Digital Marketing Agency helps in health management

Have you ever thought of an efficient strategy to publicize a hospital, guaranteeing its reputation while attracting new customers?. The Digital Marketing Agency for healthcare is becoming increasingly relevant, including for the dissemination of hospitals and similar organizations. Understand why working online is essential and how this work can even help in marketing for hospitals and in-hospital management.

Main challenges of hospital management

Managing a hospital is quite complex, especially given its relationship with professional organizations, paying sources, and regulatory agencies. These entities often pressure the business, causing it to face challenges and difficulties that other sectors do not know about.

In addition, a hospital needs to be concerned about selling services related to the health of its end consumer. Some characteristics of the hospital service itself make it more difficult to publicize or work on its marketing, including:

• Intangibility: services without physical characteristics that are performed at the time of “purchase”;
• Variation: the human factor within the hospital makes it impossible to standardize services completely. There is a difference according to who performs it;
• Perishability: It is not possible to store services from a hospital. Therefore, its management needs to be concerned with maintaining profitability in times of low, considering that it will not be possible to use later appointments or tests that were not carried out.

Keeping a hospital running properly, with a standard of quality of services and good publicity, is challenging. However, with the help of strategic marketing for the health area, it is possible to overcome some of these difficulties.

How marketing actions for healthcare help in hospital management

The main objective of a hospital is to take care of lives and bring well-being to the final consumer. It may seem like a simple thing, but for the communication area, this means that a series of obstacles arise in the way of efficient dissemination. What other companies use to sell services and products can be considered opportunistic, for example, and cause serious damage to the business’s reputation.

In reality, marketing is a science that tries to understand the market and consumer behavior. He also studies the performance of competitors or similar organizations that might attract his customers. And the intention is to find ways to offer increasingly attractive services to the target audience.

And for the hospital segment, what is digital marketing? How can he help? By better understanding your consumer, management can make more proactive decisions whether it’s time to open a new unit or introduce other exams and services. Marketers help in making decisions to make it happen more strategically.

Should digital marketing for healthcare be just advertising?

One of healthcare organizations’ biggest mistakes is considering digital marketing as advertising. Using it only when getting new customers is a mistake that can even harm a business of this type.

First, digital marketing should be considered more as a communication tool with the consumer than as a dissemination tool. By its unique nature, marketing to hospitals cannot or should not create new consumer needs. However, nothing prevents it from being used to inform and bring the two parties closer together.

Using marketing to deceive the patient, as other companies would, a hospital is even more at risk. It harms their ethical values ​​and can still be notified by Class Organizations, such as the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine), which prohibit such practices.

What is digital marketing in hospital management?

In a simplified way, marketing for hospitals is a set of strategies that unite doctors, service staff, and support areas to generate efficient communication. Instead of awakening a need in the customer and generating demand, the sector is concerned with transforming the hospital into a reference.

Marketing strategies for doctors’ offices and hospitals manage the business’s reputation. They control crises and create a series of contact points between a potential patient and the hospital. That is, even before the patient begins to develop his positive (or negative) experience before starting to be attended to synergy activities of all teams, the patient will feel more welcomed and more likely to return. In addition, a good marketing job for hospitals in their hospital management also increases referral rates for the organization.

Main marketing strategies for medical offices and hospital management

Despite having a lot of marketing in general, marketing focused on hospitals uses slightly different methods. Current strategy marketing has gained prominence in the sector but should be used with great caution. The healthcare sector has several regulatory and ethical issues that influence the type of campaign and work that can be carried out.

Some of the main digital marketing strategies for doctors and hospitals consist of creating a greater number of points of contact. This happens through social networks, a well-positioned website, and quality content.

The intention is to show that the hospital understands what the possible patient needs. Only then can he be convinced to contact you or schedule your appointment.

Digital marketing tools suitable for hospital management

To generate the digital marketing agency we mentioned in the previous topic, and it is important to use some of the most efficient digital marketing tools. Check out what can be included in your digital strategy for greater success.

SEO

Before searching for any hospital or clinic, the potential patient searches for health-related topics in the search tools. Research indicates that at least 26% of Brazilians use Google before looking for any health service.

Sometimes the purpose of the search is to understand better your symptoms and what they may indicate. In others, it is to ask questions about procedures and exams they need to do. But there are also searches made directly to choose the best hospital or clinic.

