Healthcare digital marketing trends that impact your practice

In several respects, the healthcare sector is innovative, but healthcare digital marketing strategies appear to be lagging behind other consumer-centered industries. Why? 

Over the coming years, healthcare marketers are expected to take full charge of the consumer experience – patient experiences being the focus. 

Not to mention the use of regulatory, enforcement, and off-label wounds that kill creativity. History has a way of repeating itself, and there is a pattern of disruption, especially with digital marketing. 

Technology like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and advanced wireless network capabilities enable people all over the world to communicate and exchange information like never before. Also, innovations such as wearables, predictive analytics, mobile technologies, voice search, and the like are increasingly providing the customer with ways to engage you. Are you aware of the current trends in digital marketing, which will have the most effect on your organization over the next year and beyond? 

1. The growth in voice-activated search and healthcare SEO trends

As healthcare providers continue to compete for top-spot google rankings, they may begin to focus on the importance of organically generated content to boost the efficiency of search engines. With your healthcare brand, the prevalence of Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Voice to find instructions, communicate tasks, find directions, and more. Primarily if you represent a healthcare portfolio that looks to the consumer. ComScore hints that by the end of 2020, all web searches will be voice-driven. PwC found that 71% of wearable device owners predict they’ll perform more voice searches in the future.

When creating healthcare digital marketing content for voice-activation applications, write in a conversational tone, incorporating long-tail keywords, blending keywords into the site’s backend, and considering for misspelled/misinterpreted terms. 

Posting updates to Facebook and LinkedIn regularly will help healthcare businesses move up the SEO the ranks. Still, those who will continue to stand out in 2020 are those who come up with innovative social media strategies that drive engagement. Historically, WebMD and the Mayo Clinic are two of the most influential sources of medical knowledge, and their blogs and social posts have been a huge success.

2. The increase of using video in medical marketing

Doctors can treat patients with no immediate access to hospitals or health care facilities.

Using video bridges groups and organizations with simple, inexpensive, and convenient communication. It is highly trackable and vital to the healthcare industry as video offers a way for Internet users to be visually informed about medical conditions. Video has become an essential communication tool for the healthcare and medical sectors, in particular in sharing success stories for patients. 

The use of video for healthcare digital marketing has evolved dramatically because physicians and surgeons around the world can now consult remotely with each other. And they can treat patients with no immediate access to hospitals or health care facilities. 

An especially impactful campaign comes from the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Institute. They take a personal approach to digital marketing through video by infusing faith in its patients using heartfelt videos and Insights Blog. The Cancer Institute is actively exchanging advice and other information from people who are now cancer-free using several digital marketing tools. 

Virtual Reality is also on the rise, particularly as doctors and surgeons seek to teach other healthcare professionals visually. Medical Realities, for example, is a training program that uses VR to offer high-quality advanced surgery education with realism and immersion in mind. A couple of years ago, Google Think published statistics showing that 44% of patients who found hospitals on their smartphones booked their appointments on the same platform regularly. 

3. Continued growth in Pay-Per-Click and organic search

The value of paid search – Google perfected the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ad industry, and with paid search made billions and billions. PPC ads appear as small, three-line advertisements that you see at the top and right of most search results pages with a green “Ad” logo. The upper echelon of savvy, flourishing doctors uses annual marketing campaigns for digital healthcare with pay search budgets that range from several thousand to $10,000 or more each month. Paid search is versatile, highly competitive, and can target specific age groups of men and women. With a moment’s notice, it can be turned on and off. PPC is best left, as with organic search, to professionals who have proven track records and understand the complexities of PPC advertising. 

Organic search – The first and most common way for prospective patients to discover your practice’s specific resources online through healthcare marketing is by organic searching. Organic search gives a formulaic density of common keywords and keyword phrases on your website. 

If you’ve hired a specialist with SEO keywords and reporting on Google Analytics, you can find most savvy doctors using organic search. Don’t try writing the content for your website yourself. Major search engines will likely overlook your site if you have the wrong keyword density and use particular phrases too frequently.

Finally…

These are just a few suggestions regarding your healthcare digital marketing, but always keep in mind that you want your brand(s) to be a safe, reliable, and trusted source online. Many things to consider including accepting the latest AdWords interface, learning to become a good data analyst, adding some dollars in ads to LinkedIn and Facebook.