One of the more complicated parts of being a healthcare provider is attracting and retaining patients. The competition is tough, with many physicians, therapists, chiropractors, optometrists, and dentists vying for a limited supply of potential clients.
For some health care providers, hiring a full-service marketing agency to help them promote their practice may not be feasible due to budget limitations. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to market your business on your own using digital channels such as SEO or social media. In addition to that, you could also always seek help from larger companies by purchasing sponsored ads on Google or Facebook.
These healthcare marketing strategies include:
1) Content Marketing/Content Curation
You can find opportunities to publish content on popular consumer websites, including Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This can give your practice a higher authority ranking on Google because you will be publishing content directly on authoritative sites. It would be best to create original blog posts focused on how to live better with the conditions affecting your patient population or how to stay safe during various seasons.
2) Strategic Partnerships
One straightforward way for healthcare providers to attract new clients is by establishing relationships with businesses that serve the same population as yours. For example, if you’re an orthodontist specializing in braces, you could establish a partnership with a local chain of coffee shops that offer free Wi-Fi along with their drinks. This will allow people who drink coffee and browse the web for things like “dental insurance” to see your practice when they search online.
3) Paid Search Ads
If you have the budget for it, paid search ads can be a great way to attract new patients. They allow you to reach a specific target audience by showing their ads on Google and Facebook based on particular criteria such as age range, location, and interests. You’ll need expertise in healthcare marketing to do this successfully so that it may be best handled by a professional agency working within your budget.
4) Remarketing Ads
Remarketing, or retargeting as it’s sometimes called, allows marketers to reach potential customers who have previously visited their website or used their mobile app but didn’t follow through with an action. If someone visited your “About Us” page on your website, you can use remarketing to serve them an ad with a special offer on social media or display ads on Google.
5) Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried and tested way for health care providers to reach their existing patients while also attracting new ones. You should set up an email list that sends out regular updates about the latest news in your field of expertise. In addition, you could also provide helpful articles related to living a healthy lifestyle, so people receive value from subscribing to your list. This will help turn visitors into prospects and prospects into patients because they have been educated about your practice before receiving any calls or emails from your team.
6) Video Content Marketing/Videos on Social Media
YouTube is currently the second most popular search engine in the world after Google, which means you can tap into a massive audience if your practice has video content on YouTube. You can also use videos to post on social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, so people get a snapshot of what it’s like working at your practice. The more videos you create, the more potential patients will get to know about your clinic from an informational standpoint.
7) Social Media Marketing
In addition to producing original video content, you should also share regular updates informing prospective patients about what’s going on at your practice via a company Facebook page or Twitter account. It’s best to create different pages for healthcare marketing purposes and another one for connecting with existing clients because that could blur the lines between who is a customer and a prospect.
8) Link Building
Link building is when marketers collaborate with other businesses in the same industry to exchange links on their websites. This is a key healthcare marketing strategy, especially in 2022. This is done by using outreach tools that automatically reach out to professionals in your area of expertise. Creating content that wouldn’t typically rank well when discovered through search engines but may work well when published online. Then you would create a link in the resource section pointing back to where it was originally posted along with relevant keywords.
9) Guest Posting/Blog Commenting
You should focus on sharing high-quality blog posts relevant to your business at least once or twice per week because this will increase your site’s authority on Google and attract new patients from within your community. You can also benefit from guest posting on other people’s websites because you will be able to reach out to their audience while also gaining exposure in the process. The key is to make sure you are providing value by sharing your knowledge with users who may not have heard about you otherwise, which will result in more traffic back to your website.
10) Display Advertising
An example of display advertising could include designing an attractive advertisement that runs alongside Google search results when someone searches for things like “dental insurance.” This works well if someone already has a budget for healthcare marketing services and wants to attract new patients through PPC ads online. Your ad should look professional, so it doesn’t feel intrusive but still grab people’s attention enough, so they want to learn more from clicking on it.
11) Content Syndication
In this healthcare marketing strategy, you should create a blog post around a specific topic related to your industry and then reach out to other blogs or websites for permission to republish the same content under your name. This allows an authoritative website to link back to you and share its readers with your site. Then, once someone searches for relevant keywords, results that include your client’s website will appear higher up on Google search since both of those pages contain similar content. You can also run Facebook ads back to your page, so anyone who clicks on the shared post is brought directly there instead.
12) Branded Events/Sponsorship
Health care providers have been known to sponsor local events such as 5Ks or marathons to get in front of people who may be interested in their services. If you have the budget for it, this is a simple way to bring awareness to what you do while raising money through registration fees and T-shirt sales. Sponsoring an event can also work by simply offering incentives like giveaways and free meals during breaks throughout the day that will help attract new patients within your community.
If you’d like to book a call with our healthcare marketing advisor, head on over to our booking page. Robert will be happy to help you figure out what kind of marketing would be best for your practice.