Hospitals and clinics should adopt digital marketing as a strategy to stand out in the highly competitive healthcare space.

Traditional marketing relies on expensive hoardings, print ads, TV and radio to reach patients. It is also difficult to target specific audiences through traditional marketing, causing budgets to be wasted.

Digital marketing has emerged as an affordable, highly targeted medium to earn brand visibility and win patient loyalty.

Our experience in Health-care marketing

• We have driven million+ visits for a healthcare platform website.
• Experience in managing large ‘platform’ size websites of 50 000 pages plus.
• Cross domain experience in multiple specialties covering more than 20 specialisation categories.
• Multi channel expertise in health-care marketing through social media, emailing, advertisements, creative and more.
• Client size ranges from individual doctors to branches of hospital chains that are publicly listed.

Key areas where digital marketing can power your health-care brand.

Social media in health-care – referrals at the speed of the internet

Patients often choose their healthcare provider based on references from friends and family.  A patient can now influence their network much faster through social media. This means that a hospital or clinic has to have a well though out social media strategy to get enquiries through referrals.

Reputation management for your hospital

A genuine grievance or an ill informed online review about your hospital can stay online forever, causing damage to your reputation. A potential patient who sees the review can cause them to think twice about coming to your brand for treatment.

Use of digital technology in your health-care process

Patients expect features like online appointments and payments that help them save time and make decisions quickly. These features can help reduce overcrowding and no-shows at your hospital.  Doctors can connect through video consultation if the patient cannot visit in person, making it more convenient and cost effective. Video consultation provides privacy, which helps patients who are worried or shy about asking questions. The patient can share their medical files prior to their visit so that the hospital can prepare to receive them.

Getting feedback – resolving the bad and amplifying the good

Patients can digitally evaluate your hospital’s services, which means that your online reputation is important. Healthcare brands can offer positive testimonials from satisfied patients, in order to improve their reputation. The digital marketing agency can help drive the patient testimonial program through direct calling, emailers and through social media.

Research on the patient’s needs

Hospitals can use digital tools to find what their patients are searching for online, to drive marketing strategy. Patients can demonstrate different online behaviours depending on their illness, stage of disease, insurance coverage and other factors. The hospital website and social media content can be tailored to the needs of patients, so that they are likely to choose the hospital for their treatment.

Powering your offline events with digital marketing

Hospitals and clinics conduct events (camps, meetings, CME’s) in order to drive patient education and awareness. Healthcare events can be successful by adopting digital marketing channels. This can include database marketing prior to the event by sending out emailers and SMS. Targeted digital advertisements to the patient segment on social media can increase event participation. Digital registration can improve the enrollment in the events. Pre event marketing buildups can drive increased footfalls to the event. Digital engagements during the course of the event can increase interaction with the patients generate more data for research and followup.

Compete effectively with larger healthcare brands

Digital marketing can be done affordably, which means that your brand can compete with larger hospitals or clinics who have bigger budgets. This levels the playing field allowing your healthcare brand to drive patient engagement with a smaller budget.

Digital marketing channels like search, social and email marketing will drive growth through increased patient footfalls, better perception of your treatments and credible brand building through strategic content creation.

Your patient’s, and your balance sheet can look healthier with the right digital strategy.

Medical tourism is a digital opportunity

Medical tourism is an opportunity for Indian hospitals due to lower cost of treatments in India. A tourist or non resident Indian will find the cost of healthcare treatment in India lower than their own country, without a decrease in quality.  Some healthcare facilities may not be available in some countries (for instance some countries in Africa) and medical tourism is one way to bridge the availability gap.

Indians who live in the Middle East/Gulf region (Dubai, Muscat, Doha, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia etc)  prefer to get treatment in India with their family around them to support them during the illness. Some countries like Oman have a large community of arabs who have an affinity to India, and are more comfortable with Indian doctors and nurses. Medical tourists from the UK and Europe choose India as an option in order overcome long waiting periods for surgeries. Medical tourists from the US often choose to come to India for treatment because their insurance may not cover the surgery costs.

Medical tourists may not have insurance to cover non essential treatment  like cosmetic surgeries in their home countries. Some medical tourists may want to combine their post treatment recuperation time with a vacation.

Despite growing demand for medical tourism, patients who come to India are often concerned about cleanliness, safety and data privacy.

Your healthcare brand can use digital marketing to highlight how it has planned to address the concerns of medical tourists. Brand communication can reach a global audience through digital channels, unlike traditional marketing which don’t have the same reach or affordability.

Brand management for Global patients

The patient will check out the hospital, doctor and facilities by visiting the hospital website or social media page. A credible digital presence with the right information can convince the patient to choose to get treatment from your hospital or clinic.

From the use of stock photography to the use of video testimonials, the right approach can make a difference to the bottom line. It is important to align the marketing content to the needs of the patient.

An award for heart care means nothing for a patient looking for treatment for a kidney related illness. A patient might want to have weight loss surgery for aesthetic reasons, while another wants to curb diabetes or return to work. The hospital should align the marketing and healthcare content to match the specific needs of the patient.

Digital marketing allows the healthcare provider to say the right things to the right patient based on their need. This can be achieved by using the fine grained audience targeting options available for advertisements on social and search platforms.

Digital marketing for Telemedicine platforms and Solutions 

Telemedicine has become a priority due to the COVID 19 (Corona Virus) that has caused lockdowns across the world. Delivering healthcare through telemedicine increases the accessibility and reduces the need for patients to travel. Patients can consult with Doctors from the safety of their home, and avoid visits to the hospital, which maybe a source of infections . Almost all non-surgical healthcare and medical consultations can be done through telemedicine.

Telemedicine will become widely available due to the ubiquity of healthcare platforms and high speed internet.

The question however, is how do you market the benefits of Telemedicine to patients and caregivers?

Digital marketing can help educate patients on the benefits of features like Video consultations and remote consultations. In particularly in a situation where patients or the general public has been asked to stay indoors, their primary means of information is digital – TV and Mobile internet.

Digital marketing for Telemedicine requires an understanding of both advantages and limitations of online consultations for healthcare delivery.

Analyse Digital has deep expertise in working with telemedicine platforms for healthcare delivery. This includes working during product development, field deployments and digital marketing across social media, search engines and paid advertisements. Get in touch to see how we can help you market your telemedicine solution to doctors and patients.