You don’t need everything under the sun to create a successful healthcare marketing strategy. It’s not a game in which you need to use all the bells and whistles. Different vendors will need different tools – and your marketing budget will benefit from keeping away from the ones you don’t need.
Targeting Health Systems
There are only so many health systems in the world. If you specialize in a specific country or region, it is easy to find out exactly how many are in your target area. It’s not like selling shoes – you don’t need to wait for somebody who needs your boots to wander in your door. With healthcare, you can pretty easily find out exactly who the person you want to talk to is and how to reach them.
So, if that’s the case, why waste your marketing dollars scatter shooting across channels? A simple account-based marketing approach is going to bring you in far more revenue than, say, search engine optimization.
Targeting Distribution Channels
Of course, a lot depends on what it is you sell. If you provide an enterprise-level EHR, then you may need to reach out to hospital c-suites or department directors. But what if you sell a new triangle bandage? Or you manufacture procedure masks with cartoons on them for pediatrics?
In these cases, your best marketing option is to get listed with the top hospital supply distributors. One of my clients used this approach. They had an anti-nausea remedy that they first got listed in the distributors’ catalogs. They then began a campaign reaching out to nurses in key specialties – like oncology and maternity – to create brand recognition. From there, it was easy to say, “just order us through the distributor.”
Targeting Patients
For some healthcare vendors, the goal is not to reach the health system, it’s to reach the patient. For instance, let’s say you sell a sleep coaching system or your group is an expert in living with chronic illness.
In this situation, an account-based marketing strategy would fall flat – but an SEO or social strategy would work really well. Unlike other healthcare vendors, your target audience is quite likely to be searching online for more information about their problem, so it’s worth your while to optimize your content to appear high on Google and get shared on Facebook.
Be Selective
Not every healthcare vendor needs every marketing channel. Be selective and focus your energies on the approaches that make sense for your market. You really don’t need every marketing tool under the sun.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash.