In today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, implementing effective healthcare marketing strategies is crucial for providers to connect with patients, build trust, and ultimately thrive in a competitive market.
With emerging trends, technological advancements, and shifting consumer behaviors, staying ahead requires a strategic approach tailored to the unique needs of the industry.
In this post, we'll explore the most effective strategies that healthcare organizations can leverage to enhance their marketing efforts and achieve sustainable growth in 2024 and beyond.
Explaining Healthcare Marketing
Healthcare marketing is the practice of promoting healthcare services, products, and facilities to attract patients, clients, or customers.
It involves strategies aimed at increasing awareness, building trust, and fostering patient experience.
Healthcare marketers utilize various channels such as digital marketing, traditional advertising, public relations, and community outreach to reach their target audience and communicate the value of their offerings while adhering to regulatory standards and ethical considerations.
Why Healthcare Marketing is Important
Building Trust and Credibility
A key goal of a medical institution should always be gaining the patient's trust.
This is especially important, as 73% of current patients feel their needs aren't being met by their healthcare facility. After all, dissatisfied patients will simply find another practice to go to.
Healthcare marketing can be a useful tool here – promoting a facility's dedication to ensuring patients can trust their services.
In addition, healthcare organizations must place a strong emphasis on empathy. Since patients are not your "average" customer, they need to feel sure a medical practice will handle their needs with care.
So it's no surprise that 52% of patients place a major emphasis on receiving respect from their providers.
Patient Engagement and Empowerment
Closely tied to patient trust is their empowerment.
Healthcare facilities that emphasize this important goal will likely have an easier time attracting and keeping patients.
Much like patients who feel respected by providers, patients who feel empowered are more likely to be loyal to their chosen facility.
Healthcare marketing strategies can aim to achieve this by making it a priority in their messaging. This includes: checkups, preventive screenings, and healthy lifestyle choices.
Not only will patients who feel empowered likely stay with their providers, but they'll also begin to take an active role in their health.
A strategy that promotes this will ensure both of these patient actions are prioritized.
Brand Awareness and Differentiation
To stand out from competitors, healthcare facilities can differentiate themselves in their messaging.
Placing an emphasis on this while increasing brand awareness is a double whammy and can have a big influence on patients.
An effective healthcare marketing strategy will certainly be a catalyst for growing awareness and standing out.
When creating marketing messaging, brands should promote unique services, cutting-edge technologies, patient care models, and positive outcomes/testimonials.
Since marketing for healthcare institutions has the potential to hold more weight than others, highlighting these offerings is essential to attracting and keeping patients.
Recruitment and Retention of Patients and Staff
Aside from attracting and retaining patients, good healthcare marketing strategies attract quality medical professionals.
The more a facility showcases its offerings, it will likely begin to attract interested doctors, nurses, and so on.
Just as patients want to go to a practice that cares for them, medical staff members also value this need.
A facility's commitment to excellence will ensure this is an ongoing trend.
What's more, it's beneficial for healthcare practices to emphasize the employee experience. Employees want to be treated well, and have access to good benefits, work-life balance, and so on.
7 Best Healthcare Marketing Strategies to Use
Choosing the best marketing strategy for your healthcare facility depends on several different factors. Whether it be aligning with budget constraints or finding the best source to reach your target patients - every organization will have a different approach.
Luckily, there are hundreds of different marketing tactics to choose from.
Top healthcare marketing strategies in 2024 include:
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Online reputation management
- Patient referral programs
- Patient satisfaction surveys
Let's dive into each of these a bit further.
Content Marketing
A good content plan is critical to any healthcare marketing strategy. That’s because, when a medical practice provides valuable, relevant content, that instantly boosts their chances of attracting patients.
And thankfully, there are many different forms of content these facilities can choose from:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Video
- Infographics
- Podcasts
...just to name a few.
Content marketing is a powerful strategy for healthcare facilities because it allows you to establish authority, build trust, and educate your audience about relevant health topics, treatments, and services.
By providing valuable and informative content, healthcare facilities can engage with patients, foster long-term relationships, and ultimately drive patient acquisition and retention.
In short: a good content marketing strategy can help healthcare organizations improve their credibility and in turn make patients more confident and comfortable with their choice of provider.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
No healthcare marketing strategy is complete without an SEO plan.
First and foremost, it will increase the visibility of a practice on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This can make it much simpler for potential patients and practitioners to discover the practice.
In fact, 44% of Internet users search online for doctors or other health professionals. And 36% of Internet users search online for hospitals or other medical facilities.
Therefore, using SEO strategies to rank your facility on the first page of Google becomes all that more important.
Our SEO consultants recommend spending time researching relevant keywords to use.
These would include terms related to the practice's area of expertise, offerings, and so on. Using these terms will ensure a practice's page is found by those specifically seeking the services it provides.
Building authoritative backlinks from trusted sites can also have a significant impact on a medical facility's own site. This too can boost SERP rankings and even create referral traffic.
Social Media Marketing
A practice can stand out by not only being active on social media but also by posting quality content. For example, a practice can post all they want, but if the quality of the content isn't there, that will be evident.
The goal of this healthcare marketing strategy is to foster a connection with patients. Think from the patient's perspective – what would they like to see?
This can include posts about offerings, healthcare knowledge, treatments available, workplace culture, and so on. Patients want to sense the personality of a practice, and a great way to showcase this is through social posts.
