Marketing in the medical-health sector: innovation aimed at the person
The ‘ Healthcare Marketing is the application of traditional marketing in the field of medical and health, developed in recent years and still being spread. It represents an innovation in the health sector due to the fact that patients are more connected and attentive and with increasingly stronger needs: they are constantly looking for immediate information and answers to their questions.
However, while on the one hand Healthcare Marketing offers immediate information and a large choice of services, on the other hand, it risks lacking in empathy, considering people as customers and consumers , overseeing the fact that they are above all patients, often ending up offering products and services that are not directly related to health.
Resistance to data changes from digital, but not for everyone
Another consideration to make about Healthcare Marketing is that it sometimes lacks customization. In fact, this system is at a much lower level than marketing in other sectors: research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute says it emphasizes the poor attention paid by Healthcare Marketing to aspects of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or the positioning of search results.
However, there are those who manage to overcome the traditional models of marketing by putting into practice all the precautions necessary to develop cutting-edge strategies, thus exploiting the potential of the web. This is the case, for example, of Boston Children’s Hospital, which provides its patients with an accurate website that provides the opportunity to stay up to date and make choices about services in a condition of total information (in this case relating to children ).
The second case is that of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: this body also publishes informational content, and it does so through its HealthBeat blog, characterized by a clean, simple and easy to understand style.
How to set up a good Healthcare marketing strategy?
In addition to creating a website, the focus on a correct Healthcare Marketing plan must be focused on all media, both online and offline. However, for efforts to be efficient and to produce satisfactory results, site creation, and other tools alone are not enough. What are the points to develop then?
- Organic research: refers to the way in which the patient can find the company and its services through a search on the web and the results of search engines; to take advantage of the organic search it is necessary to use specific keywords in order to stand out among the competitors. According to data processed by Business Insider for Custora, 22% of e-commerce orders at the beginning of 2016 were generated by organic research.
- Paid search: PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is a form of online advertising launched by Google: the advertiser pays a figure related to the number of clicks that the advertisement receives. According to the Business Insider survey, the paid search brought 20% of e-commerce orders.
- Social media: according to Statista elaborations carried out in April 2016, Facebook had over 1.5 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp over 1 billion, Facebook Messenger 900 million users, Instagram more than 500 million. These are just some examples to show how the use of social media can be important above all to achieve results without using a large budget. Obviously, you have to use the most suitable social media for your business.
Staying in touch with the user is essential to converting him into a patient ( lead generation ), guiding him to choose his services before he relies on others.
Web Healthcare Marketing is constantly changing: a company that wants to have good results must always stay up to date on the trends and innovations in the sector and the means by which it can advertise. With a careful marketing strategy developed step by step, taking into account all the tools available (and the help of professionals in the field) you can arrive at optimal results with the growth of your business and the number of your customers.
