AN EASY HOW-TO FOR THE LAZY HEALTHCARE MARKETER

It was early in the morning as I walked up the sidewalk. I opened the front door not knowing what to expect. The warm, familiar smell of fresh baked cookies greeted me before I could even get both feet inside. I began to scan the room and was interrupted by the sound of a cheerful “Good morning!” and a kind smile from an equally kind woman. She said they’d been expecting me.

I’m going to pause here and ask if you can tell from that short description where I was.

Any guesses?

Believe it or not, I was at a new dentist’s office. There were fresh baked cookies along with coffee, juice and water in the waiting area. If the initial impression wasn’t enough, they took me back almost right away. They gave me a tour of the office and gift (a branded water tumbler) to thank me for coming. They asked who referred me so they could give the person $50. The entire customer experience was pleasant and, as you can tell, memorable.

Healthcare marketing is just beginning to catch up to the rest of the marketing world, but in reality, they are still behind. There is a clear and obvious disconnect between physicians and marketing. Let’s start to bridge that gap!

This guide will walk you through step-by-step how to: • Focus on Customer Experience• Build Trust • Create Awesome Content

Be Mobile FriendlyFormatting your site for mobile has never been more important. In fact, a site for mobile is probably more important than a site for desktop.

According to Digiday, “The average American spends much longer on the internet compared to the global daily average, with each person spending two hours and 25 minutes on their phones, and 52 minutes at their desktop. By 2018, that gap is predicted to grow to people spending three hours and 20 minutes using the net on their phone, compared to just 40 minutes on the computer.”

FOCUS ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

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Global Internet Consumption:

Desktop vs MobileMinutes per day

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Not only is formatting hugely important, but virtual healthcare is on the rise. While some argue that virtual healthcare is impersonal and has many downfalls, I’m not going to lie, I love it.

I have an app that gives access to doctors 24/7. You can video chat or have a phone call with a physician at any given time. You explain your symptoms, they make a diagnosis and call in a prescription for you when necessary. It is fast, easy, and convenient. In my case, I needed amoxicillin. They called the pharmacy and it was ready for me in 30 minutes. I didn’t even have to get out of my PJs to see a doctor.

This virtual healthcare company says it is reinventing the way healthcare is delivered. They say, “By blending technology and the best physicians in the healthcare world, we believe that we offer a better way to consult and diagnose the issues that many of us face daily. Telehealth will become one of the first access points to healthcare in the future and we are ready to be there when our patients need us.” How brilliant!

This is a great example of a company leading the charge for the healthcare marketing industry.

Be Local

Location-based technology like geo-fencing and GPS can tell you exactly where your users are – whether it’s in your business location, at your competitors’ or anywhere that might be relevant to your brand. If you’re not familiar, geo-fencing is where you create a virtual fence around a specific geographic area. When people go inside that “fence” they can receive messages, alerts, coupons or other information sent to their mobile phone when they go into that area.

As a healthcare marketer, if you’re not already incorporating location-based marketing, it’s safe to say you’re missing out on a major patient/customer base, which equals missing out on major revenue!

Be Millennial Friendly

While you may be used to focusing on Generation X and baby boomers, it’s crucial for healthcare marketers to consider millennials as well. Millennials hold so much spending power and are making more decisions about health all the time.

Remember those Staples commercials with the easy button? That’s exactly what you need to think of when marketing to millennials. Explain your objective in three seconds or less. Use the fewest words to get your point across.

A coworker recently presented statistics on attention spans. The average person has an attention span of only eight seconds. Yes, eight. Comparatively, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. You read that correctly. The average person has less of an attention span than a goldfish. That’s what you’re working with in this new mobile, digitized world. Millennials especially do not want to feel like they’re reading a hospital website.

I can’t stress it enough. Simplify.

Be Personal

I’ve told you all about how digital is king. And truly, it is! However, it just isn’t personal. If you come up just below your competitors on SEO rankings, their website is formatted for digital just like yours, and they’ve got the location-based marketing down to a fine science, what then? What differentiates you?

How are you serving your community? I don’t mean walking around handing out fliers and self-promoting. I mean really serving. Press releases are great, but is that what your target audience reads?

In the story of the new dentist I told you a little bit about how pleasant the environment was to walk into. Not only did they create a welcoming atmosphere, they offered massages at the beginning. They offer flowers to patients at the end. Once taken back the hygienist said, “It may be little wait for the doctor. Would you like a neck pillow and a blanket?” Um, yes and yes. Talk about making me feel special.

Agencies say the single biggest impediment to marketing success for healthcare brands is the lack of strategy, while healthcare marketers cite budget as the major barrier. Well, healthcare marketers, being personal and serving your community doesn’t always need to break the bank.

Things such as offering a blanket or a carnation at the end of a visit cost a little, sure. But consider the payoff they’re receiving from just being intentional about making each patient feel special. I’ve recommended every one of our new hires to that dentist because I know they’ll have an amazing experience unlike any other dentist in town.

Build Trust

This is huge! As a marketer, you’ve got to be constantly thinking about your bottom line. However, you need to build trust, position yourself as a leader in your industry so you become a valuable, trusted resource people automatically turn to in a time of need.

For example, if you have a fantastic doctor that patients love, tell people! Put it out there how much this doctor is respected and adored.

60% of consumers say they trust doctors’ posts versus 36% who trust posts from a pharma firm.

Doctors are trusted more than brands themselves, because of their background. If brands want to build greater trust, it’s worth looking to strategically align themselves with medical influencers in the social space.

There are a lot of ways to build trust. Creating content is a good way (we’ll go over that in the next section) and customer reviews are great!

Create Awesome Content

As I mentioned, creating awesome content goes hand in hand with building trust. You need to be relevant, relatable, and well, respected!

On average, healthcare marketers spend 23% of their total marketing budget on content marketing activities, compared to 31% for all marketers.

I’m going to cut right to the chase here and say if you’re not dominating your email marketing, you need to focus on dominating your email marketing. In addition, if you’re not using video marketing, you need to be using video marketing. Leading healthcare marketers report that videos and email marketing are the most effective content marketing tactics. The same can be said for social media.

As conscious as healthcare marketers are about budget, these are budget friendly ways to get a huge ROI. But, shockingly, healthcare marketers are not taking advantage of these things.

Consider These Stats:

• Healthcare marketers tend to use print at higher rates than other marketers. For print magazines, 47% of healthcare marketers use them versus 35%, and for print newsletters, 43% of healthcare marketers use them versus 28%.

• Healthcare marketers use social media less often than other marketers.

• Out of the 5,624 hospitals in the United States, only 1,501 are using a form of social media, which equates to approximately 26%.

While these stats seem disappointing, it’s actually great news for you! You have the opportunity right now to be ahead of your competition and ultimately win.

Now that you know how to focus on customer experience, build trust, and create awesome content. I want to leave you with some final advice.

Create specific goals. Seek hard data to support those goals. Do you want to increase revenue? Specify by exactly how much, take what you’ve learned here and go do it!

Here are two examples of really easy (and effective!) healthcare marketing initiatives:

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