Digital Marketing Strategies for Hospitals in India
Keeping up with the modern trends in technology, most businesses, including hospitals, are focusing on their marketing efforts in the digital space.
As of June 2018, the number of Internet users in India rose to 50 crores!
This means that most of your hospital’s patients and potential patient’s can be reached and communicated with, effectively on the internet.
And the best part is that you have so much control over your marketing efforts via Digital Marketing.
Luckily, there are proven digital marketing strategies that really work today, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
That being said let’s dive straight into what marketing strategies work best for Hospitals today on the Internet.
Hospital Website
A fully functional website is vital to a hospital’s digital presence. Not only is this a chance to showcase your hospital’s services and facilities, and this is also a chance to write a little about the top doctors and professionals from your hospital.
The more information you can give patients about your hospital, the more comfortable they feel in using your hospital services.
It is also very important to have a very responsive website, that loads quickly, and most importantly, your website should be mobile optimised.
As most internet users today use the internet via their mobile phones.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEO and SEM do the same thing, ensure that your hospital shows up first in the list of Google search results!
SEO involves optimising your website and keywords so that your website ranks high when a relevant query is searched on Google.
SEM involves paying to rank first for a search query.
SEO is a free strategy, but it takes time to rank, and ranking depends on many factors.
SEM is a paid advertisement, with immediate results.
In the healthcare sector, both SEM and SEO are really important!
It is important that your hospital ranks first for service based keyword searches on Google, as patients are often searching for more information regarding a certain procedure.
For example, if you are an eye-hospital you want your Hospital to rank first on google for any queries regarding “LASIK eye surgery”.
Also ensure your hospital is ranking first for patients living nearby, only to patients from areas you believe would travel to your hospital.
Content Marketing
A significant part of your digital marketing efforts should focus on content marketing.
Content marketing helps in building trust and provides a lot of free value to a consumer.
People on the internet today are always on the lookout for information. Once your hospital’s piece of content is found and consumed by someone on the internet, it really helps your hospital establish authority on the topic.
Content marketing also helps in SEO.
Hospitals have the ability to talk about a wide range of health topics that a consumer will find helpful, and the best part is that hospitals have access to the best doctors in the field, who can write content.
Content need not always take the form of blogs or articles, it can be colourful fun infographics or even a video.
Videos work well as videos are known to have the highest engagement on the internet.
Social Media
Some of the best hospitals in the world, have their social media strategies done right.
A significant chunk of the time someone spends on the internet is spent on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.
So this is one of the best ways to engage and communicate with users on the internet, by creating engaging posts and offering a chance for people to share their views.
A good practice is to combine social media with content marketing.
Hospitals can use the social media platform to share content regarding health issues or health tips that social media users can find very useful.
The main purpose of such content is to educate.
So as you can see each of the tactics mentioned above has a purpose, whether it is to acquire a patient who is looking for medical attention, or whether it is building brand awareness and trust.
We cannot state enough about the importance of trust, especially if you are a new hospital.
If you are looking to outsource your digital marketing efforts for your hospital, to increase brand awareness and patient acquisition, you can contact Alt-er Marketing Agency here.
We have trained professionals in Web Development, SEO/SEM, Social Media Handling, Social Media Advertising, and Content Writing.
For a FREE strategy session, you can contact us here!