Why You Need Online and Mobile Marketing for Your Healthcare Business
If you’re a doctor running your own practice, an emergency health clinic, a specialist, a hospital director, or you’re involved in any way in the healthcare industry, you may not think that online marketing and mobile advertising are terribly necessary for your success. After all, people are always going to get sick, break bones, look for dieting help, and need prescriptions, right? While that part is true, the fact is that most people look for healthcare solutions online, and if you’re not participating in ways that will allow them to find you and your business, the harsh truth is they’ll simply go somewhere else.
In a Google Partners presentation speaking to this issue specifically, we learned that nowadays, 1 in 20 searches online are health related. One in 20! When you consider just how many searches people do online everyday, that’s an astronomical portion of searches dedicated to one subject. If you’re not spending any time on marketing yourself online, you’re losing out on so much potential traffic and business that it would be near impossible to quantify it. To reach the customers that you’re after, you need to work on things like mobile advertising, local SEO, and other ways to attract viewers.
If it seems like this happened overnight, you’re not entirely incorrect. Just five years ago, in 2011, people spent twice as much time as they do now watching TV. Now, that time is spent online, on their computers or mobile devices. To better prepare you for what’s now required of you, let’s learn some more about the shift in the way people are looking for and learning about healthcare solutions as well as their own personal health.
More and More, People Consult the Internet First for Healthcare Issues
Nowadays, if people have a few symptoms, before they call a doctor or go to a drugstore for medicine, they’ll check sites like WebMD to find out if the health problem merits a visit to the doctor’s office. In fact, 43 percent of people go to the Internet for health queries first, and that number is rising rapidly. It’s gone up roughly 7 percent each year, so as time goes on, even more people will go to the internet for their initial research or questions.
What Are People Searching and How Do They Narrow Down Their Research?
Now that you know that 5 percent of all Internet searches have to do with health-related topics, it’s beneficial to learn about what sort of subjects people are looking to learn about. There are 156 million people online in need of a health solution, and there are 20 different search paths that make up roughly 65 percent of all consumer searches related to healthcare. If you’re not marketing online at all for your healthcare services or business, you could be missing out on a lot of traffic. Ninety percent of searches start out as non-branded searches — things like a symptom causing a problem, where to get help, certain types of products (such as vitamins), etc. Before, the process for learning about a health issue started with a stimulus — the problem arising/a person getting sick or injured — and continued to what is called the First Moment of Truth (FMOT). The FMOT was the step during which people would get a recommendation from a friend or loved one about what to do. From there, they’d make a choice about how to proceed.
Now, however, we have what is called the Zero Moment of Truth. After there’s a stimulus, instead of calling someone up for a personal recommendation, people will head to their computers or mobile devices for a recommendation. Additionally, instead of a “recommendation,” they look for answers and advice. Their searching is a springboard toward what they’ll do next.
So What DO They Do Next?
With 80 percent of people searching for healthier lifestyle information at some time or another, it’s up to you to find the best ways to capitalize on that. For instance, the importance of using online video marketing is huge. People want to look up first the health benefit overview of something, then the product information (if they’re researching a product, and finally, a consumer review of what they’re considering buying. Creating video content about things that your patients or customers are searching for can encourage longer site visits and a higher conversion rate, whether that means buying your product or booking an appointment.
According to Google, people searching health issues need to peruse 15.3 resources before they take any real action, like booking a doctor appointment. Those resources could be text-based pages, video content, advertisements with photos, customer testimonials, or other marketing materials. As people move closer to buying a product. Remember, 90 percent of searches about health issues start out non-branded — their searches begin to slant more toward branded searching — about ten to 16 percent of searches, to be precise. By the time people are ready to make a purchase, 48 percent of them have started using branded searching.
In other words, you need to promote your business or brand in such a way that your potential clients will know how to search for you. Including branding in your marketing content is, of course, one step, but you’ll also want to diversify the way you market yourself. Posting retargeting ads, display adds, pay-per-click ads, and more are all ways to effectively promote your business. While some medical professionals may see this as more relevant to consumer-facing industries, online marketing for the healthcare industry may present a huge opportunity for business growth.
