Check out our Top Digital Marketing Trends in Healthcare in 2016 infographic that highlights the trends we see coming, and read this post for more information on where to focus your time and resources in 2016.

Consumerism

It’s no secret that the relationship between patients and their healthcare providers is changing. Minute Clinic, millennials, Dr. Google, online lab ordering, and telemedicine options are becoming more popular and are driving much of the conversation in healthcare. Driven by approaches such as the Triple Aim as well as changing incentives, healthcare providers are increasingly focused on improving health at the population level. At the same time, top consumer brands such as Starbucks and Amazon have raised the bar with their loyalty programs.

Transparency

Consumers are demanding more from organizations and brands. Healthcare is no exception and this year will see a continued rise of transparency-focused initiatives from hospitals and health systems.

Ubiquitous Search

Search has taken on a new life — and it is everywhere. From OS-integrated searching to virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa, your data is being used in more ways than ever. While Google is still critical to being found, there are numerous other points to consider in the way your organization is discovered.

Email Automation

Many sources are indicating that 2016 will be the year of email automation and greater levels of personalization. We’re seeing that trend in healthcare as well. Gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all monthly newsletter. Savvy healthcare marketers are creating tailored email experiences designed to maintain engagement with healthcare consumers during critical decisions.

Content Marketing

Not a new concept, but healthcare marketers are reinvigorating their efforts and reimagining what a branded content hub means for their organization. Early forays into blogs and online magazines are taking a new turn. While some are headed toward Buzzfeed-style articles with attention-grabbing headlines, others are refining the approach. The next generation of healthcare content marketing promises to be more evolved, more audience-oriented, and less navel-gazing than ever.

Disruptive Innovation

With all of this disruption in the healthcare industry, we’re seeing increased focus on new kinds of innovation. Incremental improvement is no longer enough. Leading organizations are borrowing methodologies from startups — design thinking, minimal viable products, business model innovation — to be part of the disruption. Watch for new ideas and startups to grow from within the walls of healthcare organizations across the nation.

Check out the Top Trends infographic!

Want to learn more or share some of the trends with your colleagues? Check out the infographic below.

Attend this webinar to learn what digital marketing trends are making a big impact this year, so that you’ll be prepared to respond. We’ll highlight changes we’re seeing in how hospitals and health systems are positioning their organizations online. We’ll address trends in the areas of content, design and social media. And we’ll show you different ways to tell your story online.

The Midwest was experiencing some unusual weather, which included 9 tornadoes reported in Geonetric’s home state of Iowa. This put our travel plans into a tailspin, with dozens of delays, cancellations, and scary flights.

As I reflected on this experience, and all the interactions I had with our airline representatives both on the phone, on the web and in person, I realized that the things I expect as a healthcare consumer – the things healthcare marketers must do – are really no different than the things I expect as a traveler.

In both instances, when you’re potentially overwhelmed, scared and a bit weary from navigating a system, it helps if you can keep these points in mind in your communications:

• Be efficient. Just like travelers expect continuity from buying tickets online to registering at the airport, patients want a seamless experience, from their initial research (or diagnosis) through their appointment bookings.
• Be visible. Don’t hide information, especially anything that a patient can use to make important decisions. In our travels, whole flights were canceled because of problems with one leg of the flight. Push the information I want to me and make it accessible and easy for me to make an educated choice.
• Be transparent. Show me what others are saying about your physicians, locations, and services. Consumers trust others’ reviews, even if they don’t know them. I am more likely to engage with a physician or organization if I have ratings and reviews available to me.

Although it wasn’t a great flight home, our airline made the experience the best they could. They shared information with us about the delays and even took time to explain why our local airport closed while O’Hare in Chicago remained open.

Our team made the best of it, taking selfies at various airports and gates, keeping our friends, family and colleagues up to date at home. And we know now more about wind shears then we did a month ago, so that’s good.

We even took a picture of a particularly helpful airplane helper, and tweeted her picture tagging the airline in it. And we got a pretty fast response for their social media team.

