Implement these 5 Digital Marketing Strategies to Grow your Hospital, Clinic, Nursing Home Business

It is very important to have a well-defined digital marketing strategy in place before you start putting your effort for creating content and posting in social media or invest your money in paid advertisement.

You need to first determine your business goals and objectives, then determine which digital marketing strategies will help you to achieve your business goals. Once you get the clarity, develop a plan, implement and measure it.

Here are 5 effective digital marketing strategies for hospital, clinic, and nursing home.

Having a website for your hospital, clinic, or nursing home means patients are always able to find you anytime and they can access information about your services, timing of a specific specialist, business hours, exact location of your facility, even they can book an appointment online.

Include following features in your website to make it more informative for patients.

Specialities and Services-

This will provide an information about what specialties and services you are offering at your hospital, clinic, or nursing home. If you have a presence in multiple locations, then specify location specific specialities and services you are offering at respective location.

List of Doctors-

Provide a list of doctors who are associated with you, and their education, qualification, and experiences.

Updated Contact Information-

You need to have an up-to-date contact information for your patient, in case they are facing any problem while booking an appointment, or not able to locate your facility. If you are offering emergency services, you can also create a dedicated emergency line.

Business Hours-

This will help patient to make a decision about booking an appointment.

Online Appointment-

This feature will be more convenient and easier for a patient to book an appointment.

Testimonials-

This will build more trust and add credibility to your business.

Patient Resources-

This includes patient self-registration form, accepted health insurance providers, payment options and other required information.

As a healthcare service provider, you must include SEO as a part of your digital marketing strategy to increase visibility of your brand and bring more potential patients to visit your website. More and more patients are doing Google search about nearest healthcare provider, if your business is not appearing in the search, then you need to optimise your website or local listing to appear in Google search.

Here is a quick SEO guide for your practice:

Step 1: Make a List of your Keywords

First you need to do a keyword research and make a list of keywords that align with your services. If you are providing robotic surgery for different procedures, you can include keywords like “robotic surgery hip replacement”, “robotic surgery gallbladder removal” etc.

Once you have done with your keywords list, categorised it into following two categories.

Buying or Purchase Intent- Buying intent keywords mean that the patient is looking for your service on immediate basis. Example- “robotic surgery hospital near me”, “best robotic surgeon in California” etc.

Research Intent- It mean that patient is still doing research about their treatment options, they might need your service in future. Example- “is robotic knee replacement cause any side effect”, “how safe is robotic knee replacement surgery”.

Step 2: Keywords Optimisation

You can optimise keywords mainly in two places your website and Google My Business page.

Google My Business-

Google My Business is a platform where you can list your business.  As a healthcare service provider, you should have a profile in Google My Business and fill out as much as information about your Hospital, Clinic, Nursing Home

You can include following details in your Google My Business:

Verification- First you need to claim and verify your page by following Google verification process

Name, Address, Phone- You must include name, address and correct phone number, and it has to be consistent across different channels.

Category– You can categorise your business based on the services you are providing

Description- Write a brief description about your business and include what services you are offering.

Hours– Specify your business hours, ensure it is accurate and up to date

Website Optimisation-

You can optimise your home and service page with buying intent keywords and optimise other pages like blog with research intent keywords

Step 3-Generating Citation and Backlink for your Website

Another important step to rank higher in Google search is generating citation and backlink for your website. To rank higher in Google search you need inbound link from credible websites and for citation list your business in those sites which will drive traffic.

Step 4- Ask for Review about your Business

Get more reviews from your patients, it has two advantages first it will build credibility of your business among potential patients and second it will be considered as a legitimate business.

Step 5 – Keeping a Track of your Results

Only way to know your SEO strategy is working or not is by tracking your results. You can consider following three metrics -Google ranking, website traffic, and website conversions for your analysis.

Content marketing is the practice of creating and distributing valuable and informative content to attract traffic to your website. Content can be in different formats as blog post, FAQ page, patient guideline, newsletter, brochure etc. You can upload content in your website, social media or YouTube channel.

Here are some content marketing ideas for hospital, clinic, nursing home:

• A web page about health information like disease and condition, tests and procedures, understanding investigations etc
• A blog post covering common diabetes related fears people have
• A gynaecologist Q&A about ectopic pregnancy
• Post a positive video testimonial from your patient in YouTube channel
• A LinkedIn post discussing about current trend in advanced heart surgery
• An email newsletter highlighting tips for managing diabetes or hypertension

Like any other business, your hospital, clinic, nursing home should have a presence in social media and it should be part of your digital marketing strategy. Most of your patients and potential patients spend a huge amount of time in different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Leverage these platforms and start posting valuable and engaging content to build your audience and nurture a relationship with them.

Here are some social media post ideas for your hospital, clinic, nursing home:

• You can educate your followers about health issues like how to stay healthy during flu season, how to manage your stress etc
• Highlights any awards, accreditations, awards or recognition received by your business and mentioned that in your website, Google My Business, and social media channels
• You can create a virtual tour about your facility and post in social media
• You can create health related quiz and give prize to the winners, post free health assessment form etc.
• You can create a short video about meet the Doctor, where Doctor will give a short introduction about him and his practice area or specialisation

PPC ads can help your hospital to drive more traffic and increase brand awareness. It can help you to reach your potential patients who are searching for a healthcare provider. For example, when someone searches for “best pain clinic in San Diego”, if you are providing pain management and based in San Diego, with PPC advertisement you can reach out to people who are in search for a pain clinic or hospital in San Diego.

Here are few tips on how to improve your PPC campaigns.

Set your Campaign Goals-

Before you launch your PPC campaigns, first you need to define your goals what you want to achieve from these campaigns like increase your website traffic, create brand awareness, generate leads etc. Without any goals, you will not be able to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Keywords Research-

You need to do proper research and select relevant keywords for your campaigns, there are many tools available in the market, you can use Google Keyword Planner for your research. For example- if you are providing robotic surgery in your hospital and catering to specific location, you can use keywords like “robotic surgery in Austin”.

Impactful Ad Copy-

Identify relevant keywords and setting your targeted budget is not enough for successful ads campaign. You need to write a compelling ad copy which will increase your click through rate and improve your quality score. Quality score is one of the important factors for ranking of your ads in search results.

Relevant Landing Page-

Make sure your landing page is relevant and align with your ad copy, if it is not aligned then it will have an impact on your conversion rate optimisation. If your click through rate is good but conversion rate is not up to the mark then you need to optimise your landing page.

Track your Results-

Last but not the least you need to track your ads campaigns performance against your defined metrics. This will help you to measure your ads campaigns performance and optimise your campaign to get the best out of your marketing budget.

Scale your hospital, clinics, and nursing homes business with right digital marketing strategies: –

Growth of your business depends lots on the planning and execution of digital marketing strategies. You can grow your business by implementing these strategies by yourself or you can hire us. Healthbizcare is a full-service digital marketing agency for hospitals, clinics, or nursing homes that provides results-driven customised digital marketing solutions.