The key is developing an understanding of who these patients are, and their shared needs. Once this is established, a practice will have a clear vision of how they can communicate.
Email Marketing
Targeted email campaigns are a fantastic way to nurture patient relationships while also delivering personalized content.
When patients receive emails from their healthcare facility, this develops a connection. Furthermore, it also shows that the facility has an effective patient management system.
Aside from promoting services and providing content, email campaigns also help facilities promote new services.
This is a key step in a healthcare marketing strategy, as new offerings can draw in patient interest. As a result, email campaigns heavily aid in creating patient engagement.
Online Reputation Management
Any healthcare marketing strategy should always include some form of online reputation management (ORM).
This means that online reviews, ratings, feedback on review sites, social media sites, and healthcare directories can be monitored.
Medical practices that use ORM platforms such as Reviews On My Website will be able to quickly see what's being written about them.
And that’s important because 77% of patients use online reviews as their first step in finding a new doctor.
And 84% wouldn't go to a referred physician if rated with four stars or less.
Since medical practices deal with sensitive situations on a daily basis, poor reviews about their services (or providers, for that matter) can have a massive impact.
ORM will allow teams to quickly address negative reviews by...
- Responding to patient feedback
- Addressing concerns
- Highlighting positive experiences
Patient Referral Programs
Boosting patient referrals can be done by implementing programs that incentivize current patients.
This motivates them to refer connections like friends, family members, and so on to the healthcare facility. To make sure patients feel motivated to do this, it's a useful healthcare marketing strategy to offer incentives.
Offering rewards, discounts, or exclusive benefits to the referring patient and the new patient is a great way to see more referrals.
Lastly, a key benefit of referrals is the positive word of mouth they involve.
By one patient referring another, this ensures that the referring patient has had good experiences with a facility. This becomes more and more common as patients continue to attract new ones.
Patient Satisfaction Surveys
Running patient satisfaction surveys is an essential marketing strategy for healthcare organizations.
Most importantly, they gather direct feedback from patients.
This eliminates any "what ifs'' about the patient experience. Instead of just guessing about how patients feel, providers will receive accurate data straight from the source.
From the experience of our healthcare market research company, our healthcare clients use this information, to make improvements to existing systems. Additionally, this feedback will also tell them what they're doing well.
Plus, simply the act of sending out quarterly or yearly surveys shows that a healthcare facility values patient opinion and feedback. This can foster both patient loyalty and retention rates.
Patient surveys also allow facilities to benchmark data.
Benchmarking this patient feedback allows facilities to track changes in patient responses over time. This ensures facilities will stay on top of patient trends as they inevitably shift.
Examples of Successful Healthcare Marketing
Below are a few examples of outstanding healthcare marketing strategies.
These examples, while all unique, each demonstrate the power of an effective healthcare marketing strategy.
Whether these campaigns used emotional storytelling, educational resources, or social media promotion, each one had a large public impact.
Cleveland Clinic's "Empathy" Campaign
Launching a series of ads emphasizing the patient experience, Cleveland Clinic's campaign established them as leaders in compassionate care.
Their "Empathy" campaign used stories from real patients and focused on the emotional connection between patients and their providers.
Since the series emphasized the importance of treating patients well, it reinforced Cleveland Clinic's position as an organization that truly cares about patients.
Mayo Clinic's "You Know Where to Go" Campaign
Creating a campaign around when patients should seek urgent care centers instead of an ER trip, the Mayo Clinic aimed at educating its audience.
The "You Know Where to Go" campaign used videos, social media, and informational resources to help the public grasp what conditions are ER-worthy.
Designed to cut down on unnecessary ER visits, this campaign promoted patients being able to make informed medical decisions based on factual messaging.
American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women" Campaign
Raising awareness about heart disease in women, the "Go Red for Women" campaign emphasized the importance of women taking control of their heart health.
Including risk factors and detailing positive lifestyle changes, the American Heart Association's campaign took on an educational tone to inform its audience.
The campaign used educational resources, social media, and community events to promote women having control over their heart health and becoming advocates for themselves.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's "Thanks and Giving" Campaign
An annual campaign, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital strives to make an impact over the holiday season.
The "Thanks and Giving" campaign encourages the public to make donations and provide support for pediatric cancer research. The hospital's campaign has a wide reach, using methods like commercials, digital marketing strategies, celebrity endorsements, and corporate partnerships.
Promoting a spirit of gratitude, this annual campaign offers a message of hope and togetherness.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
We probably all remember this one!
During the summer of 2014, Anthony Senerchia, Pete Frates, and Pat Quinn, who were all living with ALS, initiated the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, urging individuals worldwide to pour ice water over themselves and contribute to ALS organizations.
Their inspiring campaign garnered participation from over 17 million people and generated a staggering $115 million in donations for The ALS Association.
This campaign quickly garnered awareness and fundraising support for ALS-related causes.
Contact Our Healthcare Marketing Research Company
A healthcare organization's strategy is everything when it comes to developing and maintaining patient relationships.
Drive Research specializes in both marketing and market research for healthcare facilities, offices, products, and services.
Our team is skilled in working with companies and brands to deliver timely, actionable data to create successful marketing campaigns based on data.
To learn more about our services, get in touch with us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Lark Allen
As a Content Marketing Specialist, Lark has a strong background and passion for creative, professional, and journalistic writing. She is also a self-proclaimed music freak and 90s enthusiast.
Learn more about Lark, here.
