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Importance of Marketing for Hospitals

Bala Adalarasan
2023-07-28

Healthcare is one of the few industries that will never run out of business. Even in 2898, people will get sick, and doctors will treat them. ChatGPT isn’t going to replace doctors.

The healthcare industry’s revenue is projected to reach ₹42.18 billion by the end of 2023. The industry is growing at a rate of 12.78% and is projected to reach ₹68.23 by 2027. 

As with every industry, there are some major players in the healthcare industry, like Apollo Hospitals, because they take advantage of hospital marketing. It is a tough time for small-time doctors since growing their practice has become very challenging due to the high competition. 

This brings us to our topic—the importance of marketing for hospitals in the modern world.

Marketing for Hospitals


The healthcare industry is blowing out of proportion after the pandemic. This might be the best time to be a doctor.

People have started visiting doctors for even minor coughs and colds. Even after that, some doctors still don’t get patients. People don’t know they exist. This is the biggest challenge most doctors face today.

Advertising for hospitals is the only way a doctor can overcome this challenge.

Doctors save people, and marketers save doctors.

Taking advantage of hospital marketing is a must in the contemporary world. Marketing allows you to stand apart from the competition.

Marketing helps you in the following ways:

1. Drive more patients to your clinic
2. Build your brand and become an industry leader
3. Improved patient engagement and retention

When it comes to marketing, there are two types: traditional marketing and digital marketing. 

Traditional marketing is your usual billboard ads, television ads, and radio ads, while the latter takes advantage of the digital platform.

Traditional marketing is a bit outdated, but it can still help. Your hospital branding strategy should contain both forms of marketing.

Digital Marketing for Hospitals


Digital marketing is your best bet to build a brand in the modern world. Around 5.18 billion people use the internet. This amounts to 64.6% of the total world population. 

Imagine the reach you can have through digital platforms.

Any marketing activity that uses digital media is considered digital marketing. SEO, PPC ads, link building, etc., are some examples of digital marketing strategies.

The best advantage of digital marketing is that it allows you to reach your target audience.

Doctors can use the best hospital marketing ideas to create brand awareness, generate traffic to their websites, create trust, establish themselves as industry leaders, and more.

Importance of Digital Marketing for Hospitals


Again, traditional marketing is old yet relevant. But digital marketing is much more important than traditional marketing. Digital marketing for doctors can achieve the desired result at a comparatively lower cost. Following are some of the reasons why digital marketing for hospitals is important:

Brand awareness
Improves patient acquisition and patient retention rates
Better online reputation
High SERP ranking
Creates trust among patients
Stand apart from the competition

Brand Awareness


Red. Now close your eyes and think of a soft drink. You probably thought about Coca-Cola. Coke is the master of brand awareness. They marketed their brand so much that even the red color makes you think of them.

That is what you should try to achieve. Brand awareness has three stages:

1. Awareness about your business name
2. Awareness about the services you offer
3. Awareness about your logo, i.e., people should recognize your logo

A study states that more than 59% of customers would prefer a brand they already know.

The following are 4 things you need to do to create your brand:

1. Be a person. Being a person rather than a company helps to achieve a personal connection with people
2. Be active on all social media and socialize with patients. When someone speaks about their symptoms, reply to them
3. Tell your story to the world. People love a good story, especially when it is relatable
4. Make your content easily shareable. More shares mean more people know about you

You can measure your brand awareness campaign’s success by conducting a survey among people.

Improves Patient Acquisition and Retention Rates


Patient acquisition is the process of acquiring new patients, and patient retention is the process of retaining old patients. Patient retention is as important as acquiring new patients.

Retaining more patients shows that your customers are happy with your work. 67% of patients find a new healthcare provider after a bad experience. 

The patient acquisition can be improved by following these strategies:

1. Run PPC ads
2. Have an SEO-friendly website that ranks on the first page
3. Create a strong online reputation by highlighting your positive reviews
4. Have a strong social media presence

Following these strategies will make your business attractive to people. Now coming to patient retention.

