The best thing a healthcare business could do in 2024 is go digital. Now more than ever, healthcare marketing trends can help medical services gain global reach and become industry leaders. However, for this to happen, you must stay on top of the latest marketing strategies that drive growth.
Our marketing trends guide below highlights how certain strategies can help you connect with the right people and boost your digital exposure. Read on to get the 101 on current healthcare advertising tactics and ways to implement them in your marketing campaign.
Importance of Healthcare Marketing Trends
So, why is healthcare marketing important? People rely on social media for answers to their day-to-day dilemmas, from what to eat to how to treat unexpected physical pain.
With millions of queries per minute, search engines are a limitless source of information for users, even those with the most specific questions. This comes in handy when you offer health services that target a more niche audience; your search engine visibility helps potential clients find you easily and seek your business.
With Google Reviews as the go-to source for medical service recommendations, healthcare businesses must establish a relevant and credible online presence to get clients and positive testimonials of their offerings. Below, we’ll talk about the latest PR trends in the healthcare industry you should focus on.
The Digital Transformation in Healthcare Marketing
What are the latest SEO strategies for healthcare PR? Here’s a quick rundown of e-medicine SEO trends you should care about in the upcoming years:
- Content marketing (long and short-form, written and video)
- Social media and influencer marketing
- EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) optimization
- Local optimization and outreach
- Mobile optimization and user-friendliness
In the following sections, we’ll delve into each of these trends and explain their growth potential for your healthcare business.
Telemedicine and remote services
Mobile optimization plays a crucial role in telehealth services since it ensures a smooth user experience. A user-friendly e-medicine app should have features like appointment scheduling, reminders, and data protection.
The rise in telemedicine promotes faster response rates by allowing medical professionals to keep online patient records and hold patient consultations on the phone or computer. Patients can schedule appointments without needing to talk to a receptionist and get reminders on the day of their appointment.
This reduces the number of patients going to the hospital for what could have been an at-home treatment. It’s also a huge benefit for immobile patients who have no means of transport at inconvenient hours of the day.
Personalized patient engagement
Healthcare businesses can create personalized care plans according to patient profiles. Medical professionals can make better-informed treatment decisions by accessing patients’ past conditions, lab test results, prescribed medicine, etc.
Medical services can also implement data research to discover the latest trends for better care solutions. The insights from the gathered data are then used to alter treatment plans and expand the scope of services to accommodate the unique needs of patients.
AI and big data in healthcare marketing
AI plays a huge role in e-medicine, particularly when predicting industry trends for marketing purposes. Predictive analytics services dissect and organize clinical data to be analyzed and applied in advertising efforts to create targeted campaigns. Here are some examples:
- Chronic disease management campaigns – Individuals may have difficulty finding pain relief solutions for certain chronic conditions. Campaigns of this sort aim to collect more data about them and medications that might help, as well as educate patients on better pain management and living comfortably with a chronic illness.
- Preventive care campaigns – These campaigns usually refer to reproductive health, a topic that isn’t widely taught in schools and in general. Patients may feel uncomfortable seeking advice from their doctor or relying on others’ experiences. Through preventive care campaigns, medical professionals can promote screening services and regular checkups for optimal health and preventing serious health complications.
- Patient outreach campaigns – Online health services’ main purpose is to reach remote communities without access to healthcare. Medical businesses can use data collection to pinpoint underserved locations in their country or state and extend their services to those areas. Local SEO plays a crucial role here, growing your online presence in specific geographic locations through keyword optimization, local content creation, authoritative inbound linking, and your Google Business Profile.
Content Marketing and Educational Initiatives
So, what are the current healthcare marketing trends regarding content? As we mentioned, content is one piece of the SEO puzzle, without which you cannot maximize patient engagement and conversion. Let’s look at how the right content presents you as a credible source in the industry:
Educational content for patients
Telehealth services can foster connections with patients through their web pages. By creating digital spaces where patients can get information on various health topics, medical businesses boost their credibility and reputation, establishing themselves as experts in their field. When we say digital spaces, we mean anything from a simple health blog to a forum where patients can discuss and share tips with each other.
Thought leadership and expert content
The digital footprint of a healthcare service speaks volumes about its authority. The business should be easily discoverable online, share the newest medical technology it has implemented, and have thorough explanations of the services it offers. This is all possible through the key healthcare marketing trends.
Embracing Social Media and Influencer Marketing
Everyone seeks medical advice online, and that includes the demographic under 40. To reach this audience, you need to tailor your marketing efforts to their preferences, as shown below:
Leveraging social platforms for Outreach
Social media can be a great way to gain a following and possibly new customers. Giving potential clients a snippet of your services through text or video can encourage them to look for more info. Statista shows that Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram were the top three social media channels used by healthcare marketers in 2022.
TikTok has also been gaining popularity, with medical professionals creating engaging and sometimes humorous short-form content to get noticed by the general public. Users then share this content with friends, generating more followers and views and boosting the conversion rate.
Collaborations with healthcare influencers
Collaborating with healthcare influencers is the gateway to an increased follower base. Data shows that 1 in 10 U.S. women asked a social media influencer for health advice in 2022 on topics ranging from weight recommendations to reproductive health.
Now, think about the potential you’ll unlock by sending your health products to an influencer and having them do a review of them for their audience. A product recommendation from a person they trust will encourage these followers to check out your product and even bypass online reviews and go straight to purchasing.
Conclusion
Healthcare marketing trends help medical services get discovered more easily across search engines and expand their patient base through various SEO strategies.
What are the current trends in healthcare marketing? They include content optimization, local SEO, EAT optimization, social media and influencer advertising, etc. With the latest advancements in AI, many businesses also employ data collection tools to get specific information on target groups, helping them improve their treatment plans and recommendations.
By creating a marketing campaign to implement these methods for online visibility, you can significantly improve your SEO metrics and secure high rankings on SERPs.
