Top 7 Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategies

Nowadays, the best strategy to connect with patients is to find them where they’re at. And where are they most of the time? That’s right – online. For that reason, having a solid healthcare digital marketing strategy is crucial for anyone looking to expand their reach across the Internet.

However, I know it can be difficult to pinpoint where to even begin. So, I’ve decided to create a quick, handy guide on digital marketing for healthcare with 7 strategies you can start implementing right now.

Ready to learn? Let’s dive right in!

1. Leverage Video Marketing

It’s been found that the average user spends 16 minutes and 49 seconds watching online video ads every month. If that’s only accounting for promotional content, think about how much time they spend watching content that’s actually valuable or even entertaining.

For that reason, I believe that video marketing is something that the healthcare industry can greatly benefit from. So, let me show you some of the most popular video types you can produce to enhance your digital healthcare marketing.

1.1 Explainer Videos

Video explainers are very short pieces that can be used to promote specific services or products. In the case of the healthcare industry, it can be a new medication or a specific treatment option, for example. These pieces can help you shine a light on your unique value proposition, highlighting its features and benefits while driving patient engagement and sales.

On top of that, healthcare explainer videos can simplify complex terminology and break down complex processes. This way, anyone, be it a patient or other professionals, can easily understand them.

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(Piece by the animated explainer video company Yum Yum Videos.)

1.2 How-To Videos

Educational content in the form of how-to videos is particularly effective in medical digital marketing because it provides a medium through which to share valuable and useful information.

These videos feature step-by-step instructions on how to achieve a certain goal or complete a specific process. In a healthcare context, they can be used to tell patients how to manage their health conditions or perform certain medical procedures, but they can also serve to demonstrate to other professionals how to operate medical equipment.

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1.3 Expert Feature Videos

One of the main goals of healthcare digital marketing is to build trust and credibility online, and a great way of doing that is by creating medical expert feature videos. The idea is rather simple: you have to feature a respected and knowledgeable healthcare professional and have them discuss a topic related to your specialty. 

When patients see these videos, they’re more likely to trust the information and feel confident in their medical decisions, and identify you as a source of expertise and knowledge, establishing your organization as a respected authority in your niche and a go-to resource for information.

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1.4 Testimonial Videos

The best testimonial videos place the spotlight on satisfied patients, allowing them to share their positive experiences with a medical institution or organization. In turn, they can help you provide social proof, build trust, and improve credibility.

Providing social proof by sharing the successful outcomes and positive experiences of other people can help potential patients feel more confident in their decision to seek care from that particular provider. At the same time, you can highlight the benefits of your services. 

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1.5 Medical Tips Videos

A simpler type of video you can leverage in your healthcare digital marketing strategy is the medical tips video. This type of educational video is all about sharing useful and actionable information about a particular topic in bite-sized chunks.

You can tackle virtually any topic as long as you’re confident you can provide accurate, reliable advice.

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2. Launch an Email Marketing Campaign

Having an email marketing campaign in place is another crucial strategy when it comes to digital marketing for healthcare. Time and again, it’s proven to be a cost-effective way to build relationships, engage, maintain communication with patients, and even generate leads and sales. But do you know what the best part is? A campaign is fairly easy to create!

There are three key elements any email marketing campaign should be built upon:

• Segmentation: to help you divide your subscribers into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, such as interests or demographics, and promote targeted and relevant emails to each group.
• Personalization: to customize your content for each individual subscriber. Such emails are proven to be more engaging and lead to higher open and click-through rates.
• Automation: to send emails automatically based on time-based events or specific triggers, such as subscribing to a newsletter. This can save you a lot of time and even improve your campaign’s effectiveness by delivering timely messages to subscribers.

Once those are in place, you can start thinking about content. There are many options out there, but you can start with a welcome email and a newsletter and then move on to event invitation emails, season greetings, and even sign-up forms for your blogs.

