In 2020, a lot of companies have started witnessing a shift in the area of digital marketing. And this is the reason why organizations need to move at a very fast pace to keep up with the speed at which new trends in digital marketing are coming up.
 

Talking about the new trends in digital marketing, healthcare organizations can not be left out. In Fact, research shows that 77 percent of health seekers use search engines for medical-related information.

Hospitals and healthcare organizations will have to stay one step ahead to keep up with both competitors and patient needs. To make this happen, the healthcare sectors must entirely restructure their approach to success and update their strategy to the current marketing trends to have more customers. 

35 percent of U.S. adults say that at one time or another they have gone online specifically to try to figure out what medical condition they, or someone else might have. 

Patients are demanding better services to improve the quality of their lives. As a result, many options for care have appeared and competition is coming up in many healthcare markets. There is a need for healthcare service providers to consider new marketing trends to have a better outcome.

  Below, therefore, are 5 significant digital trends to consider for hospitals and healthcare services as we continue on in 2020 

1. Online Review Is One Of The Top Ranking Factor On Google 

According to SearchEngineLand, “85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.” A study also shows that it only takes 1-6 online reviews for 68% of potential patients to form an opinion about your practice. This means generating positive online reviews is essential to making a solid first impression and converting those people into patients.  

Customers firstly turn to online resources to read reviews and research the overall reputation of the practice and providers.

Branding is not what you tell your customers, it’s what they tell each other about you. Enhance patient care, and they are, definitely, going to remember you for a long time. Give them care and attention and they will speak for you. Nothing works better than a better review from your customers about your organization.

2. Medical SEO

To maintain profitability as a health agency, your medical institution needs to bring in new patients more often — and that means you need a working and SEO friendly website.

Having a website does not only gives you online presence, but also allows you to attend to patients through your blog, email, or any available online forum.

You also need to list your hospital or organization’s accurate addresses, phone numbers, and hours of operation, correctly and consistently on reliable online business directories – and upload your details on Google My Business and Bing Places for Business.

When your potential patient searches for best healthcare practice you want your hospital’s website to pop up on the first page on google? That is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does. And that is the reason you must use a reliable and reputable Medical SEO consultant.

Get your web developer and content editor to focus on SEO keywords. Hire a professional SEO expert; you do not need a full-time employee on your payroll for this. Just provide useful topnotch content on different health advice and your website is ready to bring in more customers.

3. Video Marketing

Video goes a long way when it comes to fostering patient engagement and building trust. Research reveals found out that video content attracts two to three times monthly visitors than reading content and also double the time visitors spend on the website.

In Fact, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, processing more than three billion searches per month. Moreso, 75 million people visit Facebook’s video platform to stream over 8 billion videos each day. It is a very good idea if your medical organization can have a YouTube channel or other video platform that contains good information on health-related issues.

Videos allow hospitals to share patient success stories, ask questions from their surgeons and physicians, and provide an image of the care experience in action. It can also help reduce the “intimidation factor” that many patients feel when researching a hospital, decreasing the fear and anxiety associated with the medical environment.

By 2021, video is expected to represent 82 percent of all IP traffic, which amounts to a million minutes of video transmitted through networks every second.

4. Mobile-Friendly Website And Email Marketing

It is not enough for a healthcare organization to have a website, you must have a website that is easily accessible if you want your organization’s marketing effort to be successful.

What exactly makes a mobile-friendly website? First and foremost, it’s a site that is easy to view on screens and devices of all sizes – and this usually means it has a “responsive” design that repositions images and text according to the type of screen on which it’s displayed.

In fact, to know how important this can be for your organization, research shows that 70 percent of global internet traffic comes from mobile phones and devices. Mobile-optimized emails should be designed similarly, with responsive layouts and high-quality images that stand out on screens of all sizes.

5. Voice Search

Voice search is becoming an effective game-changer in the world of digital marketing.

According to a study, 71% of all mobile users between the ages of 18 and 29 use voice assistants on their smartphones. Therefore, it would be a great opportunity for medical care organizations to optimize their sites for voice search with long-tail keywords as it is critical to their SEO success.

With voice search on the rise, it’s important to keep up with the stats so that you’re prepared for how these advancements will change the healthcare industry. Here are some of the major voice search statistics you need to know as an organization.

60% of people use voice search at home, while 57.8% of people use voice search on their smartphones (Stone Temple, 2017).

Voice search improves the user experience of search engines - by being faster and more convenient - and provides more accurate results.

Conclusion

With a lot being said, healthcare marketers must look to new technological and digital innovations to improve efficiency and deploy effective, multi-channel campaigns that reach the right people at exactly the right time.

Thanks for reading …