Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency: Characteristics

Healthcare marketers are only making up diseases. Healthcare digital marketing is a very complicated process:

1. There are legal restrictions on advertising health services.
2. The issue of credibility plays a big role.
3. Clients come with various questions, from listing symptoms to finding a specific doctor.

Find out about a medical marketing agency and offline and online clinic promotion features.

Article Content

1. Features of digital marketing promotion
2. Contextual advertising for health services
3. SEO for medicine
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Offline promotion
6. Conclusions

Features of digital marketing promotion

A study involving 5,000 respondents shows that patients want more computerization of medical services.

1. 58% of respondents would like to receive a reminder to visit a doctor by post or phone.
2. 53% are for online communication with doctors.
3. 50% of respondents expect video guidance to be introduced.

The survey was conducted in the USA but reflected a global trend – digitization – which is also reflected in the USA market. People google their symptoms, look for pill instructions online, and find their doctors online.

For example, a popular healthcare marketing agency’s website helps patients find the right doctor with the appropriate specialization nearby. It also allows doctors to expand their fame and reputation on the Internet.

Digital Marketing promotion results in analytics

One of the problems with promoting health services on the Internet is the incomplete analysis of its results: which ads work effectively and which only waste your advertising budget?

When planning treatment, people prefer to ask questions and make appointments over the phone. Especially in an acute illness or accident, making a phone call is the quickest and surest way to contact your doctor, clarify your questions, and make an appointment. This is a much better solution than filling out an online form and straining to wait for an email response.

Contextual advertising for health services

Contextual advertising can be created quickly, is easy to edit, and will soon bring potentially interested users to the website – if it is taken care of by a specialist. Moreover, it allows you to reach a wide audience: people who search the web for information on the treatment of specific diseases, their symptoms, doctors, and even competing clinics.

There are limitations to running contextual advertising as part of a healthcare digital marketing agency.

Google Ads: Medical Advertising Features

In Google Ads, for a medical project ad, the following are available:

• search campaigns;
• advertising on the Google Display Network.

However, personalized advertising based on the behavior and interests of the user cannot be used.

According to Google Ads help, personalized advertising for medical digital marketing services is prohibited for topics such as:

• health problems (treatment of diseases, chronic diseases, organ diseases, disabilities, plastic surgery);
• recruiting people willing to participate in clinical trials;
• prescription drugs;
• Sensitivity topics remind users of their problems and life difficulties (e.g., being overweight and appearance).

If your project falls under one of the above themes, you will not be able to use:

• remarketing;
• ads in Gmail.

It will also not be possible to target your ad with:

• An interested audience;
• Special audience groups that you have created;
• audience interested buyers;
• similar audiences.

Facebook: Features and Limitations of Health Services Advertising

Facebook is the most reliable system for advertising medical services. Therefore, it is important to follow the general advertising and announcement requirement.

Here are the basics to consider.

1. Online pharmacies can only be promoted if they have been pre-approved by Facebook.
2. Advertising relating to family planning and contraceptives is permitted by national legislation. For example, such advertising will not be allowed in Ukraine.
3. If you advertise health and fitness products or approved dietary supplements and herbs, you may only target those 18 or older.
4. Avoid images that may frighten or shock the user and ideas that are too suggestive or sexual. Don’t use before and after photos, and don’t promise unbelievable results.

Tips for promoting health services through contextual advertising

When creating a PPC campaign, pay attention to targeting. As a rule, it makes no sense to chase a larger reach by using keywords in a broad match – it’s better to specify them carefully.

Our partners do this, setting contextual advertising for a dental office. Read the case study on how they managed to release 30% of the budget:

Listening to conversations with people who click on contextual ads is also useful. This way, you can analyze how well they understand the message of your ad and what questions they ask. Based on this, you can modify your ad to bring about more targeted conversions.

It may yield unexpected results. For example, our clients have found that people are more likely to seek information about joint conditions than back pain. And if initially in the clinic, when promoting medical services, they focused on campaigns regarding spine diseases, now focusing on strengthening and healing joints.