Therefore, digital marketing needs to use Healthcare SEO Services to prioritize the hospital in search results. These strategies work with text and website optimization to make it more user-friendly for such tools. As a result, your site appears among the top results for keywords relevant to your audience.

SEO must be applied to all website content and programming. Some items, like page load speed and downtime, still depend on the hosting chosen. When in doubt, it is worth hiring a digital marketing company to assist in the process.

Paid ads

We discussed how SEO helps the hospital appear in search engines’ first results. However, we were talking about organic results. There is another way to appear to your audience and get more attention: paid ads.

They can be carried out on Google, Youtube, Facebook, or Instagram to increase the visibility of your business. There are several ways to use them, whether to increase interaction in a profile or get new contacts for the service sector.

It is also possible to utilize advertisements to publicize hospital-related news, which makes it different from the competition. In addition, the disclosure of new units and exclusive services can also happen in advertising you follow if the guidelines and rules of the CFM.

Social media marketing management

For some, ​​using social media in healthcare marketing seems strange. These networks are made to interact socially, and organizations of this type tend to handle their communications more formally and away from the final consumer. That’s the big problem!

Current consumers seek closer to the brands they consume, which is also valid for the health segment. In addition, the population with access to the internet and, consequently, to social networks continues to grow. These people use the networks daily to inform themselves about health and would love to see more reliable and relevant content.

Working with Instagram and Facebook is an excellent way to open up new communication channels. They can humanize the brand and bring more assertive and understandable communication to the patient.

To be successful on any social network, a hospital needs:

• A well-defined visual identity;
• Accurate and concise descriptions;
• Recurring content generation;
• Posts in different formats.

The more you explore social media, the better the reach and digital presence of this type of business.

Email marketing

Don’t believe them when they say email is dead! On the contrary, it lives on and remains an efficient communication tool, especially for products and services with a long buying cycle.

Email marketing is especially efficient in health as it is a less invasive form of communication. For example, instead of sending WhatsApp messages weekly to the lead, it’s better to send an email with the information you need.

In addition, this tool serves to warm up and collaborate for the loyalty of old patients who have not yet returned for new appointments. This way, it is possible to keep the leads warmer and always with the hospital in mind. Then, when they decide to come back for an appointment or procedure, the chances of getting in touch are higher.

content marketing

Any digital marketing agency for doctors suggests investing in content marketing. This strategy is efficient in the medium and long term and helps build a hospital’s reputation and nurture and attract new or old customers.

Anyone who works with content marketing must create and distribute different types of high-value posts to the final audience. However, before using it, it is important to know your audience and their needs well.

The more relevant the content you create, the better it will be to connect with your audience. This can be done in different formats, such as:

• Blog posts;
• Tutorials;
• infographics;
• Doubts;
• Videos;
• Lives;
• Stories for Instagram;
• Webinars;
• Ebooks.

Digital marketing companies try to create strategies that use always-connected content. It is the best way to guide the patient along their purchase journey while ensuring an image of a specialist for the hospital.

Tips to start working with medical marketing in your hospital management

Medical marketing is complex and requires a lot of study and patience. Therefore, the first step in working on it is to study your organization to define objectives and goals for the marketing effort. For this, it is recommended to unite the needs of all sectors.

After all, a good strategy can improve sales, appointments, and customer satisfaction. Remember to include goals and metrics for tracking. Otherwise, the chances of getting lost in marketing and not being able to identify results are high.

We created a summarized step-by-step guide for those who want to start working with hospital digital marketing. Check it out:

1. Set clear objectives: separate objectives according to short, medium, and long term and always give preference to those that can be measured;
2. Analyze the current scenario: it is important to understand the difficulties of the present scenario, as well as sensitive issues that the hospital should (or should not) address in its communications;
3. Study your audience: in addition to creating a target audience profile, create personas for each type of service or hospital objective. This way, you will be able to develop more assertive content for each one;
4. Choose communication methods and channels: while all channels are relevant, it is quite difficult to work with them efficiently. Choose the social networks where your audience is most present and determine which types of content are most likely to impact them;
5. Set the budget: before starting to work with paid ads, set the budget and check if it is enough to achieve the desired result;
6. Work often: there’s no point in creating great content if you post once a month. Social networks need to work with routine posts at least twice a week.

Limits of digital marketing for hospitals in hospital management

Medical marketing is extremely efficient and can help a healthcare business gain market share. However, it also has its limits, especially according to the regulations of the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine).

