directly to the review page. Using a QR code significantly enhances reader convenience. It can help boost the response rate for all your healthcare marketing mail campaigns. You can learn more about using QR codes from our previous blog, “Uses of QR Codes In Direct Mail Marketing.”
Enhance Lead Generation And Conversions With Data Targeting
Targeting the right audience is half the battle in implementing successful healthcare marketing campaigns. PostGrid’s direct mail solution enables you to use demographic data to your advantage and target suitable audiences. Simply knowing the demographic information of your target audience, such as their age, location, Etc., can give you an advantage over your competitors.
PostGrid offers address verification software that can access Australia Post’s official address database. It also comes equipped with geocoding capability, which enables you to plot the location of addresses on a map. Use the feature to identify patterns or clusters of customers and pitch a relevant medical marketing campaign to them.
You can use demographic data in many ways. You can use demographic data to target people within a specific group. For example, you can target older people above 60 with heart disease awareness campaigns. You can use the healthcare marketing campaign to encourage customers to get a checkup on their heart condition and so on.
Make the patient journey even more convenient by providing a QR code that they can use to set up an appointment. It encourages more audiences to set up an appointment and effectively boosts your lead generation and conversions. But make sure that you use a custom and attractive CTA in the medical marketing campaign to ensure the best result.
Utilise Thank Your Cards And Voucher Cards To Establish Trust
Much like welcome letters, thank you cards also positively affect people. It may seem like an irrelevant detail. But it significantly impacts how a person views your healthcare brand. Sending a thank you letter as part of your healthcare marketing campaign shows that you care for the patient’s well-being.
The thank you letter adds a personal touch to your relationship with the patient and creates long-lasting impressions. Sending a thank you card is a more subtle medical marketing strategy. It can help you in the long run because satisfied patients return to the same hospital. You can use a template and triggered mail feature from PostGrid.
Add a tangible discount coupon or voucher to the mix to make your healthcare marketing campaign even more effective. Thank you cards offer an excellent opportunity to utilise any promos you have for one of your healthcare services. It is one of the best ways to return patients to your hospital or other medical institutions.
#2 Healthcare Marketing Via Social Media
Another effective channel that lets you run some of the best healthcare marketing ideas is social media. Hospitals, clinics, and even doctors must maintain an excellent social media presence to attract more patients to their business.
You can use educational content and use them on social media as part of your healthcare marketing campaign. For example, you can use educational videos, including Instagram Reels and TikTok videos, to market your healthcare services and establish trust.
Most people spend a significant amount of time scrolling through social media apps. In many ways, social media platforms are now what TV was before the internet. You have a wide range of audiences to target in your medical marketing campaigns.
More importantly, social media offer advanced targeting capabilities that can enhance your marketing results. Here are some of the best healthcare marketing strategies you can implement using social media as your communication channel.
Access To Your Healthcare Organization Via Social Media
The first thing you must do if you want to use social media for healthcare marketing is to set up all your social media channels. It involves creating a profile for your hospital or any other medical institution. Ensure you have a working profile on all major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Creating a profile for your healthcare organisation is not enough either. You must complete the social media profile by uploading photos showcasing various attractive aspects of your medical organisation, such as the following.
- Include the photos of the healthcare facility and its infrastructure.
- Add pictures of your healthcare professionals and their specialities.
- Upload photos of patients (with their permission).
You must provide all your contact details to ensure that your medical marketing campaigns lead to the desired results. A patient visiting your social media channel should have easy access to the following information.
- Website
- Address
- Phone number
- Other social media handles.
Ensure all of the above information is public so any user can get the essential information. It is an effective medical marketing strategy because it is an extensive brochure of your hospital and provides all the necessary information.
Build a Community With Shareable Content
The purpose of any social media platform is to help you build communities. It lets you provide a way for your customers to become a part of your healthcare organisation. The best healthcare marketing strategies grow and propagate themselves organically, and social media helps you accomplish this.
Imagine sharing a blog post like “top 10 dietary habits to keep diabetes away” on your social media. The right audience is likely to click on the blog. More importantly, they will likely share the same with friends and family. You can use photos and links as part of your social media healthcare marketing strategy.