Which goes to illustrate one more important point: good or bad your consumers will share their experience. We were sad and scared at some points in our journey, but when someone went out of their way to help us, we let our networks know.

If you’d like help being more efficient, visible and transparent in your marketing and initiatives, or need help with that all important online reputation monitoring, contact us.

There are a number of key elements to building and optimizing landing pages that convert visitors into patients. All elements – including content, design, calls to action, and forms – can affect your conversion rates. Put them together well and you can generate more qualified conversions than your average web page.

In this webinar, we’ll share the secrets to building effective landing pages. You’ll learn how to maximize conversion rates and will leave armed with simple tips ready to put into practice.

That’s why many of our clients seek our SEO services. They often have so many things on their plates that they’re not able to set aside the time needed to make large changes to their organization’s SEO strategy.

If you’re not yet ready or able to seek help, here are five things to keep in mind as you execute your SEO strategy.

1. You can’t guarantee specific search engine results. Even if you optimize content in the best way possible, you can’t assume your competitors aren’t doing the same. Going after top rankings is a constant battle. Sometimes, through no fault of your own, you’ll lose. Other times, you’ll win. And it’ll feel pretty cool when you do.
2. Choosing to optimize for certain keywords means not focusing on others. This may lead to a drop in rank for certain keywords or key phrases. But as long as you’re working to optimize your content to rank for your top priorities—the keywords users employ most when searching for your content—there’s no need for concern.
3. Focus your efforts locally. It doesn’t matter if a particular keyword or key phrase has a higher search volume at the national level if the people who search for you locally aren’t using it. Make sure to put your primary focus on the behavior of your key audiences.
4. It’s OK if your priorities change. Midway through a project, you may realize it’s actually more important than you thought to focus in one area and less important to focus in others. Target your efforts where you think they’ll have the greatest impact on your site, even if that means adapting your strategy midway through a project. The beauty of the Web is that it’s always changing, adapting, growing. Use that to your advantage.
5. SEO is an ongoing process, and one project won’t cement your place at the top of a search engine results list. You have to update and optimize your content constantly with a focus on best practices and a great user experience. Google rewards good content, and it should always be top of mind when you think about improving your search engine rankings.

Interested in learning more? Check our recent webinar, Support SEO Efforts with a Cohesive Patient Journey, where we cover search engine optimization topics such as schema.org markup, local search, third party content platforms, placed content, back linking, syndicated content and video.

“People in the industry operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.” – Michael Lewis, Moneyball

In the session, John Marazone and Simon Yohe, both of Orlando Health’s marketing team, talked through their journey of moving from a cost center to revenue generator. And although they admit they’re not done, they are in their second year of a well-planned execution with interesting insights to report.

Marazone began the story when an interim CEO took over Orlando Health two years ago and promised the marketing department no increase in budget, but the trust and leeway to do what they do well. As fans of the ‘moneyball’ philosophy in baseball, John’s team believed the only way they could improve was to implement accountability. Their guiding principles are as follows:

• Healthcare marketing has to be accountable
• Shift to a more integrated digital, social, mobile multi-channel marketing strategy
• Align physician outreach with consumer marketing
• Precision marketing – using data to engage both current and future patients

The Importance of CRM & Finance

An important part of making this transformation included limiting untraceable spending. Advertising spending is shifting from traditional to digital channels. The organization’s CRM has become the central point for the marketing team, and is admittedly the most valuable tool.

Another key part of success for Orlando Health was engaging other departments in the organization, most importantly finance. Bringing finance into the fold helped the marketing team create corporate-wide approved ROI formulas.

And since then, every campaign has had an understood need, baseline numbers (including revenue and cost), and an execution plan All campaigns include downstream revenue tracking. All campaigns have lead generation as part of the strategy. So far, all campaigns have met their goals.

Impressive Results

Although still early in the transformation, Marazone and his team are reporting impressive numbers. From FY ’14 to FY ’15, the team has recorded a 200% increase in landing page unique visitors, a 100% increase in web-based appointment requests, and a 317% increase in marketing campaign call center volume.

