Ashton and Kristen are a couple with a child Kiara. They are tech-savvy as Ashton has a smartwatch that tracks his steps and Kristen straps on her heart rate monitor when going on her run every morning and both track their kid’s health using a smart baby monitor that keeps track of the baby’s sleep, eating and play routines.
A few years ago these were all luxury items, nowadays these items are a basic necessity to an average person, and this is one of the many reasons why there is an exponential growth of health marketing through the influx of various medical devices and treatments over the years.
Here are few steps that you can take to ride the wave of health marketing successfully:
1. Original Branding Takes the Cake in Health Marketing
When you are looking to launch a new product into a hyper-competitive space like that of healthcare Industry, it is better to focus on intelligent health marketing and solid brand awareness so that it makes a product stand out from the rest of the crowd. Through Health Marketing, it is possible to do this even if it is one among a million products.
With original branding you don’t just follow the herd and mimick each and every single one of their activities; instead, your Health Marketing efforts should paint an entirely different picture of your product and put it in front of your customers uniquely.
Use the same Health Marketing Message across various platforms.
You may be reasonably confident about your healthcare brand, but you need to have a consistent Health Marketing messaging in place to set your healthcare device/ hospital apart from the next device/hospital that looks just like yours.
You need to understand what your Health Marketing is all about- what is so unique about your Health Marketing? How do you treat your patients? How is your staff? What kind of environment does the place have? There’s always one thing that makes your Health Marketing unique; you need to find out what that exactly is and effectively bank on Health Marketing strategy based on that to successfully build your brand. Generally, it takes some time to figure out the key that unlocks the potential of your Health Marketing endeavors. Eventually, Health Marketing strategy will work seamlessly with the other resorces to bring the best out of your Health Marketing efforts.
2. Put in Effective Health Marketing Efforts to Make Your Health Marketing Campaign Relatable
Health is a pressing priority for consumers, so whatever your health-related product is, it should relate to their needs and have some amount of sincerity and reliability in your storytelling [through ads], which is used to woo the customers to try and eventually buy their product. The brand personality isn’t just limited to offline mediums, but it needs to spread its wings to conquer the online domain as well. This strategy can be accurately followed by using social media, email marketing etc. efficiently to connect with online customers/potential customers. You need to maintain a consistent brand image and brand messaging across the various platforms to showcase your brand consistency to your target audience.
Also Read: The Subtle Differences between Traditional and Healthcare Marketing
3. Understand and Adhere to Healthcare Needs of Your Customers in Health Marketing
When the topic of target audience seeks the limelight, it is about time to pay proper heed to them. When you plan and strategize how you want to target your end users, the first thing you as a marketer need to pay attention to is the use of demographic data. This step lets you gain customers by approching them with relevant freebies initially to becoming actual paying customers.
Health marketing and branding collaterals need to work in unison with the aim of persuading the target audience. Such a mindset will dictate the success or failure of the rest of your branding decisions.
Evaluate the online patient experience
Just a few years ago, having a website was enough to get the patients’ heads to turn and make them find your brand. As of late, having a site is just a door that the patients see, and it isn’t adequately utilized by them. They might even assume it to be a closed door and can be the last time he/she looks at your hospital. This could mean that all your Health Marketing efforts could go wasted.
You should invest in improving the overall customer experience on your website. If your site takes a weekend to load, do you think your customers will still stick around? No, they won’t. As a marketer, the best Health Marketing strategy in such a scenario would be to significantly optimize your website’s performance to improve user experience.
Also Read: Is Wearable Tech the new disruptor in the Healthcare Industry?
4. Use Bold Brand Messaging to Make Your Health Marketing Unique
5. Work on Building Effective Brand Messaging
People will find it difficult to buy from you if they have never heard of you, therefore building brand awareness is not some rah-rah Health Marketing stuff, but it is more of a practical Health Marketing advice. It is essential to have proper brand awareness and brand messaging in place if you’re looking to establish your footprint in Health Marketing and stay there for an extended period. When there are a million health products with similar features and competitive pricing, people will go with the brand that they have heard or have been told by their friends. They certainly wouldn’t buy anything off the shelf without them knowing about the brand or the company.
6. Under-promise but Over-deliver With Your Health Marketing Campaigns
Imagine a scenario wherein you have a healthcare product is out in the market, but since it doesn’t have a strong brand presence, it is not well known by a majority of people.
There is a common saying in sales which goes like, “If I do not know you, then I will not buy from you.”
So the best thing to do is to make the product/service in tune with the needs of the consumers.
The next step would be execute an effective marketing to get the attention of the users.
Once the buyers start rolling in to buy your product/service. You give them a value addition like a report or an analyis stating how your healthcare product/service is better than what is currently available in the market.
Because healthcare is a very sensitive issue, the reports and analysis have to be backed by solid facts and necessary data that will increase the trust factor in the brand and make more people acqauinted to it.
This concept in marketing terminology is called “Under-Promising but Over-Delivering”
You can make certain customizations to your offerings to make it look more personalized which will gain the attention of the B2B Buyers who will want the product but would prefer if it is personalized as per their needs.
7. Make Social Media Do the Work for Your Health Marketing Campaign
Many hospitals use social media as a large part of their Health marketing campaign, and when they mean utilization, they mean posting photos, videos, events, and updates about the hospital. The organic search basket is subject to most attention by the hospitals. Although organic search is all well and good, Paid advertising is better and a more feasible way to reach new prospects and get them to turn into paying customers of the hospital.
Paid social media [No follow] is so much more than just the “Level-up Post” option that appears on your business page. The other forms of running successful marketing ads include banner ads, Pay-per-click, in-display advertising and putting in place the right strategies with well-evaluated finances to target the type of audience most relevant to your business.
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8. Solicit Health Marketing Reviews From Your Patients
When you take a general scenario, people leave reviews only when they are completely swept off their feet with your product/service offering. The vice versa is also a likely scenario wherein if you had a terrible product/service offering.
So the gist of the scenario mentioned above is, people only leave reviews if they are motivated to do so. The reason for you customer to be motivated is not a reliable factor to bank upon. Therefore, you can do the next best thing- Ask for reviews.
The best method to follow, collect and collate the reviews of the patients is to use an automated review process. Say a person rates you an 8 on a scale of 10 for the service he/she received which is generally done through a mobile or a tablet. You can ask this person who has given you a positive feedback to write a detailed review on your website. When such reviews are accumulated on the site, it counteracts any other negative reviews left elsewhere on the internet.
Ask for feedback from patients regularly to optimize your health marketing strategy
When people leave negative reviews about the hospital you run, it dents your reputation and decreases the amount of trust people have in your service. Also, when they leave reviews on third-party websites like Yelp, it becomes a pain in the neck. But the good thing is Yelp allows you to reply to the reviewers and with the right follow up you may get them to change their perspective and ultimately change their reviews on Yelp or your website.
