Healthcare Marketing : Rebounding from COVID

By: Lisa Bowen

 

Those of you who know me may know that I hate needles. I’m known to faint at the sight of blood, but I’ve always wanted to help people. So helping healthcare organizations advance their brand and grow their business makes me feel like I’m doing my part behind the scenes and like I’m part of that great work. I’m fortunate to work for an agency like KidGlov, who loves partnering with organizations that have a positive impact on the world. What we like to say here is that we’re the people helping the people who are changing the world. You really can’t have a conversation today about people making a positive impact or changing the world without a picture of a healthcare provider, whether it’s a physician, a nurse or a therapist, popping into your head. Today, our healthcare professionals are viewed as even more heroic than ever due to being on the front lines during COVID-19.

 

Speaking of COVID, it’s flipped the healthcare industry on its head from putting surgeries non-essential surgeries at a halt to outpatient care stopping, and really just the fear associated with being in a healthcare setting without getting the virus. So this has had a huge impact, especially on our smaller hospitals and clinics. And if you add to that, what’s happening to a lot of organizations is marketing dollars have been used for education about COVID and safety, and now letting people know that it’s safe to come back into their organization. So what do you do? You have a lower budget, your industry’s been flipped on its head. How do you rebound when, like I said, your budgets have been cut and really shifted to cover other priorities that you weren’t expecting in your thought-out marketing plan this year?

 

I want to talk to you about just a couple of things to consider. These are really basic things, but they’re definitely necessary as you’re trying to rebound and get patients back in your clinics and hospitals. Number one, I think the most important thing is we all know that people are looking online for healthcare information more now than ever. So it’s super important to make sure your website is the way you want it to be. And you also need to make sure when someone visits your website, they right away know who you are, what you do and why they should trust you with their care over anyone else. There’s lots of options out there for healthcare, just like other industries.

 

The other thing you want to do is keep your content fresh and focused. People are looking for data. They’re smart healthcare consumers, people are taking charge of their care and really being smart consumers. So you want to make sure that you’re giving patients and potential patients exactly what they want. Content needs to be timely, remain fresh and focused, not only on what they want to know, but also almost more importantly, what you want them to know about your organization. And I think today, we have to prioritize promoting your key services, ones that will be profitable and have a big impact on your bottom line. It’s not a time to promote everything to everyone, you really have to remain focused.

 

I think the third thing that you have to make sure you do is, we’re making up for lost time in the healthcare industry, volumes have been down, patients have not been coming in as they were in the past. We can’t just rely on getting our returning patients back. We also have to ramp up efforts to capture nuance. So you need to use your content to capture leads, learn about your perspective patients and begin building a relationship with them. Healthcare especially, is a relationship-driven business, people are going to go to providers they trust and they use word of mouth as a good thing, but they also are looking for that information coming from you as their trusted provider. So they also need to hear it, not once, not twice, but many times from you before they will entrust their care to you. It has to be an effective and repetitive message that is consistent and says how you’re going to care for them and what you can do for them that others can’t.

 

Some of you might be like, “How do I capture leads? What’s the best way to do that?” Some of the most common ways that healthcare organizations have successfully captured leads for those patients that they can start building relationship with are offering downloadable content that’s valuable for them. Maybe you do an online assessment of some sort that need to follow up with them on and it can help drive business for you. Maybe you get them to sign up for ongoing information like a newsletter or you’re doing blog posts to get their attention. And lastly, what you can do, which was a lot more fun when we could do them in person, are educational events. But now, people have done successful virtual educational events to capture those names and really start building relationships with those potential patients.

 

So, the list could go on and on and on, but those are three really basic things you can do. Number one, your website has to be in order. Number two, content has to be great and focused. And number three, you have to keep those current patients, but also capture some new leads to help you grow that business.

 

So if you want to learn more, I will be back, but if you want to learn more in the meantime, you can visit kidglov.com/healthcare. And what you’ll see there is a little bit more about our healthcare expertise, some examples of our work in the healthcare industry, and also get to hear from some great experts who have been guests on our Agency for Change podcast. If you have questions for me or would like to learn more about how KidGlov could help you, please send me a message or comments, and I will be happy to reach back out to you. So thank you so much. Stay warm. I hope winter’s over soon. Stay healthy and, again, thank you for your time. I’ll share more information with you in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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