Your health care practice is determined to do a better job of marketing health care to women. And that’s a noble goal. However, it’s not as easy as it first appears, especially if you don’t have much health care marketing experience.

Fortunately, there are tips you can use to improve how you’re marketing your services and practice to potential female clients.

Why improving your practice’s health care marketing to women is smart

Working to improve how and how well your practice is marketing its health care services to women is a smart goal.

Firstly, women have often been the target of clumsy and unhelpful marketing from health care providers. That’s likely one of the reasons that the Women’s Choice Award Female Powerhouse Survey (FPS) found that health care marketing is one of the top three industries doing the worst job of meeting women’s needs.

Secondly, women often make health care decisions for both themselves and others. The FPS also reports that women make 90% of household health care decisions. As a result, creating marketing that provides value for women can lead to significant patient growth.

10 tips for improving your practice’s health care marketing to women

So, you’re ready to start improving the way your health care practice markets to potential female patients. That’s great. But you may not know how to kick off this process. Here are 10 tips that can help you begin making improvements to your female-targeted health care marketing efforts:

1. Ditch the pink — Can we all agree that the societal trope of women loving pink is grossly inaccurate? In the past, many marketers made a show of appealing to women by using the color pink and other colors thought to appeal to women in their marketing campaign visuals. However, it’s important to realize that pink is not a marketing tool, especially today. Women are no more likely to respond positively to pink or any other color than any other person. Some will like it. Some won’t care about it. Some will hate it. Thus, just work on making your marketing materials appealing generally without focusing on certain colors or color palettes.
2. Be authentic — Inauthentic content and marketing campaigns are definitely something that women have endured before. The evidence is clear in the fact that 66% of women feel misunderstood by health care marketers. Your practice can avoid coming across as inauthentic when marketing to women by taking one simple step: Talk to female patients and learn what they value in the health care space and what their challenges are. Then, you can use their insights to reach out to other women about things that they truly care about.
3. Don’t market to a stereotypical woman — Making stereotypes in marketing has never been a good idea. On the contrary, it’s led to some pretty ridiculous and cringeworthy campaigns resurfacing for laughs over the years. Yet somehow when it comes to marketing for women, most health care organizations assume that women fall into the category of heterosexual females who largely fall into two categories: focusing on family and looking “attractive” (as subjective as that is).But what about the young woman who has no interest in having a family and simply wants to be healthy because she just wants to be healthy? Or the single woman who is at retirement age and wants to be healthy so she can travel the world? If health care organizations genuinely want to market better to women, they have to be representative of more than just two possible lifestyle goals for women. This is much easier to do if you’re using the step laid out in Tip #2.
4. Be good on mobile — Women are busy, just like so many of us. That means that many of them use multiple mobile devices throughout the day. In fact, research shows that more than 60% of women own two or more mobile devices and use them daily. This high use of mobile devices is an opportunity for health care marketers to reach more women with mobile-friendly sites and content. But woe to you if your site and content aren’t mobile friendly.
5. Treat them as people first and women second — There are some health care topics that seem inherently gendered (e.g., gynecologists). But even with these topics, it’s vital to focus on marketing treatments and services that offer women value as people first. Make your message more focused on lifestyle and goals than gender.
6. Appeal to women as active individuals — The passive woman stereotype still rears its head in marketing campaigns and content even today. Don’t fall into the passive woman stereotype in your marketing. Show women making active health care decisions in your content and images. This is not only a less stereotypical view of women, it’s also more likely to appeal to a broader range of potential female patients.
7. Use testimonials — People generally rely on word of mouth to make buying decisions, and women are no different. A survey by WomenCertified Inc. found that 65% of women said customer reviews and star ratings were “very valuable” when choosing a health care provider. That’s why adding testimonials in multiple places on your site and in your marketing materials can be helpful.It’s also important that your practice has reviews available on other sites, since 58% of women look at health care provider reviews from at least two to five different sources. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure you have at least 30 reviews on your site and on other review sites — 77% of women said this was the number they would look at before deciding to make a doctor’s appointment.
8. Highlight flexible care options — Women are often juggling careers, social lives, family lives and much more. As a result they’re likely to appreciate any health care providers that offer specific flexible services, such as online care. Thus, you should be sure to promote flexible or online care options when you’re marketing to women. One effective way to promote such services is to specifically show how they can benefit people with hectic schedules.
9. Go beyond female-specific conditions/issues — Marketers and their health care provider clients often want to promote specific conditions and even body parts when marketing to women. For instance, many physical therapy practices offer pelvic floor rehabilitation, and they often target women when marketing this service. However, these same practices may not market other common conditions that women may be dealing with, such as arthritis or lower back pain, to women.You don’t have to guess which conditions, aches and pains your potential female patients are suffering from. You can ask them via an online survey. Doing so allows you to be targeted about the conditions you’re marketing to women. It also helps you avoid marketing conditions that are “female specific” unless your survey shows they’re actually a problem for your potential patients.
10. Include women on marketing teams — One of the most valuable ways to market health care to women more effectively is to have women on your health care marketing team. You do want to avoid assuming that your female marketers are the last word in marketing anything to women. However, they can be a valuable resource for creating health care marketing campaigns and materials that are authentic and designed to meet the needs of a specific practice’s potential patients.

BURG+CO. is a women-owned & women-led digital marketing agency

At BURG+CO. Marketing, we’re proud of the fact that our company is women owned and women led. Our team was founded by CEO Kelly Burgess and COO Haley Burgess, and our main goal for clients has always been and continues to be to increase traffic to their websites, increase conversions, and bring in new clients.

However, we also know that it’s difficult to meet these goals as a health care provider when you don’t know which digital marketing tools can help you. Fortunately, this is what we specialize in at BURG+CO.

Our team has years of experience in helping health care practices improve their digital presence, attract new patients and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more potential patients to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help. Contact our team today for more information about the health care marketing services we offer or to schedule a complimentary consultation.