Follow these strategies to improve the patient retention rate:

1. More than any marketing strategy, making your patients happy is the best retention tool you have
2. Make the appointment process easier
3. Create new offers only for existing patients

Failing to retain patients can result in financial losses. But more than financial losses, it can hurt your reputation. This is another reason why advertising for hospitals is important.

Better Online Reputation


Would you buy the new budget Harley Davidson bike or a Suzuki for the same price? You would go for the Harley Davidson, right? Because it is a highly reputed brand.

People tend to buy from or use the services of reputable brands over brands with negative reputations. 

Having a good brand reputation can help you in the following ways:

1. It gets you more patients
2. Helps with creating brand awareness
3. Creates trust among people

There are more ways a good online reputation can help your business. I know the question you have in mind. How do you create a good online reputation? Don’t worry; that’s the next part.

Follow these strategies to build a good online reputation:

1. Ask your happy patients to leave a review
2. Post the positive reviews on your website
3. Reply to both positive and negative reviews. It shows that you care

Online reputation management is an important part of hospital marketing, especially because it helps create brand awareness and trust.

High SERP Ranking


Search Engine Results Page, shortly SERP, is the page that shows up when you search a term on the search engine. Ranking among the top results in Google’s SERP is crucial to generating leads or traffic. 

28.5% click on the first result, and only 15.7% click on the second result. See the difference between the first and second results? Now, guess the percentage of people that go to the second page of Google a whopping 0.63%. Read more about this here. 

You can improve your website’s ranking by partnering with the best digital marketing agency in Chennai. Digital marketing for doctors improves site rankings greatly. 

Creates Trust Among Patients


Trust is the foundation of the healthcare industry. A patient goes to a doctor only when they trust them 100%. Of course, trust is important in all industries, but it is especially important in the healthcare industry since patients’ lives depend on doctors’ services.

All the above-mentioned things that you achieved through advertising for hospitals help you build trust.

People tend to trust the first search result more than the second and third because, well, you are on top. And you have a good reputation and a high patient retention rate. I mean, what more could a patient ask for?

So, you don’t need separate strategies to create trust. Just focus on hospital branding, and you will gain patients’ trust soon enough.

Stand Apart from the Competition


As mentioned, you are not the only doctor. The competition in the healthcare field is fierce. People can just go to a doctor who has a clinic next door. So, it is the doctor’s responsibility to make people come to them.

Being unique is the best way to stand out from the competition. Make use of the following strategies to stand out in the competition:

1. Create educational content. Both Google and people value these types of content highly
2. Consistently engage with your targeted audience. Just like Elon Musk
3. Email marketing. Send emails to patients and subscribers frequently

Creative hospital marketing strategies help you be unique and make people remember you. So partner up with the best healthcare marketing agency in Chennai to stand out from the competition. 

Best Healthcare Marketing Strategies


Now, there are many digital marketing strategies available, but you don’t have to use all of them. One single strategy will not work for all industries. You need to use specific strategies.

Digital marketing for doctors has a set of marketing strategies that can drive the best results, which are:

On-Page SEO
Local SEO
PPC Ads
Link Building
Social Media Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Online Reputation Management

You can learn more about the best digital marketing approaches by speaking with digital marketing agencies that have experience advertising for hospitals.

Wrapping Things Up


You could be the best doctor, but still, no patient will come to you if they don’t know about you. Your skills matter, and so does marketing. Hospital marketing allows you to treat more people. This is the perfect time to start working on creating your brand and establishing yourself as an industry leader.  

Author

Bala Adalarasan
Bala Adalarasan
Founder, CEO

Bala Adalarasan is the Founder and CEO of Orange Digital Marketing with 13 years of Experience in Digital Marketing. He keeps up with modern technology with every aspect of the agency's operations. Writing about legal issues, technology, healthcare, and digital marketing is his favorite form of writing.

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