3. Work on Your SEO

Considering that 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, search engine optimization (SEO) is something no business can afford to ignore.

Working on your SEO is an important healthcare digital marketing strategy because it allows you to bring more eyes to your website by placing it at the top of the search engine results on your chosen keywords.

Optimizing your site and content to rank higher is not easy and requires constant work, which is why I always recommend that healthcare providers focus on improving their local SEO first. This involves creating keywords specific to the area you serve using a generic word such as “hospitals” and a geographic term, like the city you’re based in. Then, you should optimize your website and a few blog posts for that keyword. 

Your institution or organization should also have a Google My Business profile, so the search engine can share your information with people searching for providers in your area. This profile is completely free and quite easy to set up.

4. Improve Your Social Media Presence

Everyone has a social media page nowadays, so strengthening your presence on these channels is essential to your digital healthcare marketing efforts. Consistently sharing content on your page helps you engage with potential and existing patients. Moreover, it can aid in improving your reputation and building social proof.

However, acquiring new followers and reaching existing ones is now trickier than ever. Especially because competition for their time and attention keeps increasing. For that reason, it’s always best to find out which social platforms your patients prefer and focus your efforts there.

Then, a good digital marketing strategy to engage with your followers is to keep them up to date on the latest industry developments, company news, events, and so on. You can do that with a simple post or create videos and flyers to effectively catch your audience’s attention and encourage them to interact.

5. Have a Responsive Web Design

I know you most likely already have a website dedicated to promoting your products or services. I mean, almost everyone has. However having a responsive design is not something that’s usually discussed that often in medical digital marketing.

A well-designed website can mark the difference when it comes to patients booking an appointment or requesting a demo. 

For starters, it can help you create a professional image for your healthcare business, which, in turn, increases your credibility and fosters trust among patients and stakeholders. Moreover, a user-friendly website that provides relevant information further contributes to building a positive impression and encourages visitors to engage with the site.

But what is a “responsive website”? Simply put, it’s a site designed to improve user experience by providing easy navigation, faster load times, and better readability. This can be achieved by minimizing the file size of images and using a legible font and contrasting colors for your text, among many other strategies.

6. Write Authoritative Blog Posts

Let’s be honest. When people go online, they’re usually looking up their symptoms, and, in most cases, they don’t yet know whether they need medical services. So, they’re searching for information rather than a doctor.

Writing blog posts that are informative and relevant can become an effective healthcare digital marketing strategy for building relationships with your prospects. That’s because providing value and showing your commitment to their health and well-being fosters a sense of loyalty and trust.

But that’s not everything! Having useful informational posts that answer common patient questions can bring you lots of other benefits, some of which include:

• Presenting yourself as an expert. 
• Provide expertise and authoritativeness.
• Be front of mind when they seek help or treatment.
• Drive traffic to your website.
• Improve your visibility online.
• Boost brand awareness.

7. Invest in Paid Advertising

If you’re looking for a healthcare digital marketing strategy that would yield faster results, you could consider paid advertising. Pay-per-click (PPC) and display ads allow you to position yourself at the top of the search results for specific keywords. The only downside is that you have to pay a fee for that service. 

Google ads is the most common platform for paid advertising, but some social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook also have PPC programs.

Paid advertising increases your visibility exponentially, of course, but it’s also guaranteed to bring you results due to its highly measurable nature. You can track your ads’ performance and ROI and make any adjustments you want based on real-time data.

Wrapping Up

It can be tricky to navigate the sea of healthcare digital marketing if you have no clue what will actually work for you. Well, that’s exactly why I made this piece. Hopefully, you’ll find one (or several!) of these strategies useful to promote your healthcare business and start achieving your marketing goals.

If you want my advice, I highly suggest that you build a comprehensive digital healthcare marketing campaign, taking advantage of each of the strategies I’ve mentioned here. It’ll take time and effort, for sure, but I can promise you that the rewards will be well worth it!