SEO for medicine

According to the study, 74.2% of all clinic traffic is due to SEO. And this is despite many mistakes that the researchers noticed in website optimization. For example, 84% of resources did not show customer reviews, and only 18% of clinics shared an appointment schedule.

How to increase website traffic?

1. Provide information about doctors working in the clinic: specializations, certificates
2. List the procedures these specialists perform so that the person understands what he is dealing with.
3. Create a patient testimonial page.
4. Keep a clinic blog: write about diseases, types of treatments, and how to prevent them. Answer the most common questions of potential patients.

And for leads to be converted, phone numbers and a callback form – Callback Widget should be displayed. According to healthcare marketing agency customer experience, placing a callback widget increases conversion by up to 30%.

By the way, digital marketing in healthcare can be “linked” to any online form on the website. The callback function is triggered when the customer fills in the state, for example, to book a consultation. And healthcare digital marketing agency instantly connects the clinic representative with the client. Such care will pleasantly surprise every potential patient.

What else is worth paying attention to? Don’t forget about technical website optimization:

• Take care of basic SEO: keywords, headers, meta descriptions, image optimization;
• watch how fast the page loads;
• find and fix broken links and images;
• adapt your website to mobile platforms – they already account for the majority of internet traffic in the world.

Registration in Google My Business and placing the premises on Google Maps is a mandatory element of promotion in these systems. This will help attract patients looking for a nearby clinic, not only in case of emergency but also for treatments and preventive consultations. For a working person, a convenient solution is to go to a medical facility close to home or work. Additionally, the presence of an institution on the map increases its credibility in the eyes of potential customers.

Also, don’t skip local directories and tables of contents. Links to your site from trusted sources will give search engines a reason to rank your site in local search, attracting free, relevant traffic.

Social Media Marketing

Using social media to promote medicine is not a simple task. Users are eager to subscribe to sites with nice pictures or memes, helpful tips, and optimistic forecasts. But disease reminder content will be less popular.

They tend to research online for a long time rather than go to the doctor. That is why it is worth investing in building an expert image of individual specialists and entire clinics.

Create viral content that enhances your clinic’s visibility. People are happy to share interesting facts, infographics, and motivational jokes on their pages. Transparent and creative content is a direct way to increase traffic from Social Media Marketing.

Social media is also useful for collecting feedback. Comments, likes, polls, and other engagement elements can help you understand what your customers like, what bothers them, and what you need to focus on to improve your image.

Offline promotion

Outdoor advertising

It sounds logical to implement outdoor advertising near the clinic or its departments in the medical services sector. Billboards, flyers, advertisements, and signage will show them how to your offices.

Large medical centers often place their outdoor advertising along the main thoroughfares. In this way, they increase brand awareness among all city residents.

Advertising in the media

This will allow the general public to become aware of the existence of such a procedure, its benefits, and its indications. Finally, media advertising is also useful for network institutions with many branches.

The media audience is much more dispersed than the outdoor advertising audience.

Offline advertising effectiveness analysis

There is an opinion that one of the disadvantages of offline promotion is the inability to analyze its effectiveness. However, this is not entirely true. Call tracking allows you to track not only internet advertising. It will also show which offline sources customers are calling from: business cards, city lights, brochures, and leaflets, as well as outdoor communication advertising.

Conclusions

1. Advertising in the medical industry is restricted by law, so marketers cannot apply many of the practices from other business niches here. Before starting the campaign, it is a good idea to consult your lawyers to avoid penalties.
2. Contextual advertising platforms also have limitations concerning digital marketing in healthcare. For example, Facebook will not allow health-related ads targeted at minors and asks you not to shock your audience with photos. Certain platforms may request licenses during the ad moderation process.
3. More than half of the internet traffic to medical companies’ websites comes from SEO. Progressing in a narrow field and for a specific location is important.
4. SMM can be a great tool for gathering feedback and improving services. It is also worth developing an expert image of your specialists here.
5. Offline promotion is still useful because not everyone trusts information on the Internet. Advertising in the media can help promote completely new services or a network of clinics.
6. Call tracking helps you track offline and online advertising effectiveness. Besides, people who suffer from ailments often contact a doctor directly.

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