Having solid healthcare marketing tactics and strategies go beyond your marketing plan; they are an investment that can do wonders for your business in both the short term and long haul, especially when it comes to patient retention and volume growth.

Here are four tips that will help you define an exceptional healthcare marketing plan

Tip#1: Have a clearly defined product roadmap for your healthcare company’s website

You’d be forgiven for thinking having a website and slapping on a few pages is sufficient to make an impression on potential patients and improve your brand visibility.

That’s not enough to offer a worthwhile patient online experience. Given that your website is your online front door, be sure to go above and beyond to wow prospective patients. For more details on what to do and what not to do when it comes down to your healthcare website.

As mentioned in the above, here are the basic principles every healthcare website should abide by:

•  Your website design should be user-friendly, easy-to-navigate, and highly responsive.
•  Get a handle on your site speeds: with every second delay while your site loading, you’ll lose 20% of visitors
• Clearly indicate your services, location, and business contact. As a rule of thumb, your site visitors should be able to see this info within 5-10 seconds.
• Quick to help: Most patients visit your online channels to get help, and find answers. Ensure that your FAQ page is rich and information. Your Contact Us page should be higher on the page, and not buried in the clutter. Include a live chat functionality that’s attended to 24/7.

Tip #2: Have a well documented SEO strategy to be found online 

In the digital age, you’re going up against both small and big healthcare players, which makes it hard for business to get found online. That’s where search engine optimization comes into play. SEO is a fantastic tool for getting your healthcare business to the first page of search engine search results (SERPs).

The right SEO strategy is more than keywords. You have to use your keywords naturally in your web content because search engine crawlers care about readability and value for the reader. Generating awesome content, mobile-ready website architecture, link-building, and backlinks are some of SEO best practices that you need to consider.

Tip #3: A robust social media strategy for your healthcare business 

Social media should be at the core of your healthcare marketing strategy.

The chances are that you’re using platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to interact with your patients and build your reputation. You need to kick it up a notch by leveraging paid social media ads and tools to get your brand in front of your target audience.

More importantly, you should have a healthcare social media strategy in place, and as a crucial element of your healthcare marketing plan.

Tip #4: A strategy to get feedback from your patients 

Patients provide you with feedback, both bad and good, through a diversity of channels, from your social media pages to in-house suggestion boxes.

As part of your marketing strategy, you should set up an avenue for following up with patient feedback. This way, you can showcase to your patients that you care about their two cents, and willing to take action based on their feedback.

More importantly, take inspiration to how the most popular mobile apps in the world today leverage product feedback. When users leave negative reviews in the App Store, an app owner has the option to reply with comments to those negative comments. Many apps have successfully improved their products and gotten customers back by simply reporting back when an issue is fixed.

Tangible example: let’s say some mobile users complain that a specific app is crashing often or it is too slow. After the issue has been fixed, many apps would publish an app update mentioning how the performance issues were fixed, retested and the app has been redeployed.

The same principle applies to healthcare marketing. And to your plan. You need to assume, right off the bat, that there will be some issues with customer experience, waiting times, delivery of medical care and more.

And you must make it a priority – and a documented item on your marketing plan – that any time there is feedback from your customers, that feedback will be collected and analyzed. More importantly, your job as a marketer for a healthcare company, it is your job to try to persuade the company to make changes and to improve the customer experience. And after that happens – you need to go back to the people who left you feedback and report on how your company has leveraged that feedback to improve its processes, train its staff and more.

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