How to Create a Healthcare Marketing Strategy – 12 Strategies Your Practice Can Use

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Operating a healthcare practice involves a lot more than simply providing excellent service. Healthcare professionals need to know how to market their business to attract more clients and improve the customer experience. 

Just like any local business, your healthcare practice should have a solid marketing strategy in place. Luckily, the digital world gives you many options to achieve this. 

No matter what type of healthcare practice you run, here are some of the most effective healthcare marketing strategies and tactics you can apply.

But first, let’s cover why this is so important.

Why You Need a Solid Healthcare Marketing Strategy

No matter what kind of healthcare services you offer, having an effective healthcare marketing strategy is essential. 

Even if you’re offering a vital service, your practice still needs to attract patients and operate as a business. Here are some of the benefits of effective healthcare marketing strategies. 

Find Prospective Patients

First and foremost, healthcare marketing will help you acquire more patients (customers). By using the right healthcare marketing tactics, you’ll be able to make your practice a lot more visible to the right people. 

Healthcare marketing strategies are also designed to build trust and make your practice the first choice for your target audience. Ultimately, this will help you attract more healthcare consumers. 

Gain a Competitive Advantage

The healthcare industry is a busy one. Even though your service is important, there is still a lot of competition around you. 

Healthcare marketers will focus on standing out from the competition and ensuring healthcare providers gain a competitive edge. It’s all about developing a strategic advantage in seriously competitive healthcare business landscapes. 

Keep Patients Engaged

A key part of healthcare marketing is keeping your patients engaged with your business through strategic outreach. Doing so can result in referrals from your patients. It will also help you improve the retention of your patients.

It can cost 5 times more to acquire new customers than it can to retain your existing ones. So, it’s important that healthcare organizations maintain strong relationships with their patients as part of their marketing strategies. 

Connect With Patients Across Multiple Channels

A successful healthcare marketing strategy will help you reach and engage with patients over multiple channels. By developing an extensive digital marketing strategy, you’ll be able to create more touchpoints with patients and develop stronger relationships with them. 

This will help you increase brand visibility while also enhancing long-term patient relationships. 

Generate More Leads for Your Healthcare Services

The right healthcare marketing strategies can help you generate new leads for your practice. By strategically sending these leads the right content and marketing messages, you’ll be able to turn them into new customers. 

How to Create a Powerful Healthcare Marketing Strategy

There’s a lot that can go into healthcare marketing. While an orthopedic marketing strategy may look different from dentistry marketing, there are a few core practices all healthcare marketers should follow. 

To help you grow your practice and acquire more patients, here are some of the essential steps and tactics to apply to your healthcare marketing strategy. 

1. Start With a Strong Website

No matter what kind of healthcare practice you run, having a great website is essential. 

93% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. On top of this, 63% of consumers primarily use a company’s website to find and engage with businesses.

This means your website is your most valuable digital resource for attracting and engaging new patients. If you don’t offer a user-friendly website that performs well in the search results, you’ll struggle to generate results from your healthcare marketing initiatives. 

Your website is also the place you’ll direct all traffic from your other marketing strategies. So, make sure it’s optimized to help you turn this traffic into bookings. 

A great healthcare website should include the following elements:

  • Online bookings: Offering a convenient online booking calendar on your website will make it a lot easier for people to schedule appointments. This will help you increase the number of patients walking through your door. 
  • Build trust: Include positive reviews, trust badges, and testimonials from past clients. Visitors will need to develop trust in your business before they schedule an appointment. 
  • Clearly convey what you do: This may be obvious, but make sure your website lists all the services you offer. It should also provide some background on your career as a healthcare professional.
  • Offer a great user experience: Websites need to load fast, be easy to navigate and be optimized for all devices. This is essential if you’re going to engage your visitors. 
  • Be visually appealing: Be sure to include plenty of images, and possibly video too, to make your site more visually appealing and engaging. 

These are just some of the most basic elements of a great healthcare website. Although there’s so much more your website can do, such as help you build your mailing list, offer useful content, highlight special promotions, and more. 

doctor practice website example
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Using the right website builder is essential for making all of this happen. With a solution like Wishpond, you get all the marketing features your business needs packed into an easy website builder.

2. Use Email Marketing 

Email marketing can offer healthcare companies an estimated ROI of 4200%. Clearly, this is a marketing channel worth focusing on. 

As a healthcare provider, email is one of your most valuable channels for engaging and attracting new patients. You can use it for:

  • Sending out interesting content
  • Keeping your existing patients engaged
  • Keep patients up to date with your practice
  • Send out the latest industry news or updates
  • Re-engaging old patients

And more. It’s easy to use and can offer amazing results. 