Overall, since making the move Orlando Health’s marketing team has tracked $17 million in gross charges and $4 million in net revenue.

Talk about impressive. And those numbers are even more amazing if you stop and recall they successfully made this shift without a budget increase.

The Takeaway

A lot of Orlando Health’s success hinged on the fact they realized driving traffic to digital spaces was critical, and that they agreed on the outset that the only real way to say with certainty that a campaign succeeded or failed was with data.

These are conversations we have every day with our clients, and it’s refreshing to see so many healthcare marketers embrace digital and the improved tracking capabilities it offers. If you’d like to talk to a partner that isn’t scared of ROI, contact us. We love to help our clients prove the value of marketing campaigns and digital efforts.

As healthcare organizations develop or expand joint ventures with medical groups and independent physicians, representing that collaboration on the web requires thoughtful strategy. It’s a challenge, but when you’re successful, the result is a web presence that connects with your visitors and provides a deep understanding of the breadth and value of your services.

Through this in-depth case-study presentation, you’ll learn the secrets behind our multifaceted strategic process that led to a cohesive and intuitive web presence for this medical group.

The front door to your healthcare organization is not your flagship hospital. It’s not your emergency room or your wellness center. It’s not your most well-known community event. Your front door—the place most of your patients first and most regularly experience your brand—is your primary care practices.

Your primary care practices tell a patient who you are. They display your logo, advertise your network and demonstrate your brand values. They make referrals to other specialists in your organization. From your primary care practices, all roads lead directly into your network.

Why not create the same experience online? Why not coordinate the efforts, messages, and visual designs across not only your hospitals, but also your medical groups? Why not make those same connections on the web that your physicians are already making in real life?

Make Connections on the Web

It makes sense to broaden your reach by having physical locations conveniently spread across your service area. But in a non-tangible space, like the web, it’s more convenient—and more effective— to aggregate all your “locations.”

When you coordinate your medical group and system-level websites, site visitors benefit from a central place to find all the information they need. Your physicians benefit from the strength and resources of your brand.

And you, as a healthcare marketer, have a web presence that’s easier to manage—especially with a healthcare-specific CMS like VitalSite that dynamically displays relevant information where patients want it and need it.

The end result? Your site visitors increasingly become engaged members of your health network.

A Case Study: Cone Health and Cone Health Medical Group

Cone Health and Cone Health Medical Group in North Carolina made the commitment to create coordinated, interrelated websites that provide their audiences with the right information, at the right place, at the right time.

To learn about their efforts to create a medical group website that builds and enhances relationships between patients and providers, view our webinar Website Strategy & Content for Medical Groups.

You’ll find out how a strategic approach to content structure and patient-focused content development helped Cone Health overcome organizational challenges to create a unified, distinctive web presence for more than 100 front doors to their organizations.

Good content strategy is more than words on a page. Consider a blueprint when you start planning a page of your site. Who is your audience? What is the main message of this page? What should a reader do next?

From there, think about the layout of the page. Page architecture is the support for what you want the content to say.

Using your Google Analytics and keyword research can also tell you what users are searching for and landing on, which can help you decide what content can live together and what might need its own page.

Subheads, Accordions and Tabs – Oh My!

Headings, subheadings, accordions and tabs are styled by your designer, so why not use them? Geonetric’s content experts offer guidelines for elements of page architecture:

1. Subheads are best used when changing topic or voice. Subheads help ease the transition and summarize the paragraphs that follow, making it easy for a user to scan the page.
2. Paragraphs should be kept relatively short for easy reading, perhaps three or four sentences. Large blocks of text can turn readers away, especially on mobile devices. Add variety to paragraphs of text by using bulleted lists to elaborate on conditions, treatments, symptoms and more.
3. Accordions should be used when you have too much copy for a bulleted list, but not enough copy for a new page. They’re great for explaining a test or medical treatment. Generally, keep accordions light on a page. More than seven can look daunting to a user, especially on mobile devices.
4. Tabs should be used when comparing information or providing chronological data. Ideally, stick to no more than five tabs on a page. And remember, some tabs can become accordions on mobile devices.

