Digital Marketing Trends in Healthcare You Should Know About

 When it comes to marketing, the healthcare industry tends to lag behind others.

Between HIPAA compliance regulations that dictate how patient information is used and stored and FDA restrictions that decide how many healthcare organizations market their products, it can be scary. How do you adapt to changing marketing trends in such a heavily regulated industry?

However, reaching and engaging with today’s tech-savvy patients and physicians means digital marketing is no longer optional for organizations in the healthcare space. It's a necessity.

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For instance, over 90% of healthcare patients source online reviews when looking for providers and professionals, so it's a good idea for healthcare industry participants to have a presence online.

Digital Marketing Trends in Healthcare

  1. Designing a responsive website.
  2. SEO best practices across pages.
  3. Having a fine-tuned content marketing strategy.
  4. Making your website Google-friendly.
  5. Including multimedia to incite action.
  6. Making practice accessible online.

1. Designing a responsive website.

Almost half of patients booking appointments online cite a clunky website or having to wait too long as a pain point. 60% of patients want to be reminded about their appointments on their phones. It's clear a clean digital experience is important — and that starts with having a responsive website.

A responsive website adapts to the screen size of the device being used. Because the elements of the site adjust depending on the aspect ratio of the browser, content is easier to read and navigate. Instead of a patient trying to navigate a clunky website on their phone, a responsive website would make that page cleaner.

Additionally, managing an efficient site allows healthcare organizations to focus on developing a strong web strategy, one that increases visibility, reach, and conversions. This is all while decreasing expenditures and effort.

2. SEO best practices across web pages.

It is crucial that your organization develops a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that allows you to be found when a potential customer conducts an online search.

There's high competition for search traffic. For example, if a nearby hospital has a more effective SEO strategy than yours, it will appear higher in organic search results than yours. A highly targeted SEO strategy increases your overall web presence.

Research keywords to find the ones that patients, physicians and healthcare professionals might be using to search for your organization. Similar Keyword tools, like Ahrefs, help you determine the competition surrounding key healthcare industry buzzwords. For example, should you optimize for “Phoenix Arizona cardiologist” or “Phoenix Arizona heart physician”?

Additionally, add an FAQ section on your website. Include general questions about your practice and doctors, but also take some time to point out symptoms patients might be experiencing.

For instance, A question could be: "Do I have glaucoma?" and the answer would describe the symptoms and end with an optometrist's phone number to schedule an appointment, since glaucoma requires a medical diagnosis. This common question most likely shows up on Google a lot, along with "symptoms of glaucoma."

Having the information about glaucoma on your website gives you a chance of ranking highly in Google's Featured Snippet section, which is often the very first search result.

Choose a relevant keyword for each of your website’s pages, including social and blog posts, as well as other content your organization publishes. These keywords should not be set in stone — analysis of keyword performance and adaptation are key, especially due to Google’s constant updates.

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