Healthcare Marketing: What is it + 8 Effective Strategies

Ellie Whims
Ellie Whims

The healthcare industry become increasingly competitive in recent years, so it’s become essential to deploy a successful marketing campaign that makes you stand out from the crowd.  

Since launching a successful marketing campaign is difficult, this article will walk you through the most effective advertising strategies to provide the biggest boost to your healthcare brand. 

Benefits Of Healthcare Marketing

The most common objective of healthcare marketing is to drive patient acquisition. Your advertising should showcase your healthcare institution’s expertise and patient care services to boost your credibility and convert new patients. 

While acquiring new patients is certainly important, patient retention can be even more profitable. By catering to existing patients through email marketing formats like newsletters, you can foster a meaningful connection with them and gain trust.

Let’s now look at the 8 best strategies to acquire healthcare consumers and retain them. 

8 Best Healthcare Marketing Strategies

Here are the 8 best marketing strategies for healthcare organizations:

  • Advertise With Wellness Billboards
  • Ask For Google My Business Reviews
  • Patient Referral Program
  • Network With Other Organizations
  • PPC Advertising
  • Social Media Advertising
  • Organic Traffic
  • Email Marketing

1. Advertise With Wellness Billboards

Wellness billboards are displays that provide in-store shoppers with sanitizing wipes below a prominently featured advertisement. These sanitizing billboards are great for targeting consumers while they are out and engaging in their environment and can be located at store fronts, gyms, and most importantly, pharmacy wait areas. 

By advertising in pharmacy wait areas, you can have the ideal contextual setting to expose consumers to your brand and be sure to reach your target audience. 

This advertising medium is wildly successful. Terraboost, a leader in wellness billboard marketing, has studies showing that 89% of shoppers take a sanitizing wipe and another 50% take a coupon or brochure to learn more about the sponsored brand. 

2. Ask For Google My Business Reviews

One of the best ways to leverage a loyal patient base is to ask them to review your healthcare business on Google My Business (GMB). People that search online for healthcare providers place their trust in the one’s with the most five-star reviews, but these GMB reviews can also increase your visibility. 

GMB reviews are closely integrated with Google Search and Google Maps, meaning that businesses with more 4- and 5-star reviews are favored by the search engine. For example, if a user searches Google for “healthcare clinics near me”, the first search result will be the highest rated healthcare provider in their local area. 

3. Patient Referral Program

While online advertising should certainly be utilized, don’t overlook the strength of word-of-mouth marketing. Patient referral programs are effective because they are generally low-cost and you’ll receive new patients who trust you since you were recommended by their friend or family member. 

Patient referral programs encourage your current patient base to bring in the people they know through incentives like gift cards and future discounted services. 

4. Network With Other Organizations

The phrase “It’s not what you know, but who you know” applies to just about every industry, including healthcare. Networking with other organizations can help you develop a stronger practice and acquire more patients. 

One key way to do this is to join professional organizations. By aligning your healthcare practice with established organizations, you can instantly gain credibility in the eyes of consumers and pick up on industry leading techniques. 

If you’re looking to expand your brand awareness within your local area, nothing beats community outreach. You can do this by partnering with a local nonprofit that aligns with your healthcare messaging or even your institution’s specialty. Healthcare brands often partner with nonprofits by donating medical supplies, helping to organize charity events, or by providing educational resources to their members. 

5. PPC Advertising

Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads can provide a sizable boost to your healthcare brand’s online visibility. To perform PPC marketing, you compile a list of key search terms you believe your target audience will search in Google. Then, when those key terms are searched, your brand will appear in the top three search listings. 

The costs of a PPC marketing campaign can vary greatly depending on the key search terms you select. While you’ll only have to pay when a user clicks through to your website, the bidding for certain key terms can be very expensive and costs can be as high as $80 per click. 

6. Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is used by tons of marketing campaigns to both acquire new patients and retain the ones you have. 

For social media content that brings in new patients, nothing can beat testimonial videos. Patient testimonials that describe how your healthcare institution improved their lives can greatly encourage prospective healthcare consumers to place their medical needs in your hands.

It’s a good idea to create different testimonial videos to target different consumer groups. For example, a mental health clinic could produce a video featuring a senior citizen who struggled with depression and another with a teenager who overcame her anxiety. 

Not all of your social media content needs extensive time and production costs. For retaining clients, simple social media posts that announce events, promotional offers, or provide healthcare tips work extremely well. A well-run social media page for your healthcare business is one of the best ways to make your customers feel connected to your brand. 

7. Organic Traffic

Driving organic traffic to your healthcare brand involves utilizing online search engines to their fullest potential. To do this, you’ll need to spend time conducting keyword research on the relevant terms and phrases that your target audience will search for when looking for healthcare services. Once you’ve identified the key terms and phrases, the next step is to strategically implement them into your website content. This will ensure that your brand ranks highly in search engine results. 

Organic growth also comes from creating high-quality content that patients find engaging and helpful. This content will help establish your practice as a credible expert by answering common healthcare questions from your specialty. High-quality content generates organic traffic since it is likely to be shared among internet users. However, this traffic can be boosted even further if you incorporate key terms and phrases into your articles and blog posts. 

8. Email Marketing

Driving new leads and patient conversions with an email marketing campaign can be really difficult. However, these campaigns can be successful in increasing patient retention. 

Effective email marketing campaigns send out information to your current clientele to keep in touch with them and keep their health top of mind. To create engaging material, it’s a good idea to segment your email list based on factors like patient demographics, appointment history, and medical conditions. 

By segmenting your email list, you can send out relevant information to targeted groups, like a monthly newsletter to patients with diabetes that details the latest diets and medications to promote healthy living. Keeping in touch with your patients by providing useful information is an optimal way to build trust and loyalty with your healthcare brand. 

A lot goes into healthcare advertising and many healthcare promotions fail to deliver a boost in brand recognition and patient conversions. 

In this increasingly competitive industry, it can be immensely beneficial to reach out to marketing experts with extensive experience in healthcare marketing. Terraboost is a leader in this advertising area and can promote your brand across their 120,000+ wellness boards that generate 8.8 billion monthly engagements
If you’re looking to stand out from the crowd, get in touch with a Terraboost agent today for a personalized quote and some key industry insights on how to get ahead.