Health care providers have been taking a real beating over the past several years. Mostly this has come at the hands of the ever-evolving COVID-19 virus. This constant battle may have caused you to neglect your digital marketing, and that’s completely understandable.
Fortunately, there are some easy-to-implement tips that can help health care providers start 2022 off with a more stable digital marketing foundation. Here are three such tips:
1. Build trust with videos.
Creating video content is a great way to reach prospective patients and build their trust in your practice. It’s estimated that by this year, up to 82% of all online consumer traffic will come from watching videos. There are several ways that health care providers can easily tap into this flood of traffic. First, make some short videos on a regular basis. Digital marketers typically recommend that your videos are 3 minutes long or less. This is driven by research showing that 68% of people will watch a video if it’s under a minute long. However, the longer the video is, the less likely people are to watch the whole thing. Keeping your videos short also means you don’t have to spend as much time on them.
Also, make sure you’re being your authentic self in your videos. It’s not a good idea to blitz viewers with medical jargon. Such an approach is more likely to drive potential patients away than convince them to hear you out. Instead, consider being informal and chatty. Research shows that 83% of video viewers prefer that.
2. Focus on your local area.
Patients are willing to do some traveling for certain health and medical services. One research study found that the average adult was willing to drive for about 20 minutes for routine medical services. In distance terms, they were willing to travel slightly more than 20 miles from their home for those services.
Knowing this information can help medical providers more clearly establish what their local area actually is. Doing this also makes it easier to focus your digital marketing efforts on potential patients who are living in your local area.
3. Be authentic on social media.
Social media can offer significant benefits for health care providers, which is why a strong social media presence is typically advocated by digital marketing pros. A consistent posting schedule that covers relevant topics can help your practice build such a presence. Yet there is also an X-factor you should remain aware of: authenticity.
One of the biggest challenges in social media is being your authentic self and gaining people’s trust. For instance, a doctor might create an informative and engaging social media post only to have viewers say it doesn’t seem authentic. How could that be?
One possibility is that the physician was trying too hard to seem “professional.” This might include sitting rigidly and using a lot of medical jargon, and viewers can pick up on these cues and decide that you aren’t being authentic. Instead, try to talk to the camera the same way you would talk to a patient in person. You’re more likely to feel more confident and comfortable, which can help viewers recognize that you’re being authentic.
Keen to improve your digital health care marketing in 2022? BURG+CO. can help
Increasing traffic to your website plays a major role in increasing conversions and leading to new patients. However, it’s difficult to attract visitors to your site when you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, digital health care marketing is a specialty of our BURG+CO. team.
We have years of experience in helping health care providers improve their digital presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more visitors to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help. Contact our team today for more information about how we can help tell your story to potential patients or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