Prioritise Video Content For Healthcare Marketing On Social Media
Pictures, blogs, and other content are great for sharing. But one type of content that works best on social media is video, especially for medical marketing campaigns. Create and share fantastic healthcare videos to boost engagement and establish your expertise. Moreover, you can create a single video and repurpose it in several ways.
For instance, you start by uploading a YouTube video and use healthcare marketing to spread it across social media. You can use short clips to use as Instagram Reels and TikToks. Valuable and reliable healthcare video content creates a good impression on your audience and enhances your reach. With advanced video editing and automation tools creating a video is getting easier every day.
Use Detailed Analytic Data To Optimise Your Social Media Campaigns
Typically, every social media platform comes with a free analytics tool. You can use the analytic data from different social media campaigns to identify gaps in your communication. The analytics data lets you optimise or change your healthcare marketing campaigns.
Advanced analytic capabilities of social media let you determine how many people are watching your ads and how they interact with social posts. Utilise the analytical capabilities of social media platforms to ensure the best results for your medical marketing campaigns.
Use Direct Mail To Grow Your Community And Engagements In Social Media
You can use direct mail to boost your healthcare marketing campaigns on social media. Direct mail is ideal if your social media accounts are relatively new or want to increase social media numbers. Send a personalised postcard inviting your old patients to like or follow your social media channels. Add a discount coupon or voucher to encourage the patient to take the desired action.
You can add a QR code to the healthcare marketing mailer to let the recipient directly access the relevant social media page. Besides that, you can also use direct mail to boost traffic to a specific post or special marketing event. Social media is an excellent place for publishing the success story of patients, conducting webinars and other special events.
In the initial stages, you can use healthcare marketing campaigns via direct mail to build your online community. A personalised direct mail can also help you boost the number of attendees of social media events you are hosting. PostGrid even offers a triggered mail feature that automatically sends an invite to like or follows your social media handles based on a triggering action.
#3 Healthcare Marketing And Content Marketing
Content marketing is a must for hospitals and one of the best organic methods for healthcare marketing campaigns. There are two primary goals for using content marketing for hospitals and other medical institutions.
One of the primary purposes of content marketing for hospitals is to get a higher search ranking for their website. A higher ranking website ranking means more organic traffic to your website. Hence, the right content can significantly benefit your medical marketing efforts and boost engagement.
Besides that, content marketing also helps you establish your authority over a subject. Helping the patient through your healthcare content allows you to show your expertise and earn their trust. Reliable content is the best healthcare marketing strategy to establish trust and attract patients naturally to your hospital.
Some of the best healthcare marketing strategies you can implement using content marketing are as follows.
Achieve Your Healthcare Marketing Goals Organically
The first step in a content marketing strategy is to define the purpose of your healthcare marketing effort. Align your content strategy with the end goals to get the best results for your content marketing efforts. Content marketing can help you achieve your marketing results organically by attracting the right audience.
For example, your healthcare marketing goal is to attract more people to a special event you are organising. In that case, you can create content that fits this healthcare marketing goal. You can use different forms of content, including videos, to promote the event across other platforms. By doing so, you can attract an audience organically from various channels, including social media.
Use Local SEO To Your Advantage
Healthcare is a local business, and the primary target audience for medical marketing lives within the hospital’s vicinity. Typically, people prefer to go somewhere near than halfway across the world to access healthcare services. You may already know that organic results no longer appear on top of Google search results.
The top section of the Google results now displays paid ads. Immediately after the paid ads, Google provides the user with local search results, and organic results appear after that only. Incorporating local SEO into your healthcare marketing can help you gain a spot in the local Google search results so that more people notice your hospital. And to do this, you need local SEO content, including blogs, images, and videos.
You can target the content to a specific area or postal code and the residents living in that area. Healthcare organisations can also incorporate other local strategies, including direct mail. For instance, you can familiarise your healthcare brand in a local area using medical marketing strategy using direct mail.
Boost Content Engagements Via Direct Mail
The thing about using content marketing for your healthcare organisation is that you want it to reach as many people as possible. One way you can do this is by incorporating a direct mail campaign to boost your content’s reach. Direct mail lets you bring more people to your content, enhancing your medical marketing content space.
It is easy to bring customers to your online content using direct mail by including a QR code in the mailer. The QR code can lead the audience to your blog, a YouTube video or anything else you want. But you need to get the targeting right for this healthcare marketing strategy. PostGrid’s address verification tool can help you out with this.
