Three Reminders Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Healthcare Marketing

Most businesses were not prepared for managing healthcare marketing in the midst of a global pandemic. Although this type of challenge was predicted to impact the medical industry, the sudden onslaught has left many business owners scrambling to put together a plan. For many, COVID-19 has reinforced three very important elements in the world of healthcare marketing:

1. 1. Patient-centric customer journey

   2. Flexible planning

   3. Access to a data-driven marketing platform

The coronavirus is unlikely to be the last curveball that the healthcare industry experiences in the near future. Moving forward, business owners can prepare themselves by zeroing in on these three critical factors of healthcare marketing.

Invest in Data-Driven Marketing

Professionals in the healthcare industry rely on data to make decisions, and so do experienced healthcare marketing agencies like Quaintise. With the right data, we can determine where your business is coming from and which marketing efforts are driving the most conversions. This information allows you to make the necessary changes to survive or even thrive when times are particularly challenging.

Your business needs a flexible healthcare marketing plan in order to adapt. This plan must include an in-depth persona profile that will guide your content and marketing efforts forward. For that reason, investing in a data-driven marketing platform is critical if you want to be a leader in the healthcare industry.

Investing in technology can be expensive and time-consuming, often requiring months of training, onboarding, and data migration before your marketing efforts can even get started. If your business has suffered due to COVID-19 and you need results STAT, we recommend you partner with Quaintise to enjoy the benefits of data-driven marketing in a matter of weeks rather than months.

Here at Quaintise, we use AgencyAnalytics to help our healthcare clients make informed business and marketing decisions. AgencyAnalytics allows us to integrate all of your SEO, PPC, social, email, review, and call tracking metrics in one place. Integration is easy and the reports are easy to understand, allowing us to hit the ground running with your marketing efforts for a fast and profitable turnaround. When all of your marketing efforts communicate in tandem, we’re able to review inefficiencies and guide profitable efforts.

When Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles contacted Quaintise to develop a paid advertising strategy, we began by taking over their Facebook advertising platform. The goal was to increase KCLA’s overall monthly leads and convert those leads into patients. We developed a tiered awareness and retargeting campaign that drove several new leads. The ads themselves were performing well, but the platform wasn’t producing a high number of conversions . After analyzing their organic traffic and on-site conversion rate, we recommended shifting the campaign budget from Facebook ads to Google SEM. In the first month of launching our new SEM campaign, we increased the conversion rate by nearly 25%. Quaintise was able to make campaign strategy recommendations based on our analytics, and KCLA saw an increase in business during COVID-19 as a result.  

ACTIONABLE TIP: If you’re tired of manual spreadsheet tracking and piecing together several platform reports, contact the marketing experts at Quaintise. We’ll utilize our AgencyAnalytics partnership to recommend informed, data-driven marketing decisions to help guide you in the right direction during these tough times.

Patient-Centric Customer Journey

Healthcare has become more consumer-focused than ever in light of the pandemic. Though federal, state, and local regulations may dictate how and when you operate, consumers have increased awareness and access to tools which influence their healthcare decisions. This means you must meet consumers where they are, addressing their concerns and fears when they begin to resume their customer journey.

Thanks to technological innovations supported by a digital-first audience, healthcare organizations are changing the way they engage with their current and prospective patients. Traditionally, healthcare businesses focus on acquiring or re-engaging patients for a specific service. However, experienced healthcare marketing agencies recognize the importance of connecting with consumers well before they ever become patients—from the start of their need-based research through the delivery of care and beyond. This patient-centric customer journey stands the test of time by growing and evolving with the consumer. As platforms, technology, and trends come and go, providing your patients with a relevant and personalized experience will get you through tough times.

ACTIONABLE TIP: Revisit your buyer personas to assess your messaging and targeted efforts. Personas will likely need to be updated in the wake of COVID-19 as fears, interests, and communication preferences have evolved to reflect the current times.  

Have a Flexible Healthcare Marketing Plan

Business has been anything but usual in recent months. However, brands that had a well-defined plan before the pandemic hit have been able to adapt on the fly to avoid major loss. Having an adaptable and flexible marketing plan allows brands to quickly re-evaluate marketing efforts, ensuring time and money is spent on strategies which produce the highest return. Many businesses that lacked a cohesive strategy have had to cease all marketing efforts, losing potential business and making it harder to restart later on.

In particular, the importance of having a telehealth marketing plan has become increasingly apparent due to COVID-19. Though telehealth is not new, many healthcare organizations were not set up to provide these services before the pandemic struck. As a result, healthcare professionals had to quickly re-evaluate their healthcare services to include things like virtual check-ins and remote diagnoses/consultations in order to survive our current reality. Business owners had to rush to figure out not only the technology required to offer these services, but how to market them to their patients. Without a flexible marketing plan, many brands will have to work harder and play catchup during and after the pandemic.

ACTIONABLE TIP: Analyze your current marketing efforts. Where is the majority of your time going? Where is the majority of your spend going? What is driving the most goals/conversions? Based on what you find, consider scaling back any marketing strategies which are costly, time-consuming, or producing a low ROI.

Quaintise can review, recommend, and implement the changes necessary for healthcare businesses to survive during this pandemic and beyond. Contact us today to learn more.