Keeping up with marketing trends is essential for all marketers in the line of health products. Today, drugs are a pretty big deal. It is important to consider the way they are presented to customers, the professionalism of the team involved, and the degree of personalization that is involved in selling them.
If you are in the health sector and trying to remain competitive and relevant, consider this list of the seven most important medical marketing trends to watch out for in 2017.
1. Location-based marketing
Although some healthcare needs may be universal, like polio or measles vaccines, some are regionally based, meaning they depend on the climatic conditions and geographic location. In such a case, marketing departments in the world of medicine should market based on what the people in a particular region need most. With the adoption and widespread use of smart phones and tablets, it’s easy to send alerts to people in a given niche and remind them why they should visit a hospital or a nearby drug store. Analyzing the effectiveness of location-based content marketing, perhaps by studying the responses of clients or tracking hospital visits, will allow marketers to understand their customers’ personal preferences and tastes.
2. Utilizing messaging apps
Platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp have already been widely used by businessmen and women to advertise their products and services, but people in the health sector have been adamant in utilizing social media to market their services. That is changing. In 2017, it is now possible to see medical practitioners converse with patients in real time platforms that provide immediate responses.
3. Optimizing marketing techniques to suit mobile phones
A high percentage of people in the developed nations own a laptop or tablet, as well as a cell phone. Even though computers are essential, it has become much easier to check updates, send emails, and even do online shopping from a phone. Medical content marketing should follow suit. If you want to optimize your website to be mobile-friendly, keep your content short and sweet, and make image sizes and resolution suitable for use in small devices.
4. Using videos
Videos attract a bigger audience than written content alone. With so many online platforms to support videos, marketing teams are fully utilizing the streaming options on blogs and websites to educate people and address urgent questions raised by the viewers. According to research, one in two patients goes online to research their medical conditions, treatment procedures, available healthcare providers, and other medical queries. Online video advertising has even overtaken television marketing, so healthcare providers should shift to this as well.
5. Providing personalized care
Impersonal marketing techniques are outdated. Especially since it is possible to study a patient’s behavior, the sites they visit online, and the health-related questions they tend to ask. Health marketing teams should utilize all the available software and technology to get personalized information regarding patients. By arming themselves with the knowledge of what their patients need, it is easy for marketing departments to personalize their advertisements of services or products. Patients will respond to such personal outreach, as long as the advertisements contain quality content.
6. Prioritizing patients’ time by condensing videos and text
While you strive to inform the patients with relevant information, it is important to be considerate of their time. What matters is how effectively you can convince the patient that they need your product or service, not how much information you bombard their phones and emails with. Keeping video and text advertisements short and sweet ensures that patients will not immediately dismiss the help you are hoping to provide. Remember that the quality of the content delivered, rather than quantity, is what matters when winning over patients. So, keep your content authoritative, up-to-date, and interesting to keep the patient engaged and informed.
7. Monetizing telemedicine
The reliability of text or emails has taken the health sector to another level. People have begun to rely more on online doctors and health specialists for consultation than the actual medical experts you find in an office block or hospital. Physicians should now utilize these platforms to legally serve patients and ask for payment for the services rendered. This marketing tactic is efficient, profitable, and will even reduce the level of congestion in traditional hospitals.
Utilizing the trends mentioned above will undoubtedly put your practice at a level you would not have expected.
About the author
Jacob C has everything that you could ever ask for in a writer. From a great grasp of grammar and sentence structuring, to usage and syntax, flow of ideas, in-depth research tactics, timely work delivery and a generous helping of wit, he commands great mastery of the language as well as a unique ability to take complex assignments and tease a flow out of them.