Our address verification API has an advanced geocoding feature that lets you target specific local areas for your direct mail campaigns. It is ideal for raising awareness locally and improving your local SEO position. By doing this, you can effectively enhance the results of your healthcare marketing campaigns.
#4 Healthcare Marketing Via Paid Ads
Your healthcare marketing is incomplete if you do not use paid ads. Using paid ads can be significantly effective for hospitals and other medical institutions. It offers a sure shot of showing up in Google search results for specific keywords.
Your healthcare organisation pops up whenever a patient searches for something online regarding their health or medical conditions. Moreover, 7% of Google’s daily searches are health-related – this translates to over 1 billion health-related searches every day.
As you can see, ignoring paid ads for your medical marketing strategy is not an option if you can afford it. Not utilising paid ads is the same as saying, “I know this will generate more leads, but I’ll pass.” You can target specific keywords based on the health departments in your hospital.
Google Ads For Your Healthcare Organisation
Setting up paid ads for your healthcare marketing efforts may be challenging if you have yet to gain experience. You can start using Google ads for hospitals and other healthcare institutions.
Step 1: Define The Result You Wish To Achieve
The first thing to do before you set up paid ads on Google is to define the results you want from the healthcare marketing effort. Your goal could be to increase the number of healthcare appointments or enhance the reach of your healthcare website. Whatever your goals, you must define them before proceeding to the next step.
Step 2: Post Globally Or Locally
One of the first things Google asks you when implementing paid ads is whether you want to post the ad globally or locally. In most cases, hospitals and other medical institutions use local ads because that’s where their target audience resides. However, if you want to target your medical marketing campaign globally, you can easily do so with Google.
Step 3: Create The Copy For Your Ad
An advantage of using Google ads for your healthcare marketing campaign is that it helps you with the ad copy lines. You can also add appropriate pictures or videos for the ad. Finally, you can create a dynamic banner ad to be posted for Google searches with relevant keywords.
Facebook And YouTube Ads For Your Healthcare Organisation
When people hear online paid ads, they immediately think of Google. But Google is not the only channel you can use for your medical marketing campaigns. Other platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, also offer paid ad features that can be useful for hospitals and other medical institutions.
Facebook offers advanced targeting capability for their paid ads. You can use it to run highly-specific healthcare marketing campaigns. Consider creating a customer/patient persona to execute highly targeted marketing efforts.
Many people go to YouTube for healthcare-related queries and home remedies. YouTube is an ideal channel to target such an audience with your medical marketing ads. It would also help to have a YouTube channel with reliable healthcare videos to enhance your organisation’s credibility.
#5 Healthcare Marketing And Mobile Optimization
Most healthcare marketing strategies depend on digital channels, especially your website. A crucial statistic you should remember here is that 60.28% of all web traffic comes from mobile phones. It means more than half the web traffic comes from mobile devices.
More importantly, the user needs more patience to load around for a website to load. The user will likely navigate away from the page if the website needs to be more responsive or have a long loading time. You could use offline channels like direct mail to get a response for your healthcare marketing campaign.
But if the website is not mobile optimised, the user can quickly close the window wasting all the hard work you put into it. Hence, the success of your healthcare marketing campaign depends significantly on mobile optimisation.
Here are some ways to optimise the mobile experience of your medical marketing efforts and ensure a smooth customer journey.
Choose A Reliable Web Host
The web host has a significant role in determining how your mobile website performs. As you know, some hosts offer a better load speed for your website than others. Always pick a web host after checking the page load speed and the tools it can provide for mobile optimisation. You can implement more effective medical marketing campaigns with a better host for your organisation.
Consult With A Reliable Web Designer
The design of your website is another factor you must consider for mobile optimisation. First, ensure that your website is easy to navigate and intuitive. Moreover, the website must automatically adjust for mobile viewing to provide a seamless healthcare marketing experience. A reliable web designer can comprehensively analyse your website and suggest the necessary improvements.
Test Your Mobile Website
The last thing you must do after optimising your website for mobile devices is to test it out. Fortunately, several online tools can help you test your website and its performance. To execute successful healthcare marketing campaigns, you must optimise the following aspects of your website.
- Average response time
- Error rate
- Peak response time
- And more
