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Isn’t it true that in India and all the other parts of the world, entrepreneurs, businessmen, and governments are focusing on digitalizing their processes? The current COVID-19 pandemic has made us all realized that if only we adapt to the latest trends and business practices, we can still perform business activities in almost every situation. It is high time for the healthcare industry to accept these digital practices.
The healthcare industry in India is known to have a dynamic and progressive way of dealing with business management and expansion. Still, most healthcare institutions, mainly small and medium, prefer traditional marketing approaches in place of current and innovative ones. In this blog, we will be sharing how digital marketing is equally effective for the healthcare industry.
Digital marketing is a broad and ever-growing field, and which includes;
- Creating presence on Social Media account
- Website optimization
- Healthcare apps
- Blogs sharing
- Providing online consultation
It also seems to be an ever-changing field, as it is relatively young and more dynamic than other business functions, and even marketing. It will be not wise to believe that a hospital, clinic, or any other medical institution won’t be benefited from social media accounts, google ADs, or other such digital marketing tools.
If anything we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that people/consumers don’t shy away from spending too much time online, they rarely get bored with it. This current habit of consumers will also make them search and research treatments/hospitals online. Even before the pandemic, this was very common in developed parts of the world and was being accepted by Indian treatment seekers.
Changing Aspects Of Healthcare Industry
- Consumers Are Researching Healthcare Services Online
With modern times, consumers have all the tools to research almost all the products and services they consume. Pandemic gave and also forced consumers to research the products and services they consume, which means that they now surely know more about brands dealing in those products than earlier. Another aspect of this phenomenon is product reviews and word of mouth. What consumers learn about the product or brand online, they share the shame.
Treatment seekers today, with all the access to the internet and awareness, research about the treatment, and best hospitals/doctors in their area; the experience, the review, the pricing, and more. Researching this online is far better than personally visiting different hospitals and knowing about them. While researching online, treatment seekers tend to judge a particular institution from its website’s content, website design, posts on social media, patient reviews, and many more secondary aspects too. Digital marketing is all about establishing your digital presence and positivity around it.
- Digital Marketing is efficient when Compared With Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing today is more costly and proves to be relatively ineffective when compared with digital marketing. Not every healthcare player has a large budget to spend on hoarding, TV commercials, regular radio commercials, and PRs. The affordable methods like print media tools magazines, pamphlets, and more have been turning ineffective, and consumers are avoiding them. On the other hand, digital brochures, magazines, and other materials are being highly consumed and preferred by the consumers. They also have a paperless and environment-saving factor to them.
Creating and growing social media accounts with a high following is easier, less costly, and more productive by following this:
- Social Media enables consumers and potential consumers to act as influencers for the organization, and followers also have the option of high engagement.
- Give a virtual tour of a healthcare organization’s facility on live stream or Google Maps is also a viable and distinct promotional option.
- Today Google is a primary place where people search for symptoms, diseases, cure, and doctors. If you have a strong presence on Google, at least in your locality/city, you’ll benefit more than most of the advertisements.
- Digital Marketers Target Healthcare Consumers Directly
As per the new trend now Digital Marketers have started searching for healthcare specialists. The main customers of healthcare products are healthcare providers and not treatment seekers. A hospital, center, or clinic will buy more healthcare products or services than any individual. If there’s a doctor’s approval, healthcare products will be consumed as per the patient’s choice. This means if healthcare marketers start building their brand in consumers/patients, then their customers (hospitals/clinics/centers) will be automatically attracted to them.
The second side of this point is target marketing. It means delivering to a niche market. There are not many multispeciality hospitals in every city. Their collective market might be huge, but a treatment seeker will visit them based on the information he/she gets as per the treatment they seek. The targeted ADs for individual services result in higher consumers’ responses and engagement. While in the case of specialized hospitals, they can appropriately approach the niche market they are working for and target them effectively.
- Social Media Highly Influences Consumers
Today social media is the platform that connects most individuals, and brands can find a more significant number of consumers there. If your organization has several posts and high engagement, people are very likely to follow you and trust you as a brand. Apart from this, followers on social media also tend to be loyal if useful, informative, and reliable content is posted. Overall it is easy to convert these loyal followers into loyal customers.
Social media influences people and their decision making like anything. A good healthcare provider can enjoy these benefits by posting about itself, its accomplishments, its treatment, and the various information regarding their service area. Healthcare Professionals have started sharing informative content on social media, so their customers can get something beneficial everyday. Which is again a technique to maintain engagement.
The excellent product, services, or treatment the healthcare organizations have for the world will be marketed through social media, so more and more people can know about it and connect with it. Digital marketers will help you form the best strategy for your marketing goals and execute them for you.
These are among the primary and most beneficial advantages for the healthcare industry in digital marketing. A healthcare organization should understand that every digital marketing firm has a different way of working, and they should select the one which can provide the best to them. Digital marketing is the future and an ever-growing and expanding field. The healthcare industry shouldn’t be the one to be away from benefiting from its advantages.
Let’s see Scenario of Healthcare Industry In India
The healthcare industry of India, as well as around the world, is always on its toes with continuous discoveries of new diseases, disorders, and more. The healthcare providers have understood the need for outside counseling to be on terms with the industry changes and how to implement those changes profitably. One such aspect is digital marketing. Today many digital marketing firms have specialized their services in the healthcare sector to attract targeted treatment seekers. Digital marketers assist healthcare institutions in developing/bettering their websites & apps, building/increasing social media presence, increasing the traffic on their all online portals & platforms, and several other aspects that lead to increased brand awareness and loyalty.