The Council governs marketing to physicians to keep it as ethical as possible. Ideally, communications should not resemble traditional advertising with a commercial and sales tone. According to the agency, this leads to misinformation and possible misleading disclosure. Failure to comply with such measures is also harmful to those who carry out the marketing and can lead to problems with the regulatory body.

To help you work with hospital management and proper disclosure, we have separated some of CFM’s main limits and permissions. Check it out below.

What is allowed by CFM?

According to CFM, medical marketing needs to be ethical and avoid commercial communication. Therefore, the agency encourages using informative content, whether in the form of videos, posts for social networks, or blogs.

In addition, healthcare professionals linked to a hospital are allowed to conduct interviews for various media, including television, newspapers, and the internet. All to inform and guide the population.

Other information that hospital management can include in communication and dissemination are:

1. Specialties of health professionals recognized by the CFM;
2. Disseminate titles and academic materials published by health professionals;
3. Publicize procedures performed at the hospital.

Always show services, specialties, and procedures recognized by CFM.

What is prohibited by CFM and requires attention from hospital management?

Several advertising formats should be banned from social networks and other hospital management communication channels. Let’s start with the visual part: using photos, selfies, and other types of patient content are prohibited. This violates the privacy of the individuals involved in the images and creates great risks of receiving a notification from CFM.

When talking about consultations, experts, and testimonials, never guarantee results. This is considered false advertising for the bodies that regulate advertising in the medical field. Instead, inform the possibilities and that each organism reacts in a way to what is being shown.

Contrary to what the CFM claims for medical professionals, prices and payment methods, in the case of hospitals and clinics, can be disclosed but discreetly.

Why digital marketing for hospitals is increasingly important

When we consider the number of restrictions related to the medical universe, we understand why many who work with hospital management do not pay enough attention to marketing. However, digital is more important with each passing day. We can even say that it stopped being optional a long time ago. Today it is mandatory to be present in the survival strategy of any organization.

Most patients are acquiring the habit of seeking medical services online, and the trend is for this to become even more frequent. However, in addition to looking for hospitals and clinics, people also consider your ratings, comments, and even the number of followers before scheduling an appointment.

Hospital management can struggle to get new patients and appointments without good marketing.

How to maintain a digital presence in digital marketing for hospitals?

We want hospital management to take full advantage of digital marketing for hospitals. Therefore, we have separated some tips that should make the routine of strategic marketing for health simpler. Check it out below.

Understand your hospital marketing audience

Does your hospital publish every day but doesn’t get an engaged audience? Perhaps the big problem is that you still don’t understand exactly what your followers want.

Understanding the public is one of the foundations of digital marketing for hospitals. Start by understanding what your basic needs and characteristics are. Thus, it is possible to understand their doubts, pain, and what leads them to schedule an appointment or procedure.

Only with this knowledge can you generate relevant knowledge for your audience. When the hospital or its employees can contribute to the needs of their patients, they generate a more efficient connection. Even if someone only starts following a hospital profile out of curiosity, they will end up scheduling their appointments there when there is a relationship.

Create content together with experts in each area

Hospital management has access to one of the richest sources of information they could ever want: the health professionals themselves. Leveraging them to create informative, relevant, and reliable content helps build a good reputation for the business.

Content can come from videos, reels, stories, or even texts for social networks and websites. What matters is that they follow the CFM regulations and help clear up common doubts in the offices.

By being with patients daily, health professionals can better understand their needs. Thus, topics for posts can arise that administrative staff would not even imagine. It all helps generate value for followers who can eventually become patients.

Keep networks and websites always up to date

This is probably one of the most important tips around here. Your website and social networks must have basic hospital information that is always 100% up to date. Missing this part makes you even lose patients!

After all, put yourself in the shoes of a possible patient. He needs to schedule an appointment with the gastroenterologist. The person found a hospital or clinic through social networks and saw it in one of the posts about their specialties. Great, the patient got in touch to schedule an appointment.

That’s where the first frustration begins: the customer can’t find a current phone to call. So you need to ask a friend who has already been to the place to schedule your appointment. But unfortunately, when he was finally on the phone, he found that the specialty no longer existed.

Even if, in the future, the patient needs the clinic again, he will probably look for a competitor. Avoid this problem by keeping your website, social media, and Google My Business up to date. Information, such as specialties served, telephones, Whatsapp, and forms of schedules, must always be clear and easily accessible.

