The ongoing HIPAA online tracking guidance saga took a turn last week when a Texas judge issued a summary judgment in favor of the American Hospital Association declaring the guidance as unlawful and exceeding HHS’s authority.  

While some pundits are quick to believe that this is the end of the story, the answer might not be so simple.  

Healthcare organizations have been wrestling with HHS’s guidance on the Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates which was released in December 2022 and then updated in March 2024. For a more complete overview of the guidance, check out our series on this topic. 

At a high level, the most dramatic implications of the guidance were twofold: 

• The combination of an IP address and the URL of a page relating to health information such as a symptom, condition, search for a provider, or online appointment forms would be considered Individually Identifiable Health Information (IIHI)/Protected Health Information (PHI). The summary judgment refers to this IP/URL pair as the “Proscribed Combination.” 

• Healthcare entities needed to consider any visit to their digital properties to be doing so related to the past, present or future care. While HHS softened this language in the 2024 update to the guidance, the actions required to meet with the standard did not change as a result. 

Overview of the summary judgment 

Much of the 31-page summary judgment wrestles with somewhat esoteric procedural issues surrounding the case, such as if the plaintiffs have standing and if such informal guidance documents are subject to judicial review.  To sum it up: the judge explains that the case is valid, that he has the authority to act here, and that a summary judgment is warranted. 

In the end, the judge declared unlawful the fact that the Prescribed Combination (IP address and URL) is IIHI and effectively rolls back the guidance.  

What does this mean for healthcare organizations’ efforts to improve their privacy posture in response to the guidance? 

Healthcare organizations should not simply abandon the new tools and tactics they’ve adopted to better protect consumer privacy. Even with reduced regulatory risks, this event should act as a wake-up call for all of us to put consumer privacy first.  

There are a number of reasons to continue down the consumer privacy path: 

1. It’s likely this isn’t the last we’ll hear about these issues from HHS. For starters, they have the option to appeal the judgment. And while the judgment rolls back the guidance, it denied the AHA’s request for a permanent injunction on this matter. So, the agency could pursue a similar set of rules like those imposed by the 2022 guidance by following a more appropriate rulemaking path (as we’ve always believed they should). We would expect this process to include a detailed explanation of the new rules and their legal obligations, an open comment period, and a timeline for implementation by Covered Entities and Business Associates.
2. Regulatory compliance is only one of the risks healthcare organizations have faced on these issues, and it’s less clear if this decision will have much impact on the ever-growing list of class action suits claiming breaches of consumers’ health information. Many of these lawsuits were in the works prior to the 2022 guidance, so its revocation is no guarantee that they will also go away. Many of the class action suits also involve state privacy laws where the bar may be different than under current HIPAA legislation. 
3. The judgment leaves open the potential that, in some circumstances, sharing data with non-HIPAA-compliant organizations from your web properties could still represent a breach under the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This could apply to some patient portals, for example, where online interactions are presumed to be for the logged-in individual. There are also less obvious scenarios that could prove problematic. The summary judgment cites the scenario where an organization “greets visitors with a dropdown box requesting their subjective motive for visiting the page”. While the summary judgment notes that this seems unlikely, this could be the case on websites that have a visitor survey or when the visitor selects their role (patient, caregiver, provider, jobseeker, etc.) from a list for the purpose of personalizing their online experience.  
4. Lastly, protecting consumer privacy is important to all of us and a robust process to do so must be a priority going forward. 

Where does this leave us? 

Even if the guidance doesn’t re-emerge in some form, this has been an eye-opener for all of us due to the sheer amount of information being shared with third parties. We encourage you to proceed forward with the same level of caution and oversight that you’ve been applying to marketing technology decisions over the past year and a half: 

• Continue to vet tools and vendors through your data governance and vendor assessment processes to understand what information they’re receiving and the strength of their regulatory compliance processes. 

• Don’t make any knee-jerk moves when it comes to the changes you’ve made to improve compliance until we better understand what the status quo is likely to look like on these issues. 

• Keep the dialogue going between marketing, IT, legal and compliance to clearly articulate your organization’s position related to these health consumer privacy issues. 

