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Editor's Note: This blog was published prior to the transition to WebMD Ignite.

The days of “build it and they will come” have long since passed. Now patients have an abundance of choices for care, and they won’t choose their local health system simply by default. There are many factors contributing to this shift: Telehealth allows patients to meet with leading physicians across the state, retail healthcare offers routine care at a deep discount, and the internet has become a hotspot for free healthcare information.

Healthcare has never been more competitive. To stand out, it’s essential to create a strong healthcare marketing strategy. However, marketing for health systems comes with a unique set of challenges and requires a strategy with special considerations that aren’t found in any other industry. Let’s take a closer look.

Important strategies for marketing your health system

There are many different channels and strategies that health systems can use to market their services, and each potential strategy has different strengths, weaknesses, and a few best practices. However, throughout each and every one of these strategies, HIPAA must be kept top-of-mind to properly protect patients.

Let’s dive into the marketing strategies health systems should use and outline any special considerations healthcare marketers must stay aware of.

1. OPTIMIZE YOUR ONLINE EXPERIENCE

Healthcare websites are essential to driving intelligent engagement, especially if they are primarily used to inform rather than generating leads. Think of them as the core of your strategy. They provide an opportunity to connect each part of your consumer-centric, multi-channel marketing strategy to a single location with all of the information a patient needs.

There are a few ways to improve the online experience. First, make sure your website is mobile optimized. Second, ensure the messaging used on your website matches the messaging used in other forms of outreach. Combining both of these initiatives will help you create a smooth, consistent online experience.

2. ENGAGE IN CONTENT MARKETING

Content marketing can take many forms. It could be a laser-focused blog post to help patients find you through search, a symptom checker to help prospective patients determine if they need care, or helpful resources to build rapport among existing patients.

At its crux, content marketing should be about providing patients with answers to pressing questions. To find out what patients are asking, examine the data in your business insights solution, or identify common questions fielded by your contact center. Providing the information that patients need to know through content marketing initiatives will ultimately help you acquire, engage, and retain patients.

3. SOLICIT POSITIVE PATIENT REVIEWS

Positive patient reviews help your health system build trust with consumers and patients. Great reviews can attract new patients while instilling confidence in existing patients. To get more positive reviews, send follow-up outreach asking satisfied patients to share details about their experience on social media or third-party review sites. Don’t forget to follow HIPAA guidelines when you thank them for sharing their thoughts!

4. KEEP REFERRALS IN-NETWORK

Healthcare marketing isn’t all about the patients. Health systems need to keep in touch with physicians to ensure they are advancing the goals of the health system by keeping patients in-network. Physicians with high morale or a good opinion of your health system are more likely to trust your employed physicians to deliver the best quality care possible.

Physician marketing campaigns should focus on building confidence in your brand through highly targeted campaigns mixed with direct outreach from liaisons. In this outreach, liaisons should ensure top referrers are aware of all your highly skilled in-network providers. The best way to guide this strategy is with a physician relationship management platform. This technology will provide important insights about which physicians to target, what type of outreach they need, and how to measure the success of your campaigns.

5. PERSONALIZE PATIENT ENGAGEMENT

Eighty percent of consumers want brands to provide them with personalized experiences, but many health systems are only beginning to invest in personalization. One of the most effective ways to get started with personalized engagement is with a data-driven contact center solution. Your chosen solution should be able to take the demographic data within the EHR and combine it with detailed insights from a healthcare CRM. This will help you deliver outreach that is crafted around a consumer’s unique needs and identity.

6. FOCUS ON RETENTION

Many health systems focus on driving new patients into their health system and assume they will remain with the health system on an ongoing basis. This may have been true decades ago, but consumers today have ample choice when it comes to receiving care. To ensure patients continue to receive high-quality care from hospitals in your network, you need to create campaigns that improve patient satisfaction.

For example, if a patient calls your engagement center to make an appointment, your agents should fulfill their request, then refer to a comprehensive patient profile to see if there are any relevant events or services that may help them manage their existing conditions. This will help the patient feel valued while ensuring they trust your health system to always keep their health top-of-mind.

7. USE SEO TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Each day, consumers Google more than 1 billion health-related questions. They want to learn more about their condition, certain symptoms, potential medications, and more. Getting in front of these patients with reliable advice and a suggestion to visit your health system won’t just attract new business  —  it will help you provide more timely care to patients in need.

8. CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY

Social media is fundamental for building trust among consumers and patients. Each day, patients will access various parts of your social media presence to learn more about your health system’s values and how other people perceive you.

It’s important to have a clear direction for your social media marketing strategy, and a strong understanding of how to have an ethical, HIPAA-compliant two-way conversation with patients. For this reason, many health systems choose to outsource social media management to third-party agencies with a strong understanding of privacy laws and an empathetic and ethical approach to confronting common patient questions.

9. PURCHASE PAY-PER-CLICK (PPC) ADS

When a patient is searching for information, they turn to search engines. When they want to understand your values, they turn to social media. But when a patient is ready to receive care as soon as possible, they’re likely to click on a PPC ad. PPC helps you get right in front of qualified consumers, and you only pay when they click on the advertisement.

Optimizing your ad targeting and associated copy will help you ensure you’re getting the best deal per click, but doing so requires a few hours of attention each week from a dedicated, seasoned specialist. Since employing an inhouse PPC expert isn’t always economically feasible, many health systems use an agency to purchase and optimize PPC placements.

10. ALWAYS MEASURE AND IMPROVE

Health systems shouldn’t just deploy campaigns and have faith they are working. Rather, you need to constantly measure how certain activities help you acquire, engage, and retain patients. For instance, you can employ A/B testing to put two slightly different campaigns head-to-head, and only invest in the more successful campaign. Or you could use predictive models to see how certain marketing actions will affect performance down the line.

When you adopt a more data-focused healthcare marketing strategy, it’s easy to get caught up in ensuring upward growth. However, don’t be afraid to experiment and fail. You’ll often learn more from a failure than from a success, and this knowledge could help you create an approach to marketing that truly sets you apart from both traditional competitors and disruptors in your market.

Using technology to support your healthcare marketing strategy

There is an abundance of methods and marketing channels available to help your health system engage, acquire and retain patients. Before your health system begins to embark on a quest to improve your healthcare marketing strategy, however, it’s important to ensure you’re equipped with the right technology and expertise.

By investing in the healthcare-specific tools and assistance, you will be able to execute on the facets of your marketing strategy that matter the most. In the end, your strategy and technology must work together to accelerate your marketing initiatives and help you achieve your goals.