Digital marketing tips for local healthcare businesses

Digital marketing tips for local healthcare businesses in 2021

Are you using digital marketing to boost your healthcare business?

Digital marketing is now a must for all types and sizes of brands, from big real estate companies to small medical clinics.

It is estimated that the world’s total digital ads will reach a value of $389 billion in 2021. This means that companies are viewing digital channels as the best means of advertising.

Of course, digital marketing is usually about non-paid ways of brand awareness. This is perfect for small and local brands because they don’t have a considerable budget.

Creating social media accounts and posting about your products/services might be free and easy, but it is not enough. It is necessary to have a strong digital marketing strategy to be able to get ahead of your competitors.

Here are several tips in this regard to help you boost your local healthcare business using digital marketing.

Have a set of S.M.A.R.T. digital marketing goals

No matter you have a big company producing medical and hospital equipment or a small dentistry clinic, you need to set your marketing goals first.

If you want to build a sales funnel and keep money flowing into your account, you have to know what exactly you want and what you have to do. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For instance:‎

  • Building a community of niche audiences in your region
  • Increasing brand awareness 
  • Increasing your rank on Google for local queries

When you clearly define your digital marketing goals, you will stay focused on them. Of course, a good strategy needs frequent revision to make sure you’re performing well, considering the latest trends.

Estimate the required budget

To implement your marketing strategy, you need to set aside enough money. Try to consult with a digital marketing agency to be able to estimate the required budget carefully.

Remember that you have to be realistic to be able to afford all the expenses. You might need to pay for many things such as website development, online tools, cameras, content creation, influencer marketing, ads, etc.

Create and publish informative blog posts on your site

Nothing is more important than compelling content in the world of digital marketing. The first reason is that optimized content can put your site on top of the search results of Google.

This means that the more people who are searching keywords related to health, wellness, and illness see your website. As a result, your website will get more traffic, and your sales will probably grow.

On the other hand, providing your audience with useful information about health makes you a local thought leader in the industry. Remember that if you can make a local brand reputation, you can be sure about the future of your business.

When people find the answers to their questions in your blog posts, they will naturally become your customer. So creating informative content should be your first priority.

It’s highly recommended to build a strong Silo structure to let search engines crawl your content, recognize your niche and keywords, and index your business better. Try to conduct deep keyword research, create lots of detailed posts, and then put them in an optimized architecture.

Share content on other niche blogs and get backlinks

The truth is that posting great content on your blog is not enough. The competition in digital marketing is so fierce that you can’t solely rely on your content to get ahead of your local rivals.

This is a fact in Search Engine Optimization that you have to pay attention to Off-Page optimization in addition to On-Page improvement. Google puts a lot of value on backlinks, meaning that the more high-DA sites link to your content, the better.

You might also be forced to pay for sponsored posts in which you’re allowed to openly speak of your business. However, organic backlinks should be your first goal in link building.

Use SEO tools to analyze your performance

For a professional SEO campaign, you might need to collaborate with experts. But if you don’t want to spend more money, you can D.I.Y.

Try to use tools like M.O.Z., Ahrefs, Yoast, WordCounter, and SEOSurfer to analyze the quality of your content, track your backlinks, check your traffic, and compare them with your competitors.

Have a consistent social media presence

Without a consistent social media presence, any digital marketing strategy is meaningless. More than 3.8 billion active social media users are a great opportunity for businesses of all sizes.

As a local healthcare business, you can take advantage of social platforms to boost your sales. You have to use scheduling tools to share your blog posts on your social accounts.

Also, you’d better reach out to all niche groups and channels on the top social networking sites/apps like Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.

Remember that social media marketing is all about high engagement rates. So it would help if you didn’t leave your social activities without interacting with your audience.

Remember that the more friendly you speak with your followers, the more likely they’ll become your customers.

Don’t forget video marketing

The attitudes of today’s people are totally different. Texts don’t appeal to them anymore. Multi-media contents like pictures, infographics, and videos are responsible for the majority of the global internet traffic.

That’s why video marketing is of great interest to all businesses. You also need to leverage the power of video marketing to increase your brand awareness.

All social media platforms provide you with video marketing features. For example, Instagram lets you post videos of different sizes on feed, I.G.T.V., Stories, Live videos, and Reels.

You can include testimonials of your satisfied customers in your video marketing. This is the most effective means of convincing local people that you’re offering quality products/services.

Collaborate with health and wellness influencers

Influencer marketing can also be very useful to your business. Try to collaborate with health and wellness influencers to promote your business. Of course, Mega and Macro-influencers are really expensive, and you might not be able to afford to work with them.

Micro and Nano-influencers are great choices for your business. Try to find highly-engaged influencers of these types and start a lasting partnership with them. You can collaborate with them in different ways:

  1. They create and post promotional content on their accounts
  2. They take part in your lives
  3. You create content and ask them to share the post on their accounts
  4. You involve them in your experiential marketing and share the result on social media

Takeaway

We tried to present several useful tips to help you in your digital journey. Obviously, you need to take care of many other things and study more about digital marketing. Remember that practice makes perfect, so you have to experience these tips for mastering digital marketing. Keep in mind that you have to frequently track your results and optimize your performance to reach a high R.O.I. in marketing.