Geonetric will continue to share information and insights that you can use to help your organization make important HPIAA-related decisions. If you could use assistance regarding your organization’s compliance goals or how Geonetric Privacy Filter can help, reach out to our team today! 

In honor of Geonetric’s 25th anniversary, we’re sharing the stories and successes of just a few of our healthcare clients across the United States. Some have been with us for decades, others just a few years; some are major health systems, others just one standalone hospital. But one common thread ties them all together: Geonetric has helped them take their digital marketing programs to new heights.  

Rutland Regional Medical Center is a 144-bed hospital in Rutland, VT, serving patients in southern and central Vermont and eastern New York. It is the second-largest hospital and one of the largest employers in the area, employing more than 1,800 people and offering 43 areas of specialty.   

We began working with Rutland Regional in September 2011, when the hospital was in need of a partner to redesign its website.   

“We had a dated website that didn’t function well, and the organization made the decision to do a complete overhaul and redo of our website,” explained Rowan Muelling-Auer, Rutland Regional’s Web & Production Specialist. “We try to keep our dollars in our community and our geographic location as much as we can, but after doing a lot of research, we decided to look for a vendor with an expertise in healthcare which brought us to Geonetric.” 

In the years since, we’ve worked with the Rutland Regional team on various projects centered around conveying that patients didn’t need to leave the area to get the best medical care possible — world-class physicians were located right in their own backyard in Rutland.  

Recent work  

The Rutland Regional site’s most recent update took place in 2023, with a focus on showcasing the hospital’s brand, services and physicians. Prior to that, the last Rutland Regional redesign took place in 2016, meaning the site was starting to become outdated from both a design and a functionality perspective. Website design technology had greatly improved and opened up new possibilities since then, making it the perfect time to update the site’s templates and color palettes as well. 

Features like the new He@lthy Together blog, advanced search function, and multiple pathways to the provider directory helped build both patient and staff trust in the Rutland Regional brand.   

Collaboration between Geonetric and Rutland Regional kept the project on track, and helped set the site up for success after its June 2023 launch.  

“[With] the redesign, there was a great amount of collaboration that went into that project that ultimately led to that being so successful,” explained Client Services Director Ashley Nost. “That’s a project that just worked well from start to finish.”  

In the months following the initial launch of the redesigned site, Rutland Regional saw a 44% increase in the engagement rate of its provider profile pages, a 42.5% increase in the engagement rate of its service line pages, and a 16.7% increase in total sessions for its location profile pages.  

One major aspect of the redesign that stands out to Muelling-Auer was the site design itself, which brought to life Rutland Regional’s branding through elements that “really stand out as ours.”  

“Christina [Hoge, design director] did such a beautiful job taking our branding and our materials and making it into a website that is recognizably us while also still feeling fresh and current and really attractive,” she said.  

Muelling-Auer has heard from internal staff, volunteers and community members alike that the new site isn’t just warm and engaging but easier to navigate as well.  

“I’ve certainly heard from outside of our organization where people are saying, ‘You know, I could never find this before, and now I can.’ It’s pretty great.”  

Leveraging VitalSite®  

Rutland Regional has also established itself as a “super user” of our VitalSite® content management system. With a small in-house team, Rutland Regional needs to be able to do as much site maintenance as it can on their own, and VitalSite empowers Muelling-Auer to do just that through features like branded page templates and content scheduling.  

“What I really enjoy about VitalSite is how intuitive it is. It allows you a lot more flexibility in terms of how you build content, and I think it ultimately just makes it better for end users,” Muelling-Auer explained. “Especially in a role like mine where I’m the only person in my organization who does anything with VitalSite, having the ability to publish content in advance and know it’s going to appear when I need it to be is just one example of a really helpful tool that Geonetric’s built.”  

Muelling-Auer acknowledges that even when she runs into a capability VitalSite doesn’t have yet, the Geonetric team is on hand to listen to her concerns.  

“They hear your problems; they hear the things that you would like to see. They work on building those into future planning for the CMS,” she said. “That’s something that’s worth its weight in gold. No program is going to do everything, but when you have a team behind you who is dedicated to making you successful, that’s everything right there.”  

