7 Proven ways to attract new patients in 2022
There is no denying that digital has changed the outlook for all sectors, especially healthcare. Digital marketing in the healthcare sector helps to reach the right patient at the right time through relevant advertising. Patients have much more options available than ever before. They are no longer calling a doctor’s clinic to arrange an appointment without doing any research first.
More and more, healthcare patients are conducting their initial research online through websites, reviews, and social media. They check each and every thing about the clinic or the doctor like number of good and positive reviews, doctor’s experience and qualifications, consultation fee, what kind of technologies does the clinic or hospital have, how many people are recommending them, how many happy patients they have etc. before going for any treatment. This is why it’s important to have a planned and budgeted digital marketing plan to target new patients.
Whether you are a private practice with a team of 10-15 people or a hospital chain of over 500 employees, you should promote your services online to reach out to new patients. You have to go beyond “Word of Mouth” advertising. If you want to win the marketing race in 2022, you have to unleash the power of digital marketing.
Healthcare Digital Marketing
Healthcare digital marketing is for doctors, private practices, hospitals, healthcare networks, healthcare providers, medical professionals etc. It not only helps reach a wider audience, but also helps in improving their brand image online. You can reach out to millions of people through SEO, social media, google adwords, content marketing, video marketing etc.
Let’s find out the top 7 tried and tested ways to reach more patients in 2022:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of optimizing your website to be found in search engines for relevant keyword searches. For eg: If you are a leading dentist in Gurgaon and if someone searches for “best dentist in gurgaon” or the “best dentist near me” or any other query related to dental, your website will appear in the top organic results.
SEO not only helps in improving keywords rankings but also improves the visibility, website traffic, credibility, ROI of your website.
- Local SEO: Local SEO is a part of SEO strategy which helps in improving your business visibility in the local search results of Google. Businesses having a physical location or serving a geographic area can benefit from local SEO. Google shows the top 3 business listings before displaying organic search results when you make any search on google.
- Social Media Marketing: Social media management or marketing is the use of social media channels to connect with your audience, build your brand, drive website traffic, boost sales etc by posting relevant and high quality content/posts. Through popular social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, you can share important updates of your clinic/hospital, services or treatments, educate or interact with the users, share healthcare tips, provide patient support etc. So if you want to reach more customers, you need to enhance your social media presence.
- PPC Marketing for Better Targeting: PPC is the process of promoting a business through paid advertisements that appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs). It will put your ads in front of people when they’re ready to make a purchase. PPC is important for every business, especially healthcare. You can generate high quality leads, drive traffic to your website, improve brand awareness etc with PPC marketing services.
- Video Marketing: Video Marketing plays a crucial role in healthcare’s business marketing. It is no doubt one of the best methods to connect with your prospective patients. You can create different types of videos like patient testimonials, treatments before and after, educational videos, walkthrough of your clinic or hospital etc and share it on your youtube and social media channels. You can go live and have a Q&A session in order to address patients’ queries. Videos keep patients engaged and more connected to your content.
- Content Marketing: Content marketing helps healthcare businesses reach and educate people through informative content. It’s one of the best and most powerful techniques of digital marketing. The content marketing strategies in the healthcare domain is not restricted to blogging anymore. You can plan informative blogs, ebooks, webinars, infographics, success stories, FAQs, guest posting and a lot more.
- Reviews: Reviews are the first thing new patients consider for before setting up an appointment with the doctor. Reviews are a very important part of healthcare digital marketing strategy as they help patients to determine which doctor or healthcare provider to visit and why. Ask your satisfied patients to share their experience with other people by posting reviews on google my business listings, social media or any other online channel.
These are some of the effective ways of attracting new customers for your healthcare business. So, doctors, it’s high time now to go beyond just having a practo listing or a facebook page.
Author Bio – Nishu Sharma is a healthcare marketing expert and is a Co-Founder of Branding Pioneers, a leading healthcare digital marketing agency in Gurgaon.
