How To Determine a Healthcare Marketing Strategy

PPC, SEO, Mobile, Social, Influencer, Blog, Podcast, Video. These terms describe the current state of the digital marketing industry. Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you to write blogs or start a podcast, while also running numerous ad campaigns, posting and responding on social media, and producing videos to sell your services. Oh yea, you'll also need to stick to a tight budget while also providing data on how your campaigns are performing.

With that being said, it is incredibly hard to balance all of the things listed above. But keep in mind that your job boils down to one thing: get new patients! And how do you get new patients? First, you have to get their attention. To get their attention, you have to know where they're looking. And how do you know where they're looking? Start by using the data at your disposal to see where current patients are coming from.

Step 1: Review your website traffic

How are your patients finding you?  The easiest way to see how people are currently finding you is to use Google Analytics (or your favorite software) to review your Acquisitions. Are they coming from Organic Search or are they coming from Referrals, such as Yelp or YP.com. If you're running ad campaigns, which ones are leading to the most conversions or clicks?

What pages are they landing on? Your homepage is likely your most visited page, but look down the list and see where people are landing when they arrive at your site. What is different about that page and why would people be finding it over other pages? Are your keywords incredibly focused? Maybe your meta titles and descriptions are extremely clear and relevant.

Who is finding you? Demographics can help lead you in the right direction on where to focus your efforts. If you're seeing a high volume of middle-aged men, then your strategy should be different than a bulk of your traffic coming from college-aged women. Defining who you're reaching can help you decide on your strategy (should I build content for LinkedIn or Snapchat? Should I run ads on Google, Facebook, or Instagram?).

Step 2: Define your target audience and set your strategy

After you determine who is already finding you online, you can begin to set your sights on increasing your marketing efforts to target similar audiences. If you're seeing a lot of 50+ aged visitors on your site, you might want to look into running some Facebook ads since that population is huge on Facebook. You should also design content around that age group, utilizing images of grandparents or cool seniors riding in a convertible (yea, it's corny but it works).

It's also a good time to define your ideal target audience(s). You may have a new service for young children, so targeting young moms and dads on Instagram and on Google would be a solid route. Just remember to use imagery and content that is relevant to your target audience.

Step 3: Finalize your marketing strategy, set your budget and build your creative

Once you've narrowed your target audience and set your strategy, make sure you have an appropriate budget in place to build out enough content and to run enough ads to get the job done. When building out your content, utilize appropriate channels (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogging, Podcasting) to reach your target audience(s) in as many places as possible. Some people love reading blogs on LinkedIn while others love listening to podcasts on their way into work. Others simply like to browse social media, while those who are actively searching for your services are probably on Google Search typing in keywords to find the best option closest to their location.

Just remember to create content regularly and present it on numerous channels to gain as much attention as possible.

Step 4: Test and Refine

You're running ads, your SEO work is in full swing, you're posting to social, and you even had some time to get a weekly podcast in the works. Look at you go! Now it's time to start looking at that data again to see what is working and to make sure every dollar you're spending is driving traffic and conversions. Look again at who is coming to your site and see how they're getting there. Is your Facebook Advertising campaign crushing it, but your Google Search Ad Campaign a bit of a mess? Start testing and retesting new ads, new creative, new keywords, and new audience parameters to refine your campaigns and determine what is working and what is not.

Just remember, your goal is to get new patients to use your services. If you're putting effort into something that is not helping with that goal, it's not worth your time. Only put money and effort into things that are bringing in new business. It doesn't matter how many 'Likes' you got on a Facebook post if it doesn't have the potential to lead to new patients.

I would love to hear from you about any issues you're having with your healthcare practice in regard to marketing. Feel free to reach out to talk about any ideas you have or anything that doesn't seem to be working for you. 615.249.8488