Redesign recognition  

Rutland Regional’s 2023 redesign earned a Platinum Award for Best Website Redesign at the 2023 MarCom Awards, as well as a Silver Award for Best Overall Internet Site and a Gold Award for Best Provider Directory in the 2023 eHealthcare Leadership Awards.  

Our work with Rutland Regional also earned an Outstanding Achievement award in the 2017 Interactive Media Awards.  

A commitment to customer success  

Muelling-Auer credits Rutland Regional’s nearly 13 years of partnership with Geonetric to the relationships she’s been able to build with the team handling her account and the open communication they’ve established.  

“My constant refrain when it comes to Geonetric is the extraordinary customer service, day in and day out. It really makes a relationship feel like it matters between both parties,” she said.  

Another benefit Rutland Regional has enjoyed since working with Geonetric is knowing there’s a team working behind the scenes to react to any changes in analytics, HIPAA regulations, marketing technology, and the ever-evolving state of the digital landscape.  

“I don’t think you can stress enough how important that is for the kind of company that Geonetric is,” Muelling-Auer explained. “Whether it’s how responsive websites are changing, the switch over to GA4, changing rules around HIPAA — it’s all of those parts and pieces that really help to make Geonetric a partner in your digital management of your assets and your presence online.”   

Ready to experience the Geonetric difference?  

If your organization could use a digital partner with 25 years of experience, a healthcare-specific content management system, and a team that’s always keeping tabs on the latest in healthcare digital marketing, let’s talk. Contact Geonetric today to learn more about how we can help your organization! 

Getting a peak behind the curtain at Google’s search algorithm has long been on digital marketers’ wish lists. Late last month, we got exactly that in the form of a then-anonymous leak that revealed previously unknown details of Google’s algorithm and how it collects data from users. 

Among the algorithm factors included in the leaked documents are API references, internal memos, and development notes that all solidify one message: high-quality, authoritative content is still king (when paired with a comprehensive SEO strategy, of course). 

So, how can healthcare marketers tap into this trove of knowledge without having to sift through more than 2,500 pages of API data? Here’s a high-level overview of the leaked information and how you can apply it to your organization’s content and SEO strategies.  

Critical Algorithm Factors 

The data released in the leak confirmed many of the things we assumed were important to Google regarding ranking content. 

Search Engine Optimization 

The leak provided several insights into some of the critical factors that play into how Google ranks content. 

First, the algorithm places a significant focus on user intent, trying to understand and deliver results that line up with what users are trying to accomplish.  

Next — and this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise — the quality of the content factors into how the algorithm ranks sites. Google still emphasizes high-quality, authoritative content, as well as E-A-T, or the expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a piece of content.  

Finally, in the SEO realm, the quality and relevance of any backlinks in a piece of content remain critical to how well that site performs.

Entity-Based Search

The leak also released information about how the algorithm prioritizes entity recognition, in which entities like people, places, and things rank better than simple keywords.  

We also learned more about the role the Knowledge Graph — Google’s database of billions of facts about people, places, and things —  plays in connecting entity-based searches and providing contextual relevance.  

Publisher Reputation

Another leaked data point that isn’t a shock but that marketers still need to prioritize is reputation. Google prefers content from reputable publishers and recognized authors, as well as information published with clear editorial oversight. 

Content Strategy

One part of the leak that we were especially excited to read up on was the data surrounding content strategy. 

The leak showed that in-depth content — longer, more detailed articles — ends up performing better than content that’s short and to the point. Integrating multimedia elements like images, videos, and infographics can also enrich the content and help it perform better in search rankings. 

Technical Insights

The leaked data indicated that page speed metrics are more nuanced than many had assumed, considering factors beyond simple load time.  

Google’s prioritization of mobile-friendly content is still ongoing, and it’s placing an increased importance on schema markup and rich snippets. 

User Experience

The leaked information revealed that core web vitals play an enhanced role in ranking, with a focus on load time, interactivity, and visual stability. Google is now also considering bounce rate in context with other engagement metrics. 

