Marketing and growing your healthcare clinic is a challenging task, especially given the fiercely competitive online environment of massive healthcare conglomerates. While the demand for healthcare services is growing year on year, so too is the competition, which begs the question – how do you stand out and attract traffic to your healthcare clinic in a meaningful way? How can you reach your target audience and convince them that you are the right option for them?
It all comes down to digital marketing and connecting with prospective patients while promoting your practice through advertising strategies and organic search methods. Here, we’ll explore the basics and secrets to successful online advertising for healthcare clinics, which will help you increase ROI from your healthcare marketing campaigns.
1. Get to know, define and understand your prospective patients
When it comes to digital marketing and advertising, it all starts with your target audience and online buying psychology. You need to begin by understanding your buyers, their needs and their pain points. To appeal to the right audience, practice managers need to consider the goals and motivations of their patients, while answering that important question: what would entice them to book an appointment with you? Understanding your prospective patients will help guide all aspects of your marketing strategy, including what specific web pages should be created, what language should be used and what questions need to be asked and answered.
When painting a picture of your prospective patients, consider:
- Where are they seeking treatment and where are they based?
- What is their likely budget?
- Why would they want to move healthcare providers, or what could tempt them to do so?
- What would be a blocker in them making an appointment?
- What matters most to them – reputation, price, trustworthiness?
- Would they be able to easily make and keep an appointment with you?
2. Do your competitor research
Once you have your target audience defined and you understand them and their motivations, you need to move onto your competitors. Who are they, what are they doing to attract patients and how can you do better? Consider:
- What are their prices like, and are yours on par with theirs?
- Do they offer services or products you don’t?
- What is their online experience like?
- What type of content are they creating that appears to be working for them?
- Are they active in the community in a way you aren’t? What can you do to compete in this area?
This is a crucial step that you need to spend time on initially, but you also need to dedicate time to competitor research regularly – it’s going to be hard to beat the competition unless you know exactly who they are and what they’re doing!
3. Get smart about your campaign objectives
Adequately researching your competitors and your target audience will put you in a good position to set campaign objectives – an essential step to ensuring that your advertising activity is delivering excellent ROI. Just take care to be realistic – stretch yourself but don’t set yourself up for failure and disappointment by setting expectations sky high. Once you have your objectives set, you can use them to structure a killer campaign strategy.
4. Create a campaign strategy
To get where you want to be as a business, you will need a well-defined strategy in place. While creating your strategy, keep in mind your unique selling points (USPs), your target audience as well as your desired results. A well-thought-out and defined strategy will help you define goals and timelines, putting you in the right position to get you the results you want.
5. Use the right platforms for your target audience
The best ads in the world would be pointless unless they’re seen by the right people. Take efforts to ensure your ad is seen by potential patients in your local area using clever targeting, and choose the right online advertising channels, whether it be LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google Ads, email or display. The right platform will vary depending on your business and your objectives.
6. Create unbeatable content
You may have heard that content is king – it’s as true today as it ever was. So you need to get the words on your ads, and on your website, just right. Ad copy needs to be convincing and enticing, and supporting assets including ebooks, blog posts or PDFs need to be written with your target audience in mind. Your content should focus on convincing language as well as structure, layout and style as well as elements such as Calls to Action (CTAs). Once your content is perfect, ensure it’s complemented by the right imagery – you only have a short amount of time to capture the interest of your prospective patients. Don’t jeopardise yourself with stock photography or bland ads.
7. Continually track and analyse data
You need to ensure your tracking is in place so you can maintain incredible results month after month – it’s important to know where your leads are coming from and which of your advertising campaigns are most effective. Tracking will allow you to adjust and react accordingly, leading to the best possible results. Google Analytics is a great starting point, as are other tools such as Hupspot and Hootsuite.
8. Set a budget and keep it realistic
Knowing how much money to spend and where is a learning curve, and one that will take time. We recommend you begin by setting a budget and spreading it across multiple marketing channels, then gradually increasing individual budgets depending on what channels are best performing.
9. Keep an eye on your campaigns
Realistically, it may take several months to start seeing real results, but it’s best to start early and incorporate regular, monthly reports that will help you measure your performance while highlighting areas for improvement. This is something all your healthcare competitors will be doing, so start as you mean to go on.
10. Always continue to test and learn
The online world is continuously changing – you need to evolve with it to achieve real ROI. Keeping on top of changing trends and best practice can feel like a full-time job, which is exactly why some healthcare professionals decide to invest in a healthcare marketing agency such as Rocket Healthcare Marketing. Digital marketing is a broad area, and you want to ensure you are collaborating with experts in the area with a proven record of success.
An active online presence can make all the difference to business success in 2023, and effective advertising is a large element of that – it will help you get your healthcare clinic in front of the right people, while boosting your profile. It’s not an easy job, but incorporating these ten tips will get you on the right track for long-term success.