The impact of healthcare marketing for doctors is visible with the emergence of social networks, where everyone has become micro-influencers. Even if it’s a small number of people, anyone has the power to influence changes in opinion on many topics, including which doctor to visit or not to visit.
Nowadays, it is not enough for your patient to be able to refer you to other people. You also need to have authority online. People increasingly consider what they find online before going to an appointment or even getting in touch.
As recently as 2012, around 60% of respondents to a study said they considered what they found online before going to a doctor. In 2016, that number jumped to 84% of the public, and the trend is that it will continue to rise. As a result, anyone who doesn’t appear in the first results of Google with a good website and positive reviews is losing visibility.
Every hospital, clinic, or office must consider its digital authority, whether a cardio surgeon or a rheumatologist. This is only possible through digital healthcare marketing.
How do content and social media marketing help with marketing to doctors?
When you think about healthcare marketing for doctors, you have to remember that when someone searches more about a particular specialist, they find a list of content on the first page of Google. They can be recommendations from covenants, clinics, hospitals, websites, or even small offices. But many doctors ignore this and choose not to create an effective digital presence, leaving everything about them to someone else.
Taking medical office marketing into your own hands is important to achieve better results. And the most effective method is to produce content!
Patients want to know more about specialties, treatments, and diseases. As a result, some of the most common Google searches involve healthcare, so it’s only natural that doctors, hospitals, and clinics take advantage of this trend.
Building authority, attracting more attention, and winning over new patients are some results of applying healthcare marketing strategies. But soon, we will explain some of the most relevant for those who want to grow in the healthcare marketing agency.
How does the purchase funnel work in medical marketing?
A medical marketing agency always uses the concept of a purchase funnel to strategize. It considers the public’s interactions with a clinic or practice before the conversion and scheduling.
What exactly is this funnel? It is a tool that guides all strategic thinking. Graphically intended as an inverted pyramid representing our audience in a medical marketing agency.
Each segment of the funnel is a purchase step. So, for example, let’s say we’re reaching an audience of 10,000 people with our social media. Many are at the top of the funnel and will remain there for quite some time.
A slightly smaller amount was genuinely interested in what you have to offer and went into the lower end of the funnel. There they are closer to contacting you to schedule an appointment. But they still haven’t decided who to consult with. This only happens when they reach the end of the funnel, the conversion.
For simplicity, we’ve summarized it in three steps. However, those who study digital healthcare marketing in more depth will realize that this sales funnel can be divided into four or more parts according to the business and audience:
Conscience
A large amount of your audience is at this stage. This is when the potential patient is still not sure what they need. He doesn’t know if he should visit a specialist or if he’s come close to deciding to see a doctor.
Even so, he is interested in health-related topics. Therefore, when creating a marketing strategy, we must consider this potential patient carefully. He wants to receive information and follow the clinic.
If we leave people at this stage, we may miss the chance to turn them into customers in the next step.
Interest and consideration
After getting a lot of information, the person becomes interested in their specialty. She wants to know more about the pathologies she attends, the procedures she performs, and how the area works. Gradually she begins to think that maybe she should see a doctor in this area.
This means that the lead (probable “customer”) has reached the consideration stage when he already knows his pains and needs. But be careful: he knows what he wants, but he doesn’t know who he wants to get it with.
This means that you will simultaneously keep an eye on several clinics, hospitals, and offices. It’s more reason to create quality content that helps set you apart from the competition.
Conversion
It is the moment when the patient picks up the phone and calls the clinic to schedule an appointment. Usually, companies work on conversion through attractive promotions or campaigns. But in medical marketing, it is impossible to do this type of action due to the restrictions of the CFM.
We can call the possible patient to schedule an appointment or get to know the space. Conversion should happen through ad campaigns, aided by well-placed calls to action on the website or social media.
Tips to improve your marketing to doctors
We know you want to win more patients through good marketing to doctors. For that, use some of the strategies that we brought below. The disclosure will be infallible and in-depth knowledge of your audience!
