Digital marketing is a new channel of reaching patients and public about hospitals’ services faster and easier leveraging on tools and sites the target audiences use. Today’s post will focus on how to do digital marketing for hospitals – what to have, tools, channels and sites to reach patients across the globe.
Now let us visit each one by one:
What to have:
- What are the innovations, positioning, and the things you want your hospital to be known for? E.g. cheap medical services provider, fast delivery, caring, highly professional, etc.
- What are the illnesses or medical services your hospital deals on?
- What is/are your hospital digital marketing objectives? E.g. to create awareness, increase number of patient, educate potential patients, establish the hospital as an expert in the medical field, etc?
- Is the medical service your hospital rendering new in the industry? If no, there is competitor(s); then, list things that make your hospital unique.
- When would you want to commence the digital marketing/advertising?
- What would be the duration of the digital marketing/advertising?
- What goal do you want to accomplish with the hospital digital marketing? Goal can be 20% increase in patient admission to the hospital, 100%increase in inquiries, 40% increase in filling a form, etc.
All these will be creatively manipulated and incorporated in the tools that will be used to reach millions of masses out there. These are the messages the hospital will be sending out to the public via digital marketing tools.
Some of the Digital marketing Tools that can be used are:
- Articles
- Case studies
- Online banners
- Testimonials
- Apps
- Newsletters
- Email campaigns
- Headlines
- Bulk sms
- Classified ads
- Videos
- Contextual ads
Your ability to employ these tools will determine how effective your communication will be, and these tools will influence digital marketing channels to use.
Digital marketing channels for hospital:
- Content marketing: this brings about usage of articles, case studies, video, etc.
- Social media Marketing: there’re different categories of social media, which are online forums, social networking, news aggregators, etc.
- Influencers: influencers are bloggers, news portals, healthcare writers, etc.
These are just some of digital marketing channels to use; this will determine the websites to employ.
Sites:
There’re hundreds of healthcare’s websites out there to deploy your hospital digital marketing contents. These niche sites will go along way reaching your target patients effectively, because people visit these healthcare’s sites looking for numerous health’s solutions. Good example of healthcare’s site is 247healthblog.com; this health’s blog allows sponsored hospital post, press release and display banners.
There are also general categories of sites with high traffics out there. You choice of tools and channel will determine the type of website to use, e.g., Cokoye’s health section allows internet banners and sponsored posting. Also, another factor on sites to use is your budget, ads duration, country, etc.
If you don’t have the time and expertise to handle the digital marketing guides above, and to effectively carry out all the nitty-gritty of digital marketing activities; consider hiring healthcare’s digital marketing agency. An agency will help you do all the listed creative works, carry out situation analysis, select best websites, choose right strategies, manage adverts, and market your hospital all over the internet.
This is how to do digital marketing for hospitals.
Chris is an internet public enlightenment strategist and COO at Adhang.com ( a leading online marketing platform and the first Internet public enlightenment agency in Africa).
www.AdHang.com