To do email marketing, you’ll need two things – an email list and an email marketing platform. You can build a mailing list when new patients make a booking via your website – the booking form can automatically send the lead to your leads database and subscribe them to your newsletter content. 

You can also attract new subscribers by offering interesting content, running special promotions, or more. 

It’s always a good idea to segment your mailing list into categories. For example, this could include existing patients and new leads. This way, you can send more relevant content to each list, which will result in greater engagement. 

dental practice email marketing example
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Here’s a guide to getting started with email marketing, and here are some email marketing examples you can check out to help you understand how to utilize this powerful medium. 

3. Utilize Social Media the Right Way

When it comes to building a comprehensive healthcare marketing strategy, using social media is essential. However, many healthcare providers don’t know how to make the most of their social media channels. 

First, you need to select the right channels for your business. This should include a Facebook page, which is essential for any local business. Then, you can choose to market your business through platforms like Instagram or TikTok if it makes sense. 

Never take on too many social media profiles and spread yourself too thin. Rather, focus on one or two channels and generate as much engagement as you can on these. This will make your healthcare marketing strategy a lot more effective. 

While you can do a lot with social media, as a healthcare provider, your goals will likely be to:

  • Generate awareness
  • Build trust in your practice
  • Send traffic to your website

Social media is also a great place to display more of your personality and reveal the human side of your healthcare practice. This will help you create more meaningful relations with your patients. 

You can also use your social media accounts to engage with your audience and provide customer service and feedback. 

Of course, focus on creating great content around your healthcare practice and be consistent with it. If you want to reach a lot of people through social media, then you’ll want to run paid ads. This is a great tactic, as social media ads let you be very specific about what target audience you want to show your ads to. We’ll cover this in more detail later.

healthcare marketing social media example
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Here’s a guide to some of the best social media marketing tips for your business to help you get started. 

4. Build a Consistent Brand

A key part of healthcare marketing is building trust. People won’t schedule an appointment with a healthcare provider if they don’t trust them. In order to do this, you’ll want to focus on building a consistent, trustworthy brand across all of your marketing channels. 

Be sure to understand your target audience and know what sets your brand apart from the competition. Establish this market positioning, and use it in your marketing tactics to help create a clear brand. 

As a local business, a great way to build your brand could be to get involved with your community. This might involve sponsoring events, participating in community development programs, or helping out your local community in some way. The more you actively get your brand out into your community, the more recognizable and trustworthy your brand will become. 

Of course, you also want to make sure that you use the same branding, business details, and tone of voice across all of your marketing touchpoints. This is key to building a consistent brand.

5. Focus On SEO

Where’s the first place people go to find a local business near them? Google. In fact, about 7% of all Google searches are health-related. 

That’s a lot of potential search traffic your business can tap into.

We really can’t underestimate the power of a strong SEO strategy for healthcare providers. The more visible your website is on search engines, the more business you’ll be able to attract. It’s that simple. 

Here are a few essential local SEO tactics to follow to help you gain more visibility:

  • Optimize your Google Business Profile: This is Google’s local business directory, and it’s what will display your business at the top of relevant search results. When you create a profile, add as many relevant details as possible. Include images, reviews, contact information, and more. Of course, also include your location to add this to Google Maps. 
  • Optimize your website for local keywords: Include keywords related to your services and location across your website so that search engines understand where you’re based. 
  • Publish valuable content: The more SEO-optimized content you publish, the more visible your website will become. More on this later. 
  • Publish landing pages for all your services: Create landing pages for the different services you offer, with each one focused on a relevant keyword. This gives you more chances of showing up in the right search results. 
healthcare practice SEO example

There’s a lot that goes into successful SEO, but these are some of the most important basics for a healthcare practitioner. You can follow these SEO tips for more details or check out this guide on how to implement a local SEO strategy.

6. Publish Great Content to Become an Authority in Your Field

Whatever healthcare marketing strategies you’re running, they all come down to creating great content. This is how you’ll generate trust, interest, and authority around your healthcare practice. 

“Content” refers to any kind of marketing messages and resources you publish – like blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, social media content, and more. While your content marketing plan can be diverse, the best place to start is with a blog. 

Blogging lets you achieve two main things. First, it helps you improve your SEO performance by targeting relevant keywords and generating more visibility for your website. Second, it helps you become a trusted expert in your field and establish more authority. 

Publish content on topics that interest your audience and that they might find valuable. This could include tips for certain medical conditions or news and updates on the industry. 