Have your website in marketing for doctors
The website has a central position in a healthcare marketing strategy for doctors. It is possible to work with fundamental strategies, such as Google ADs, SEO, and content marketing. When well optimized, it leaves the medical professional among the first search results in tools such as Google. This increases the number of contacts and aids in establishing credibility.
In addition, we can consider the site as a business card, but much more complete. It helps potential patients access all the information they need about the specialist, hospital, or clinic. Whether the specialties that are served, agreements, location, or schedule, everything is a very simple way to access.
Another advantage of having your website is a blog area, which has many other benefits that you can out in the next topic.
Work with a blog focused on patient needs
Having a website is essential. There is no doubt about that! And since you will be working with your website, how about including a blog in this strategy? It’s great to receive snippets of information about health on networks or Whatsapp, but some things need to be added.
That’s where the blog comes in. In addition to helping to position y site in search engines, it also offers quality content to the public. Articles written by healthcare professionals help generate authority and guide your prospective patients. Besides, posting blog articles frequently is essential for your website’s SEO and helps rank your website in the main search terms in your segment.
We have a full article on how to use blogging in marketing to doctors for anyone who wants to know more about it.
Keep your social networks up to date
It’s no use. having Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn if the information on these networks is old. Basic data, such as address, contact telephone numbers, and website, must always be prominent and with recent information.
Try to avoid going too many days without posting too. For potential patients, a stopped social network is synonymous with abandonment. So even if you only share industry news or old blog posts, keep moving to get more attention. What’s more, Instagram gives less reach to posts from profiles that don’t post often.
Respond to all reviews
You will inevitably receive online reviews. They can come through the website, Facebook, Instagram, or Google My Business, and sometimes they will be very positive. But it is also possible to receive complaints, and this is normal.
This is important to them, whether positive or negative, and encourage your patients to continue evaluating. The reviewer feels validated and is more likely to interact with your other content whenever you answer.
It also shows the care you take with your patients and helps new leads form an opinion of your business, allowing healthcare marketing to doctors.
Top trends in medical marketing
The medical marketing landscape has been rapidly evolving since rapidly evolved digital tools. Therefore, anyone who wants to stand out in the sector must be aware of the main trends. After all, they show the audience’s needs and help identify possible new actions.
We separate the three fastest-growing trends in health marketing. Check each one below to define how to work with medical marketing more efficiently.
Increase in online healthcare searches
Something amazing is happening: people started looking for information about their health first on the internet and then looking for a specialist. The numbers are frightening. 94% of Brazilians look for health information on the internet.
Those who expect the patient to first schedule an appointment and then see related topics online lose contacts. This indicates that SEO and paid traffic strategies should be highlighted in industry marketing, which we will discuss later.
Higher paid investment in marketing to physicians
Digital ha.s several possibilities for organic growth. Everything brings incredible results in marketing for doctors, from content marketing to healthcare social media marketing strategies. But growing competition online and falling organic metrics, especially from networks, have strategists looking for paid traffic.
It can be used for different purposes. Even if you are just trying to introduce your brand to the online environment or increase the number of followers, a good paid strategy can be quite advantageous.
Growth in access via mobile devices
Mobile devices have become more accessible to a large part of the Brazilian public. Combine this factor with the new trend among mobile phone operators: offering packages with advantages for accessing Whatsapp and social networks. This explains why optimization for devices of this type has become so important.
Therefore, everything needs to be thought out to make sense both on smartphones and tablets and on desktops and notebooks. Take special care with the content format, prioritizing videos and photos vertically and with captions so that people who use smartphones in public places can understand.
Step by step to optimize the website for SEO in medical marketing
Your website must rank among the top results in organic search engine results pages to effectively market to physicians. As we’ve already noticed, patients love to look up health and care-related information online. So if your relationship starts at that moment, the chances of getting new patients increase. Check out how to do this in the step-by-step guide below.
Optimize loading speed
It does not just search engines that tend to prioritize fast sites. And the potential patient also prefers these pages. The longer content takes to load on the screen, the greater the person’s chances of leaving the site.
Want to know if your domain’s loading speed is adequate? Google itself provides a tool in Page Speed Insights. It even shows what optimizations are needed to achieve optimal loading.
