4 Healthcare Marketing Trends To Be More Competitive In 2017

April 28, 2016 - 9 minutes read - Healthcare Marketing, Plastic Surgery Marketing

Healthcare marketing has moved out of offices and online. These days, 72% of patients routinely consult the internet for information on doctors, hospitals and medical treatments, according to Pew Research. What’s more, an increasingly digital generation is looking to speak directly with healthcare practitioners via social media, schedule appointments with the click of a button, keep record of personal healthcare information, and access immediate answers on their smartphones to questions that come up in conversation.

In 2017, our healthcare marketing consultants find that many providers are still lagging behind patient expectations in their online marketing strategies and capabilities. Patients want a responsive website, actively monitored social media profiles, and robust content at the very least. The most competitive medical firms and professionals are exceeding patient expectations and making headline-worthy waves with the adoption of trending technology and channels.

Download Our Plastic Surgery Marketing Case Study and Learn How We Helped a Plastic Surgeon Increase Leads by 335%!

4 Healthcare Marketing Trends To Be More Competitive In 2017

Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Websites

Smartphone ownership has hit 68% of all American adults and 45% for tablets. That means a huge percentage of your website traffic is likely coming from tablets or mobile phones. You want these people to see all the content that you have to offer — efficiently and without delay. So what special features do mobile-friendly healthcare websites have that regular desktop-enabled sites lack? BIG call-to-action buttons… simplified navigation with nested menus hiding additional content… click-to-call functionality… maps coupled with GPS functionality to get people to your brick-and-mortar location — all these mobile-friendly features are necessary, not just desirable, for healthcare businesses in the year 2017!

Even if your target market is the poor, rural, elderly, non-college-educated sort that might make it onto a computer but isn’t likely to do so on a mobile device, keep in mind: Google released an algorithm update on April 21, 2015 that emphasized helpful content and user-friendly design as significant ranking factors for non-mobile websites. The message is clear: you won’t just fail to convert if you’re offering a poor user experience; you won’t even receive the visibility necessary to get visitors to your website without meeting these baseline expectations. 

The Mod Girl Difference: Our user experience consulting helped HealthyPsych decrease their bounce rate 3%, increase time spent on page 9%, and boost important pageviews by 87.33%. 

Patient Education

Most online healthcare information seekers begin with entering their queries on Google or Bing. From there, in-the-know web users hit up known medical information houses like WebMD. Only 1% of people begin their searches on social media. While we advocate utilizing multiple channels for a well-rounded sales funnel, most of your effort should focus on top-level Search Engine Optimization.

Modern SEO is about more than web coding: it’s about providing a variety of informative content pieces containing long-tail keywords and visual media. One mistake many healthcare providers make is that they presume their audience is a clued-in group of loyal followers who care as deeply about their organizational news as the company founders and employees. More likely, though, your audience are seekers of educational information to help them make informed decisions about their health. Through blogs, podcasts, articles, videos, whitepapers, infographics, newsletters, eBooks and more, you can provide answers to important questions on readers’ minds and let them know where to go to find more hands-on, personalized assistance.

The Mod Girl Difference: Through content revisions and improved navigation efforts, we helped a Tampa Bay plastic surgeon boost pageviews 472% (from 2,729 to 12,886) in one month’s time.

Patient Advocates

Every healthcare provider knows that nothing beats a personal recommendation-based referral. Yet, hearing about your practice from a family member or friend isn’t the only type of testimonial that matters in the Age of Information. Research by Software Advice, a company that compares medical software, shows 6 in 10 patients look at online reviews before choosing a physician. As the graphic below illustrates, the vast majority of consumers trust online reviews from strangers. (Also, did you know almost 44% of insured patients would consider going out-of-network based on an online review?)

Click here and discover more proven healthcare strategies to stand out from your competition.

Websites like Yelp, RealSelf, HealthGrades, Vitals.com, RateMDs and ZocDoc are likely to grow in significance in the coming years as more and more health-based businesses recognize the value of a good recommendation. It’s not ethical to offer rewards for reviews, but we find that simply setting up patient satisfaction surveys is enough to solicit feedback across channels. Beyond reviews, you can use post-op email campaigns to improve patient relationships and boost satisfaction rates. 

The Mod Girl Difference: We helped a Columbus, Ohio plastic surgeon get a 106% increase in leads and 85% conversion rate in five months’ time after implementing lead-nurturing post-surgery email campaigns.

Engaging, Visual Social Media Posts

People may not go to social media as a first resort, but they do factor in social media branding when making decisions like choosing a particular doctor, hospital or procedure. One study found that 40% of people polled said they found information on social media that affected how they coped with a medical condition, their views on diet and exercise, and their choice of medical practice.

Snapchat and Facebook video ads are two of our favorite new social marketing tools. One of our clients, ROXY Plastic Surgery, is killing it on Snapchat right now — a website that offers a competitive advantage to medical providers at this point because many haven’t taken the time to figure it out! Dr. Roxanne K. Grawe and her colleagues use Snapchat to connect with young mobile users who are curious about plastic surgery procedures but may not be ready to book a consultation yet. “We plan to offer followers videos from inside the operating room, an insider look at plastic surgery and Med Spa procedures, answers to common patient questions, patient reviews and testimonials, breaking new announcements, and special offers,” she explained in a press release earlier this year.

The Mod Girl Difference: We helped ROXY boost site impressions 957% and increase leads 335%, with a new social media engagement strategy that harnessed the power of new visual channels like targeted Facebook Ads and Snapchat video.

Download our case study and discover the essentials of a successful plastic surgery marketing strategy.

Go The Extra Mile with Healthcare Marketing Consulting

You’ve got a fantastic healthcare business. Yet, you’re falling short of your own goals and expectations for social media engagement, web traffic, and conversions. Wondering what the other A-listers are doing that you aren’t? They’re investing in healthcare marketing consulting.

Contact us and get a leg up on the competition with Mod Girl’s inbound marketing solutions.

Tags: healthcare marketing trends, medical marketing, plastic surgery marketing