Digital Marketing for Healthcare: How to Crack it?

According to studies, the Digital Marketing sector is growing at a rate of 25-30% in India annually. Currently, 700 million Indian users are online as of 2020 and this is expected to grow to 974 million in another 4-5 years. India also has the World’s largest Facebook population. All these facts coupled with better internet infrastructure has led to the growth of digital marketing.

By definition, digital marketing is marketing through online platforms like social media, email, multimedia and so on in order to reach more and more customers through the power of the internet. Slowly businesses have started to understand its importance and are incorporating it into their marketing strategies. One such sector is the healthcare sector.

In recent times, the healthcare sector was badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic across the world. This accelerated the process of the healthcare sector to go digital as compared to following the traditional methods. Digital marketing for healthcare has drastically changed the sector. Instead of general marketing strategies now it gives you the power to segregate the customers into multiple groups and target them with relevant ads and convert them from potential customers to customers.

So lets us look at the methods through which healthcare can reach more people through digital marketing.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

• Search engine optimization helps you in ranking your website higher on search engines so that maximum traffic diverts to your site.
• Search engines display pages based on the keywords that you search and other factors. Conducting keyword research for every content that you write makes it more likely to increase your page rank which directly results in your page ranking higher on search results. Being the top results will increase your sales substantially as the first 3 search results receive over 75% of the clicks.
• Optimizing your healthcare website and making it easy to navigate, compatible with various devices including smartphones. Better user experience and website layout make it stand out which will eventually lead to more sales.
• Create quality and easy-to-understand SEO Friendly content that you can post on other reputable websites to increase your website traffic. This process increases your customer base while saving a huge amount as it is extremely cheap compared to other forms of marketing.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media is a great tool to reach maximum customers from all around the world.

• You should regularly post educational content on various social media platforms. Posts about health improvement, ‘Did you know?’ facts, quiz, etc. This consistency keeps your followers engaged.
• Healthcare is very tedious and sometimes heartbreaking but that need not be always. Posts that talk about inspiring stories of people fighting cancer can really make followers happy. This increases individual or organizational reputation amongst the masses.
• Infographics have the ability to convey factual, data-based information in a very short amount of time and this the reason why it is the most popular amongst the current generation. Post interesting infographics to increase online presence and brand awareness.
• Every post on social media should always include healthcare-related hashtags as it opens your services to a much larger community following that specific hashtag online. This is a very useful way of generating leads and converting them into loyal customers over the course of time.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

About 5% of the total Google search volume is related to healthcare queries. When such a huge amount of potential customers are looking for advice search engines provide a way to tap into this large group. Healthcare companies or hospitals can display their ads on various online platforms and pay a small fee every time the ad is clicked. This is called Pay Per Click or PPC and it is more likely that they will click on your ad to receive answers to their query which will increase website traffic or more footfalls in the hospital for physical check-ups.

CONTENT MARKETING

There is a very famous phrase, ‘ content is the king’ and it fits perfectly in digital marketing for healthcare. Following small rules can help your healthcare website rank higher than others on the search engines

• The content that is written on your website whether it is blog posts, about us page, description of services, etc. All these needs to informative, detailed but easy to understand. The use of short sentences with less than 20% use of passive voice can significantly improve the visibility of your site.
• The addition of videos, images and infographics really captures the attention of a larger audience as they require a lesser attention span than blogs and articles.
• Create clear content strategies by first understanding your audience. You can further sub-divide them into smaller groups based on income, region, gender, etc. in order to create content that will be more targeted as opposed to general.

Like every sector, healthcare is also experiencing the need for digital marketing. This is the outcome of such a huge audience online. While you invest in digital marketing for your healthcare business you would always expect the best returns. To plan and execute your healthcare digital marketing strategy it is a good idea to take the help of a Healthcare Digital Marketing Agency that has immense expertise in this area. Through their expertise, they will help you in minimizing the mistakes which can slow down your progress and help you get the best outcome.