Create a mobile responsive website
Mobile devices are here to stay, and websites that do not adapt to this reality will be abandoned. Google itself is no longer showing non-responsive results in searches.
Most website building platforms like WordPress and Wix offer themes that are already responsive. However, those who have an older site should seek updates, preferably from programmers, to avoid malfunctions and user experience later on.
Work with local SEO
Local SEO tools are essential for anyone looking to attract new patients. They help position yourself in strategic results according to the searcher’s location.
The most used for this type of optimization is Google My Business, a tool linked to your website and Google’s paid ads. Combine My Business with local strategic keywords to position yourself even better.
Use content marketing
Content remains the king of marketing strategies for doctors. Even if your website looks extremely attractive to search engines, it also needs to offer value to the user. Therefore, invest in blogs and posts that make a difference in the lives of those who read.
Informational content is especially loved in the medical business. Providing quality information also helps build a doctor’s or clinic’s reputation for authority.
Essential marketing tools for doctors
Now let’s get to the practice of marketing to doctors! The time has come to find out exactly where to be and what to use to get results. Some tools may seem obvious enough, but they have specific uses for those working in medicine, dentistry, or diagnostics. Check out!
Social networks
Yes, every clinic and health professional needs to be on social media. But it’s important to be strategic: evaluate your audience carefully to define exactly which networks to be present on. For example, some experts trying to reach younger generations have even used Tiktok, with more humorous content, to bring followers and patients.
Others choose to focus on Facebook and its various groups to engage and attract. As with marketing, the strategy depends on who we want to reach. Remember to set a posting frequency and stick to it to avoid losing everything you’ve achieved with your profiles over time.
Email automation
Email is the cornerstone of marketing: it is widely used, playing a role from the attraction phase to the conversion and loyalty of leads. Take advantage of it in your practice to keep clients informed and also build a post-appointment relationship.
To achieve this, you will need to use an automation tool. It allows you to program automatic emails to contact bases according to their evolution in the sales funnel. There are several options, such as RD Station and Leadlovers. When in doubt, consult a digital marketing agency to decide which one is the most suitable.
Google Analytics
Knowing who accesses your website and its behavior helps define the next steps in digital marketing. Google Analytics tracks these hits and displays them in easy-to-understand graphs and tables within the platform.
It is one of the essential instruments for marketing result analysis. Without it, you will hardly understand when a strategy has brought contacts and visits to the site or not.
Google Keyword Planner
We always talk about strategic keyword choice, but how do you define it? Keyword Planner is an essential free marketing tool for doctors that lets you discover search volume, competition, and even cost per click for ads.
The suggestion is to take advantage of it to plan your website’s organic and paid content. Always try to mix keywords of high relevance and competition with others that have not yet been explored as much. Thus, you can position your site faster and increase traffic to your pages.
How to use social media in marketing to doctors
Marketing to doctors has become quite difficult without the use of social media. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Tiktok… there are so many that it is even difficult to name the most used, but the reality is that they are part of the public’s daily life.
For this reason, it is important to learn how to use them! But now we have a warning: there is no point in creating a single calendar and failing to take advantage of the unique advantages of each network.
We separate below the three most relevant networks for digital medical marketing: Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin. We also brought a step-by-step guide on digital marketing and how to do each.
Facebook in Marketing for Physicians
In your marketing strategy for doctors, Facebook needs to be included. Even though many insist that this social network is losing relevance, it is still the champion in the number of users. With 700 million accounts worldwide, it can reach people just about anywhere. In addition, most of these people access it daily.
So how to use this large number of people to attract new patients to the clinic? Check out some tips to get started.
Create a Facebook page to promote your clinic or hospital
Even if you already have a personal account on the social network, it is not enough to start your promotion. When configured as pages, Facebook has exclusive tools for businesses, including those in the health area.
Creating a page is free for anyone who has an account on the social network. We can use it as an information and content “central” where we link to other networks, websites, and all kinds of data that your customers may need.
Of course, it will also need frequent updates. Otherwise, your content will not routinely appear in the user’s feed.
