Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Digital Marketing Revolutionizing Healthcare Sector

Digital marketing has paved its way in almost every sector whether it is retail, banking, education, tourism, healthcare or any other industry you name. However, healthcare sector has been slow in adopting digital marketing trends and practices. A research shows that the healthcare marketing lags behind by two years when compared to other sectors. 


There is a huge gap between the usage of print media and social media in healthcare sector. For example, 35% of healthcare marketers use print magazines, 43% of them use print newsletters and 36% use print media for annual reporting. While the figures for the healthcare marketers using social networks and blogs is relatively far less when compared to other marketers. Only 58% of healthcare marketers compared to 74% of all marketers use blogs for marketing purposes. Story remains same for the social media marketing however the sector ranks exceptionally high for using YouTube – 71% which is higher than the overall average of 63%. The reason could be that medical professionals extensively use YouTube for showing procedures and interviewing doctors. 

Despite of the barriers to entry for internet marketing in healthcare industry, digital marketing tools provides the most effective ways for modernization. The healthcare professionals need to follow a proper online marketing strategy in order to be a successful marketer in digital world.
 
  1. Healthcare marketers should rely on social media for collecting information about their target customers. This will help to understand their customers and expectations from a healthcare service in a better way as today customers find social media as the best platform to express their concerns, queries or reviews.
  2. The second key to success is optimizing your website through mobile and SEO. Hire medical SEO services to ensure that you rank high on search engine result pages and get a good online visibility. Also make sure that your website is optimized for mobile handsets because nowadays large number of people access the web through their mobile phones. Mobile optimization helps your website to open in mobile phones easily.
  3. Next step is to position your company in the market and creating demand and preference for it. This involves what healthcare facilities you are providing, at what price, how it is being accepted and how you are different from your competitors.
  4. Use social media to engage your visitors through meaningful and interesting content. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow patients to get involved in conversations with real healthcare professionals and doctors. Such conversations instigates interest and encourages more people to get involved. People like sharing their opinions, feedback and winning contests. Healthcare sector can leverage upon this by running contests and surveys on social channels.
With the help of social media and content marketing, healthcare sector can gain leadership in the market and earn huge profits. 

FOMAX is a premier offshore software development and information technology company offering systems integration, delivering consulting and outsourcing solutions to various sectors.

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