By publishing great marketing content, you’ll be able to develop a far more compelling healthcare marketing strategy. 

healthcare marketing blog example
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7. Build Trust With Reviews

One of the first things any patient will do before scheduling appointments is checking your business’s reviews. In fact, 86% of 1,124 US-based consumers surveyed trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and believe they’re a reliable resource when choosing a new physician.

The more positive review you have available, the better. 

Not only that, but you can add reviews to your website and landing pages to help establish trust across every step of the customer journey. You can even share positive reviews on social media. 

The best places to generate these reviews are on your Google Business Profile and Facebook page. Try to encourage your patients to leave a review after you see them. You could even set up an automated email to send to patients asking if they’d like to leave a review. This is an easy marketing tactic, and it can help you achieve a lot more positive brand awareness.

doctor reviews example
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8. Create a Presence On Local Directories

If people don’t search for your business directly, they’ll probably look for healthcare practices through relevant directories. The greater the presence you have across these directories, the more visible your business will become. 

Search for any relevant online directories in your field or location, and try to set up profiles on them. Just make sure that you maintain the same up-to-date information across all listings. 

This will help you with SEO, it will help you spread more brand awareness, and you’ll be able to establish more trust at the same time.  

dentist local directory example

9. Use Paid Advertising to Attract More Patients

Organic marketing is great. However, you’ll struggle to reach enough people if you only rely on the organic performance of your content. 

This is why running paid advertising campaigns is so valuable for healthcare practices. Paid ads let you reach your target audience fast. And when the ads are compelling and properly targeted, you’ll be able to generate an impressive ROI from them. 

When it comes to running paid ads, there are various options you can take. However, you’ll probably want to stick to Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Both allow for very detailed targeting of your target audience, their demographics, and, most importantly, their location. 

Search ads are the best way to get to the top of Google search results for the right keyword. These can deliver a great ROI if you bid on the right keywords. Facebook ads are ideal for getting your business in front of the right people. 

healthcare marketing paid advertising example
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10. Develop Physician Referrals

One of the most effective organic marketing strategies for healthcare providers is word-of-mouth referrals. If these referrals come from trusted physicians, even better. This is a brilliant way to send more patients to your practice. 

If you haven’t enlisted the help of a physician liaison, you might not be doing enough. Referrals from doctors are some of the most effective ways to bring in new patients, but it takes a proactive approach to build and maintain relationships with referring physicians. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

  • Make introductions: Take the time to personally welcome new healthcare professionals to the area with a note or in-person visit.
  • Build trust and maintain relationships: Referring doctors need to trust your ability to provide excellent care and like you as a person. Stay in touch and cultivate a friendly, professional relationship.
  • Engage with your community: Active involvement in your community can help you get noticed by referring physicians who value your skills and entrust their patients to your care.
  • Follow up regularly: Thank referring physicians with a phone call or handwritten note, and keep them informed of the referred patient’s condition and treatment plan. This attention to detail can persuade them to refer more patients to you.
  • Keep it simple: Make it easy for doctors to refer patients to your practice by keeping your contact information up-to-date on your website, social media, and business cards. Have an easy-to-use referral form on your website.
  • Scale your outreach: For larger organizations, building relationships with referring doctors requires a team of skilled physician liaisons and the right digital marketing tactics to stand out in a competitive market.

By following these best practices, you can maximize your chances of receiving valuable referrals from doctors and grow your patient base.

11. Follow Up With Your Patients

If you want to develop a strong brand reputation and maintain customer loyalty, then it’s important to stay in touch with your patients. 

Use strategies like email marketing to stay in touch with them and offer helpful content to the patients. You should also consider reaching out to patients after their experience with your practice – asking how their experience went and whether they would like to leave a review. 

This shows you care about the patient’s experience, and it keeps your healthcare practice top of mind – which is important for generating repeat business.

12. Monitor Your Marketing Results

If you’re not measuring the results of your marketing efforts, you won’t understand how marketing is helping you achieve your goals. 

Make sure you understand how to use tools like Google Analytics or the analytics and insights available on your social media and marketing channels. Carefully monitor these metrics to know how your campaigns are performing, what’s working, and what isn’t.

This will help you understand where you can improve your marketing efforts and where you’re seeing the best results. By doing so, you can constantly optimize your marketing efforts to achieve better results. 

Conclusion

The right healthcare marketing strategy will improve the way you grow your brand and communicate with patients. Focusing on marketing is essential for ensuring your business functions as it should. 

While there’s a lot that can go into a marketing strategy, the statics above are some of the most effective for any healthcare provider. By carefully planning and executing your marketing efforts, your healthcare business should see far greater success. 

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