Choose a category for your new page
During the c.onfiguration of the page, you will have to choose a category, among them:
- Local business: clinic, pharmacy, diagnostic center, spa, among others;
- Company, organization, or institution: it can also be used for the health segment, but larger companies, such as hospitals and pharmaceutical organizations;
- Brand or product: most suitable for medicines or their manufacturers;
- Public figure: indicated in the case of a professional or specialist, such as a doctor, professor, or speaker.
Are you in doubt? It is worth checking the category adopted by similar pages.
Create a content calendar
As with any other social network, the purpose of the content on Facebook is to generate interactions and shares. So select what should be most relevant to your audience and start sharing it. Always try to work with a calendar created in advance to avoid going long periods without publications.
Share your content in local groups to increase your reach
Facebook groups are one of its busiest areas these days. After creating a publication, remember to share it in groups with relevant topics, whether they are aimed at the medical field or the final audience.
It is also interesting to stay active in discussions in such communities. They help draw attention to your page and increase the relevance of your posts, especially in functional groups.
Instagram in marketing for doctors
Marketing for doctors on Instagram has become increasingly vital for medical specialists. As a result, the chances that you, who are reading this article, have an Instagram are high. The social network has gained popularity in recent years and shows no sign of losing steam.
Choose the profile type for social networks
As with Facebook, there are a few profile categories you can choose from. As the name implies, the personal profile is used for personal accounts that post daily food photos and outings with friends. It’s not something that exactly helps in medical marketing, although putting things personal can increase reach and engagement.
Therefore, we recommend choosing a professional account (in the case of a clinic or hospital) or a creator account (in the case of a specialist). In addition to allowing you to use all the tools for businesses, they give you more detailed insights into your audience.
You can find out, for example, how many people saw your post, which came from hashtags, from the homepage, and even from other people’s profiles. Data also helps decide what and when to publish based on audience interactions.
Create a Temporary Content Calendar
Instagram has stories, a content format that is only visible for 24 hours. However, it is widely used to show the daily life of clinics and health professionals and generate greater interaction with users.
Our tip here is: to explore all available tools. Stickers, for example, have question boxes, polls, and other forms of interaction that are very attractive to users that will help make the content more interesting.
Create a fixed content calendar
While stories disappear after 24 hours, feed posts, Reels, and IGTV stay there forever or until deleted. Therefore, they need a little more care when creating them.
Currently, they serve as both a business showcase and a point of interaction. As soon as they are posted, they are active: they attract likes, comments, and shares and should generate as much interaction as possible. But they need to remain relevant even days later when a potential patient can visit your profile.
LinkedIn in Marketing for Physicians
It’s worth including LinkedIn in your marketing strategy for doctors. LinkedIn is already prominent among the medical community and professionals from different areas despite still gaining ground in Brazil. It is an exclusive social network for networking and labor market issues, so many find it difficult to adapt to it, but we guarantee that this network is essential.
Work with a professional profile and a page
When you decide to start a LinkedIn strategy, you will need to deal with two fronts: the professional profile of the health specialist and the page. Profiles have the highest organic reach right now, so they shouldn’t be ignored.
At the same time, the page is the connection point for everyone who works or has worked somewhere. So, in the long term, it greatly increases the result of the strategy, especially when the manager keeps it up to date.
Engage with interest groups and other professionals
Much like Facebook, there are several groups divided by interest on LinkedIn. Find a few related to your industry and interact and share your posts there.
This is a way to create the much-desired online networking, as the platform’s objectives preach, and generate authority. In addition, they help build the reputation of any health specialist who wants to improve their marketing.
Post regularly (even if you don’t have interactions initially)
It’s common to get frustrated with the lack of interactions on LinkedIn at first. After all, your audience tends to be colder and more reserved than elsewhere. But as you adopt the other tips we’ve brought you here, especially when interacting with other accounts, your reach grows!
As the Brazilian public does not yet overexploit LinkedIn for ads, its organic potential is high. Start experimenting with posts to determine what types of content your audience interacts with the most.
Share relevant third-party content
In addition to showing your expertise in marketing to doctors, it is always worth demonstrating that you are connected to the rest of the market around you. To do this, just routinely share the posts that you find most relevant. This helps spread the word about fellow professionals and even increases your reach in the community.