Point Your User in the Right Direction

Now that you gave your user such great information, what should he or she do next? Adding a call to action (or CTA) to the page should direct that user to the next action – make a call, send an e-mail, schedule an appointment, etc. A few helpful tips:

• Keep CTAs high on the page so they don’t get buried when the site displays on a mobile device.
• Make your CTAs stand out by placing them in callout boxes or panels.
• Don’t bury CTAs in accordions or tabs. Since those are user-triggered, there’s always a chance the reader won’t find them.

Page Architecture Matters, So Don’t Skimp

Avoid the temptation to just plop words on a page and hit “publish.” Page architecture might take extra time, but it’s time well spent. Sound page architecture and content results in not only a better user experience, but longer page-viewing duration, higher return visits and a higher likelihood of conversion.

If you need help planning and writing your site content, contact us to find out about our content strategy and development services. From strategy to in-depth writing and analysis, our team can help you share meaningful content with your target audiences.

Imagine that you’re on a business trip in a different state. After arriving in this foreign town, you begin to feel under the weather. What do you do? Most likely, you take out your smartphone and begin searching for “urgent cares.”

Immediately Google displays results of local urgent cares. The closest urgent care that appears in the search results is half an hour away. You think that seems pretty far away, but end up biting the bullet and head to what you hope is relief.

Now what if you, as a healthcare marketer, know that in reality the closest urgent care to that person is only 10 minutes away – but you just haven’t had time to create a listing yet.

As both a provider of healthcare and a marketer of healthcare, it’s frustrating to miss that opportunity.

Now, maybe you’re thinking: “But the locals, the ones who actually live in my community and are the main consumers of our health services, know where our facilities are.” But what if those locals do a Google search for your urgent care and you appear, but your phone number is wrong? Now you have a local health consumer that is frustrated with your service and might go to a competitor.

Four Reasons Google My Business Is Worth the Time Investment

Having an up-to-date listing would be beneficial in lots of scenarios. But if you’re in charge of promoting 20 urgent cares, two hospitals, six family practices as well as a handful of specialty clinics you’re probably thinking this is quite the time investment.

And it is. But it’s so worth it. If you’re not convinced yet, here’s four reasons why investing in local listings, specifically Google My Business, is worth the work:

1. Claim Your Business – Before Someone Else Does: This is more common than you might think. Maybe a previous ad agency or employee claimed your listings and now you can’t make changes. Maybe a competitor claimed the listing and is holding it hostage. The process to reclaim your listing can be tedious or smooth as butter depending on who has possession. Either way, not having control over your listing is a pretty big deal.
2. Provide Your Patients with Up-To-Date Information: Keeping your listings up-to-date and accurate is just good business. You want to make it as easy as possible for your patients and potential patients to do business with you – this means keeping addresses, hours of operation and phone numbers current. As Google tends to be a consumers first place to begin a search, if you don’t have the most recent information there consumers can easily become frustrated with your brand.
3. Manage Your Organization’s Reputation: Another important part of business listings are the ratings. By having a local listing, you’re allowing your patients and consumers the ability to rate and review your facilities and your services. Giving happy – and unhappy – consumers Google as a platform to share their thoughts and experiences can be scary. But by having your listing claimed, you’re able to respond to those reviews and take the necessary steps to maintain the reputation you work so hard to protect.
4. Outshine Your Competitors: Who doesn’t want a chance to look better than competitors? When you claim your listing, respond to your reviews, provide your listing with up-to-date information, and include great photos of your locations it will be easy to look better than your competitor’s search listing.

Getting Started With Google My Business

Now, after reading all those great points you’re probably thinking it’s time to attack this! But, you’re also thinking that you have lots of locations to update and lots of edits to make – and a lot of other to-dos! No problem. Geonetric can help. Drop us a line and let’s talk about getting your listings claimed and up-to-date today!