Practice Marketing : Selling health-related products is becoming more common in fields such as dentistry, dermatology, and even family medicine. Although the majority of healthcare practices that sell products have mastered the art of practice management and marketing, far fewer have had success marketing their products online.
In this post, we will discuss a few digital marketing strategies that healthcare practices should consider using to promote health-related products, as well as the reasoning behind why these healthcare marketing strategies are effective at driving interest and sales.
1. Invest in paid search advertising.
Paid search advertising is a type of digital marketing in which ads for search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are purchased. Google AdWords is the most popular paid search platform, owing to Google accounting for nearly 93 percent of all search engine traffic, according to statcounter.
There are several reasons why paid search advertising for health-related products should be considered. For starters, your practice has an equal chance of ranking for highly competitive keywords. This is in contrast to organic rankings, which consider factors such as site traffic and mobile friendliness. The highest bidder always takes the top spot in paid search advertising.
Another reason to consider this type of digital marketing is that paid search ads avoid the waiting period that often comes with achieving a high organic ranking, resulting in instant visibility. Better visibility means more clicks on your product, more traffic to your healthcare website, and possibly more product sales.
The ability to target your ideal patients is a third reason to consider paid search advertising. For example, in Google Adwords, you can target demographics such as gender, age, and household income. You can also exclude demographics if you know certain audiences would be uninterested in a product.
2. Write blog posts about your products.
Blogging is a digital marketing tactic that has been shown to increase organic search rankings and traffic to healthcare websites over time. This is because search engines like Google crawl websites on a regular basis looking for new content.
When you publish blog posts about your products, search engines deduce that your practice is an authority on those products and are more likely to direct searchers to your site. According to HubSpot, small businesses with blogs grow their leads by 126% more than small businesses without blogs.
Furthermore, blogging as part of your online marketing strategy can help position your healthcare practice as the go-to place in your area for specific products. Blogging also allows you to go into greater detail about your products, which you may not be able to do on a product page on your healthcare website. Furthermore, blog posts allow you to provide a unique perspective on products, whether through a product review or comparison.
3. Use social media to discuss products.
For physicians and other healthcare practitioners looking to promote out-of-pocket products, social media is an excellent digital marketing platform. One reason for this is that social media is widely used and frequently accessed. According to Pew Research Center, 81% of U.S. adults use YouTube, 69% use Facebook, and 40% use Instagram. At least 54% of YouTube users, 70% of Facebook users, and 59% of Instagram users visit the sites at least once per day.
People are also interested in what healthcare experts and practices have to say, which is another reason to use social media for healthcare marketing.
According to an American Osteopathic Association survey, two out of every five adults are already or would like to follow their healthcare providers on social media. According to another survey, 60% of social media users trust their doctor’s posts more than other sources.
Invest in sponsored content to ensure that people see your product posts. Sponsored content, like paid search advertising, allows you to target highly specific audiences. For example, on Facebook, you can specify demographics such as gender, age, and location, as well as interests and behaviors. According to Sprout Social, 65% of people who interact with a social media advertisement will click through to learn more about the subject.
4. Send promotional emails to patients
Although many healthcare practices are solely concerned with attracting new patients, marketing to current patients is also beneficial because once a patient has interacted with your practice without incident, the likelihood of them returning and spreading the word about your practice increases. Maintain contact with patients to keep them coming back.
Email marketing is a tried-and-true digital marketing strategy for encouraging patients to make their first, second, and third purchases (and so on). According to this survey, 97 percent of email users check their inboxes every day, so you have plenty of chances to reach out to your patients.
For selling health-related products, display signage and other in-office promotions will always be important. However, if you want to reach people other than those who come into your office, you must engage in digital marketing. Begin implementing these strategies right away to see how they affect product sales.