What hospital management needs to include to have a good website

So far, we’ve talked a lot about digital marketing for hospitals, how to do it, and a little about the use of social networks. But we have not yet mentioned one of the pillars of this type of online dissemination: the website. When used well, a web page guarantees steady traffic of visits and contacts to the hospital.

Therefore, hospital management must invest in a quality website and SEO optimization, something we have already mentioned above. What makes an effective page for marketing and for managing a medical clinic and hospital?

Below are some essential items that help bring more results to digital strategies. All should be configured on the site to improve the user experience and help you get to that first appointment.

Contact forms

In digital marketing for hospitals, we consider the consumer on a journey to purchase. It all starts before he even recognizes the problem when he has the first contact with brands that talk about areas of his interest. Then, as his need grows, he progresses down the path until he finally reaches the bottom of the funnel and buys.

Many companies, not just hospitals and clinics, fail when the prospect reaches the middle or bottom of the funnel. That’s when he starts trying to contact you to ask questions, get more information or get details.

One of the main mistakes is not creating places where the consumer can demonstrate their interest through contact forms spread across the site. Instead, they can obtain the format of a newsletter subscription form and a waiting list to receive information about new procedures, among others.

Place them in strategic locations to get leads from interested people more often.

Responsive mobile templates

The simplicity of smartphones has conquered more and more consumers. In addition to using them for conversations, phone calls, and social networking, many take advantage of them for research and website visits. Some professionals in digital marketing agencies have even noticed the rapid growth of access via mobile devices.

Can your site afford to be unresponsive? Certainly not. By harming the user experience that accesses mobile devices, the chances of losing part of the audience are high.

Ideally, the site should be responsive since its creation. So hire experts to create it.

Clear CTAs

Ever heard of CTA? This abbreviation means the call to action and consists of a short call that stimulates actions on the user’s part. These are usually imperative sentences, such as:

• Buy now;
• Schedule your schedule;
• Know more;
• Download the ebook.

Sites that don’t have CTAs in appropriate places fail to convert! The reason is simple: after showing all the information the customer needs, it doesn’t show them what they should do. As a result, the possible patient does not know if he should call to schedule it, put his email in a register, or simply leave the site.

We recommend including CTAs in blog articles and strategic areas like sidebars and footers to get more engagement. The same goes for posts on social media. With this, you can improve your engagement. For example, you can notice how influencers often include phrases like “share with your friends” at the end of posts.

Why should digital marketing for hospitals care about the user experience?

User experience is another concept that has gained strength within the digital marketing universe for hospitals. It encompasses all interaction points between user and brand, each with the potential to leave a positive or negative impression.

Today, even in the medical field, we know that any impression the user has of the company throughout their buying journey can convince them to become a patient or make them give up altogether. Small details make a difference, like a non-responsive website or robotic-sounding emails.

Hospital management must pay attention to its way of publicizing services, specialties, and procedures to improve this experience. How about proceeding some tips to improve the time the user spends in contact with your brand? Check out!

Facilitate conversation on social media

After publishing, is someone responsible for monitoring the networks and responding to comments or inbox messages? If the answer is no, know that your efforts to create content may be in vain.

Social media users expect to start a conversation when they make comments or send messages. Not receiving answers generates frustration, worsening your impression of the hospital.

Ideally, the conversation should be simple and quick. In addition to answering, it is very important to take advantage of the moment of contact to ask questions, guide, and inform. Many adopt the strategy of asking the person to contact you by phone, Whatsapp, or even visiting the website. Unfortunately, this method also generates losses since it is more difficult to make the user leave the social network to make a call or visit another address on the web.

In-hospital management guides the team to respond to emails quickly

Just like Instagram and Facebook, emails also need a quick response. But unfortunately, we lived in times of immediacy, and delayed responses generated more and more user irritation.

This channel combines email marketing efforts and good service to achieve greater user and patient satisfaction. Many use email to chat, ask questions or receive news This is an important communication channel for hospitals nel with current and former patients and potential contacts. Keep it active to generate an even deeper connection with your audience to do good digital marketing for hospitals.

Following these basic steps, you can start your digital marketing strategies. But remember that this area is quite delicate and needs a lot of attention. If you find it necessary, look for a digital marketing consultancy like to help.

Tips for digital marketing actions for hospitals

Ready to put all the information we’ve brought you about digital marketing for hospitals into practice? For this, it will be necessary to plan some actions and start feeding your website and social networks with content.

