Healthcare Marketing: Mistakes To Avoid, Strategies To Start

Healthcare marketing is driven by patient connection, strategic communication, and a focus on empowering people to make healthy changes to their life.

To start simple, healthcare marketing is all the methods used to create awareness and attract the right patients to a healthcare provider’s practice.

But is the execution as simple as the definition? Well, maybe not when done single handedly. Ideally, patients should be engaged at every step of their journey, from researching their healthcare provider or organisation to following up with a doctor’s findings.

This level of interaction becomes tedious in the absence of a strong patient-provider connection. You need experts to run the plan more efficiently. Afterall, just like a doctor’s expertise is his own, so is a marketer’s. Both of them cannot be combined, but surely collaborated; a hand-in-hand can go a long way!

Here are a variety of common mistakes in healthcare marketing you might have slipped into making yourself.

1. Using non-patient-friendly terms (AKA — Jargon)

Clunky medical terms only confuse and frustrate your potential patient. For instance, professionals might understand that an AMI refers to an “acute myocardial infarction.” But a person outside the medicine sphere would prefer the term “heart attack.” It’s that simple!

Not to forget the gross treatment images along with these terms! They only impress the medical peers but not a layman who actually followed your profile for relatable & easy to understand health information.

2. Less importance to patient communication more to conversion (AKA- Salesy)

A huge part of any marketing strategy involves communicating, either actively or passively, with your patients. As compared to any other industry, healthcare demands empathy. These days people want to learn before they buy, and be educated instead of pitched.

Constant & empathetic patient communication is paramount. At its heart, Nth Sense prioritises a patient-first approach uniting several marketing ways around one single goal of bridging the gap between patients and doctors.

For instance, using WhatsApp business functionality for patients can enhance appointment communication. Further, it also facilitates emotional connection when a health tip is shared by the doctor in the long run.

3. Shortcoming in Educating Your Patients (AKA — Not Blogging)

No blog on your medical website is a wasted opportunity. Did you know? Providers or organisations with blogs see an average of 55% in traffic growth, and 11% growth on ROI in their first year.

A blog gives you a voice in your community. With a strong presence you can engage and establish credibility with patients via adding value instead of direct selling.

4. Ignoring Patient Reviews

Reviews drive almost every decision we make, big or small. Don’t you check what people are talking about the newly released movie? Or consider people’s feedback for any online product purchase? I know you do!

Beyond making your services more attractive to prospective patients, responding to reviews supports reputation management. With timely patient feedback you can take care of the patient experience as well as look for loopholes to manage.

Summary

Improve your healthcare marketing approach by avoiding jargon, aligning your internal & external communications, maintain a consistent brand, and always keep the patient experience top-of-mind.

Bonus takeaway; avoid these buzzwords-

• “Innovative” — Instead of simply claiming that you are innovative, describe the ways in which you are innovative.
• “Comprehensive” — How about “inclusive.”? Doesn’t it sound more to the point?
• “Qualified” — Everybody is! There are better ways to set apart your benefits than broadly claiming the bare minimum required of you. Share the specific qualifications of you and your team.

What actually happens when the marketing goes wrong?

It brings trouble to both sides of healthcare — doctors and patients!

To patients- it can cause undue stress, agitation and even procrastination. The potential patients instead of getting connected, which is the actual objective, might feel fear/doubt/worry.

To doctors- On a broader level, it is an effort gone wrong. It can discourage your willingness to do it again, it might create a wrong impression in front of your potential patients.

Keynote

Not every healthcare marketing technique can be successful. Campaigns that focus too much on “conversion” can cause confusion leaving you with not-so-desired results!

Nth Sense’s Role

Nth Sense aids healthcare professionals to examine how healthcare marketing differs from other fields, tackle ineffective tactics, and empower them by discussing successful healthcare marketing strategies.

Once done right, it not only helps the organisation or provider market himself more efficiently but enables current as well as future patients to take control of their healthcare journey.

For you to understand more, here is an extensive blog that shares 6 different healthcare marketing strategies to implement.

https://www.thenthsense.com/post/nth-sense-s-guide-to-healthcare-marketing

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