Many feel “stuck” at that moment. After all, how do you decide what would be most efficient for your business? However, some actions are already widely used in digital medical marketing and have proven results.

Of course, you still need to consider the details according to your target audience. But the ideas should help you create a strategic plan for your digital marketing. Check out!

Messaging apps for hospital management

2020 accelerated some changes that were already taking place among the healthcare public. The search for practicality is part of the internet and has made applications increasingly popular. Nowadays, the public also wants to use them to be able to schedule their health services.

Everything can be included in one app, from appointments with specialists to determining what procedures are available at a hospital. This improves the customer experience and brings them closer to the business without putting more pressure on your service team.

More “traditional” digital marketing tools like social media and organic content for search engines are excellent. However, your prospective patient’s life is noisy. He receives new notifications every second, and even if he pays attention to your post, he quickly forgets what he saw.

So having an exclusive channel for your information and communications is great. Some exclusive applications for the medical area already provide warnings to prevent the patient from forgetting their schedule. In addition, they bring the long-awaited practicality, avoiding a phone that can take much longer to schedule appointments.

Digital marketing for hospitals using influencers in hospital management

There are influencers in virtually every digital niche, including the medical field. Maybe you never thought you’d need one of these figures in your hospital’s digital marketing plan, but it’s worth trying.

They are excellent for anyone looking to strengthen their brand work, especially in the learning phase. However, at this point in the sales funnel, the potential patient is still unsure about their needs and pains. Therefore, he is less likely to find a hospital’s social media on his own.

The influencer “shortens” the path, disclosing relevant information about their sector and showing how to find more reliable data. Another interesting way to work with digital influencers is with collaborations. Do a life, for example, to ask questions about a topic in your area with the celebrity, helping to increase your authority and popularity online.

Internal marketing for those who are already patients

According to Philip Kotler, the pope of marketing, getting a new customer costs 5-7 times as much as keeping existing ones. Unfortunately, we often forget this when it comes to digital medical marketing. We are so focused on bringing new people into appointments that we forget that there is already a base of patients who trust their specialists.

Did you know that your reception has a golden tool for internal marketing and retaining patients? These are the emails and contacts of those who have already been served there. Through them, it is possible to disclose other services, procedures, and specialties that may interest these people.

Imagine that your hospital has just purchased new diagnostic equipment. This new service should be advertised to those who are already patients and are much more likely to schedule an appointment.

Choose the most appropriate channel to talk to this patient. For example, send emails, Whatsapp messages, or even in-app notifications.

Spread your content beyond social networks in your hospital management

Do you already have the habit of posting on social media? Excellent, you are one step closer to increasing the number of appointments over the internet. There is a way to leverage your contacts through this communication channel by disseminating your content.

After making a publication, it is important to remember to publicize it. For example, share Facebook posts in groups and send them to the most engaged patients via the broadcast list. This will help increase reach and generate more engagement for your social network.

Collect feedback from patients seen for better hospital management

Marketing to doctors is also great for improving the patient experience! Take the opportunity to collect opinions about your services and service and always show customers that you are working to improve them.

Some interesting feedback sources include:

• Direct messages from Facebook and Instagram;
• Comments on publications;
• Reviews on the Facebook page;
• Answers to the story’s question box;
• Reviews on Google My Business.

Pay close attention to the latter: Google My Business is an extremely relevant tool to promote hospitals and clinics. It is possible to appear among the first organic results in the search engine and Google Maps. The more reviews your business receives, the better!

How to use Google My Business in digital marketing for hospitals

We discussed Google My Business in the previous topic, so there’s nothing better than learning how to use it in your hospital management. First, check if your business is already registered in the Google tool. It’s free, and anyone can use it to improve their digital presence.

If you don’t already have it, just go to Google’s official website or download the My Business app. Then, make your registration using the name of the hospital or clinic and address and wait to receive the confirmation code for the chosen modality.

Then it will be necessary to update the profile with some basic information about the business, such as:

• Opening hours;
• Contact forms;
• Links to schedule appointments or download an app;
• Photos of the space, exam places, and waiting rooms, among others;
• specialties;
• Posts with news or security warnings;
• Site.

We recommend keeping your profile always up to date. Google tends to prioritize local searches for businesses that have new and complete information in their account. The tool is also excellent for notifying patients about opening hours on holidays and special days. That way, when a patient comes to your clinic or hospital on those dates, they’ll know if it’s open or not.