Strategic Recommendations 

Let’s break the information in the leak down into recommendations you can put into practice today to help your website or blog perform better in Google’s search results. 

Content Refreshing

Make it a habit to regularly update and expand your website content to maintain its relevance. The only content that search engines like more than relevant, user-friendly content is relevant, user-friendly content that has been updated recently. 

This may require some advanced governance or tracking on your end to ensure that content available online for a certain amount of time is flagged for revision. Thankfully, depending on the content itself, this refresh could be as simple as minor updates or as complex as a thorough rewrite. 

Intentional Structure

You can create content clusters — content that’s organized around a certain theme to boost its relevance — by building or restructuring sections of your website and creating internal links to each piece of content. By interconnected relevant pages you can create a web of content that’s not only easy for search engines to crawl, but for users to navigate as well. 

Expertise

Help build up your editorial authority and oversight by highlighting the author of your blog posts and news articles. Whether you have an in-house editorial staff or are ghostwriting articles for providers, sharing information about who wrote what through author panels and schema can help drive your articles to the top of relevant local results. 

Schema

Speaking of schema, adding industry-specific schema structured data (such as frequently asked questions, reviews, ratings, etc.) to your service lines, providers, locations, and article pages will ensure that search engine algorithms and artificial intelligence have an easily understandable cheat sheet when crawling your site.  

Topic Authority

You can build comprehensive resources and become an authority on specific topics with intentional internal and external linking. A combination of robust service line sections and linked articles will provide compounding authority, showing users and search engines alike that your organization has the expertise they’re looking for. 

Local Authority

You can also rely on local relevance by optimizing with providers, locations, and distinct services in mind. You may need to rethink your current provider and location profile strategies to make sure crucial information and conversion points are included, but optimizing them for search can help you overtake your competition’s search engine real estate. 

Expert Help 

If your organization could use a hand applying overall SEO practices and the information from the Google leak to your website strategies, Geonetric is here to help.  

We have 25 years of experience navigating changes in Google’s algorithms, and our team is ready to put that expertise to work for your organization. Contact us today to learn more! 

Geonetric was founded in 1999, and as you can expect for any company that’s been around 25 years, things looked very different back then. 

When it first started, Geonetric specialized in creating websites and web applications for companies in a variety of industries — not just healthcare. Marketers didn’t have to worry about what their website looked like on a smartphone, how many followers they had on Facebook or LinkedIn, or their search engine rankings.  

The last 25 years have brought with them a tidal wave of new technologies that impact not only our team but also the digital marketing and healthcare industries as a whole.  

To celebrate Geonetric’s 25th anniversary and to showcase just how far we’ve come since 1999, we’re kicking off a blog series highlighting some of the most significant technology breakthroughs and trends we’ve encountered, with thoughts from Geonetric CEO Ben Dillon on how these concepts have shaped the work we do as an agency today. 

1999 

Geonetric’s first year in business was an interesting one in the digital world. The potential Y2K bug loomed large, and the concept of search engine optimization — tailoring the content on a website to make it easier for people to find it — was starting to gain steam. 

While Geonetric was primarily a technology company at the time and hadn’t started providing marketing or SEO services, “the idea that things had to be findable was definitely starting to emerge,” Dillon said. 

“[It was] nothing like the sophistication we have now, in terms of understanding what people are looking for when they come to find your site, or understanding what the search engines were doing,” Dillon explained. “Early on, it was really about ‘How do we present this data?'” 

2000 

The first year of the New Millennium saw the launch of Google AdWords. While it wasn’t the first search advertising platform to exist, AdWords’ cost-per-thousand impressions model returned an impressive $70 million by the end of its first year. 

That number wasn’t enough for AdWords to financially overtake Overture, a pioneer in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that had launched in 1998. But AdWords’ competition with Overture planted the seeds for Google to shake up the PPC game in just a couple of years. 

2001 

The first cell phones with 3G internet access were released in 2001, but the prohibitive cost of data meant that many consumers wouldn’t use the feature for years.  

“The web was still, in a lot of ways, relatively new, relatively niche… mobile was not a big consideration for a long time,” Dillon said. “But it did grow from that point. Those were all steps along the road to say, ‘Ok, the phone can actually be a fully functional front end to this internet thing.'” 

2002 

Google AdWords officially adopted a PPC model in 2002, bringing with it an increased focus on targeting and ad relevance. AdWords’ Quality Score metric didn’t just award ad position based on the company’s bid amount, but also on how relevant the ad was to the user’s search query.  

This shift meant that both large and small companies could compete for ad space with relevant, high-quality ads and even target consumers by their home country or language. 

Today, AdWords plays a key role in both search engine optimization and search engine marketing, services Geonetric provides for many of its clients. AdWords allows us to launch display ads that help build our clients’ brand awareness and target consumers while they browse the web, watch YouTube videos, check their email, and more. 

2003 

WordPress came on the scene in 2003 as one of the first dedicated blogging platforms, and Geonetric utilized it to host blogs for a number of its website clients. 

It would be years before WordPress grew into the content management platform it is today, but its launch heralded the start of a shift toward organizations connecting with consumers more through content marketing and thought leadership. It was a change that did meet with some resistance, Dillon explained, as many corporate websites at this time defaulted to “a very formal voice and tone” and weren’t used to having to regularly write content.  

“At the time, lots of organizations looked at it as this thing to put cute little blog posts up. We worked to convince organizations that they should have their CEO do a blog, or you should have a corporate blog to talk about health issues, or talk about things going on in the organization.  There was never a place for content like this to live before blogs came about,” Dillon said.  

“A lot of organizations struggled with ‘What should we write about every week?’ And we’re like, ‘What we’re seeing is the ones that are successful are actually putting things out several times a week. You might have to write more than one post a week for this thing to work out.” 

Since initially working with WordPress sites, Geonetric has since developed its own proprietary content management system, VitalSite. VitalSite is designed specifically for healthcare organizations, with HIPAA privacy regulations and end-user privacy in mind.

What’s next? 

Our 25th anniversary trip down memory lane continues in two weeks with our look at 2004 through 2008, an era that launched social media marketing, personalized search results, and more. 

If you’re looking to leverage today’s marketing tech trends and Geonetric’s 25 years of experience to propel your organization into the future, contact us today!

Our team is ready to put their decades of experience to use to help you navigate the ever-changing digital marketing landscape and prepare you for whatever’s coming next. 

Artificial intelligence. Whether you’re having an internal marketing discussion, attending a conference, or simply reading the news, AI is an inescapable topic.

We frequently discuss artificial intelligence with our clients as they ask how it can fit into their marketing efforts — if it even can, legally. In such a highly regulated industry as healthcare, is it possible to use AI without violating HIPAA guidelines or jeopardizing patient trust?

Let’s set the record straight: we’re big fans of these tools and how they can help streamline SEO and content marketing workflows. But since this technology is still in its early stages, we’re cautious about how we use AI tools, and ensure there are internal policies in place about what information we can provide to get the responses we’re looking for.

That being said, there are plenty of ways you can use AI at your organization to help boost your SEO efforts and take some of the more tedious content tasks off of your plate. Let’s take a look at how AI tools can play a role in your day-to-day content marketing and SEO tactics.

Topical & SEO research

One of our top pieces of advice for healthcare organizations looking to incorporate AI into their SEO and content activities is to treat AI like a research assistant or editorial sidekick as opposed to a tool to produce finished work such as a colleague or other trusted employee.

AI is fantastic for generating ideas or lists for things like campaign ideas, key phrases, ways to format certain pieces of content, or topics important to your target audiences. You can also use AI to identify common patient or audience questions, providing multiple perspectives on the messages you’re trying to send and the best ways to address them. For example, if you want to build a frequently asked question section about a particular service line, utilize AI to brainstorm a list of questions a patient may have vs. the questions a caregiver or family member would ask. 

SEO support

While we’re on the topic of SEO research, it’s important to note that the information your AI tool returns may not reflect real-time searches. While the keyphrases you get back from a brainstorming prompt may not be the right ones for your organization, AI is still a valuable tool for getting the ball rolling and thinking about the terms people are searching for related to your niche. 

Content ideas & outlines

Once you’ve built out your list of ideas and chosen the topic you want to write about, AI can also help you create an outline to guide you through the writing process.

If you’re drafting something like a location page or provider profiles, you can ask what information should be on each of the pages. By prompting the AI tool to think like a website visitor, you can determine what people are looking for when they visit a specific page or what kind of consumers are looking at the kind of content you’re writing. 

The resulting outline should give you a good idea of the content types you’ll want to include on each of these pages to make them as effective as possible for both search engines and human visitors.

Repackaging & restyling 

Let’s say you have a piece of content that was originally written with one audience in mind but now needs a bit of sprucing up in the voice and tone departments. Perhaps you’ve updated your editorial voice as part of a brand refresh, or you need a new version of the content that’s geared toward family members instead of the patient.

By inputting your content into your AI tool and asking it to rewrite it to your specifications, you can get a head start on drafting content that’s updated to match the style you’re looking for. Of course, we always suggest checking your AI tool’s work — this technology isn’t perfect, but it’s a time-effective way to get started.

AI is also handy for repackaging existing content for new channels. Have a longer article you need summed up in an Instagram caption? How about a blog post you want summarized for a more professional audience on LinkedIn? With AI, you can spend more time thinking up new content and less time optimizing what you already have for cross-channel promotion.

Proofreading & editing

If you’ve hit a bit of writer’s block or have some pre-written content that needs punching up, AI can assist there as well. Just input your content into the tool, and it can help you refine your word choices, tweak it to be more engaging, find spelling or grammar errors, suggest revisions so it’s more in line with your brand, and even identify issues with the overall flow. 

Visual suggestions

One of our favorite ways to use AI is to help produce ideas to visually represent complex or abstract topics. 

For example, if you explain the content you need an image for, AI can come up with an art direction for your stock photos, or suggestions on how to visualize the data in the form of an infographic. 

Analyzing data

Speaking of data, this is another arena where AI truly shines. If you have a boatload of data that needs sifting through (notes from 20 hours of user testing, thousands of patient survey responses, etc.), AI can help you identify patterns or pull out information like quotes that can be useful in your marketing program.

Your data would have to be anonymized to stay HIPAA compliant (more on that in a bit), but even without personally identifiable information, AI can help you make sense of your data in record time.    

Writing formulaic content

AI is also beneficial when it comes to writing the formulaic, essential content that your site needs to function and rank on search engines — especially if it’s repetitive content you don’t necessarily feel like writing over and over.

You can use AI to write or outline things like meta descriptions, provider bios, instructions or tool tips, page headlines, and other low-stakes copy that serves as signposts guiding visitors through the site vs. marketing-driven content. 

Proceed with caution 

As we’ve mentioned, this technology isn’t quite perfect. There are a few things to keep in mind as you begin incorporating it into your SEO and content workflows.

Identifiable data

If you don’t know the right kind of data to use in your prompts, your use of AI tools may end up being a liability for your organization instead of a benefit. 

One essential part of the “art” of using AI is understanding how to get the answers you’re looking for without using private information in your prompt. 

You can avoid this by anonymizing the data and information you’re feeding to your AI tools and taking extra precautions like removing your brand name and being wary of giving it too much information that can identify your organization, employees, or patients.

Standing apart from low-quality AI content

With the explosion of AI tools in content marketing, there’s suddenly a sea of bland, SEO-optimized, AI-generated healthcare content that makes it difficult for providers to break through the noise and impact their SEO ratings. 

The good news is that quality AI-generated content is achievable by creating original content tailored to a specific audience and following basic SEO principles. 

Remember, AI shouldn’t be creating your full drafts or long-form content — that’s what other organizations are doing to crank out piles of uninspiring, generic content. Use AI for the brainstorming, outlining, and proofreading steps of your content workflow, but keep the majority of the writing and editing tasks with you and your team.

Keep it human & authentic

That sea of bland, boring, and obviously AI-generated content that’s formed over the last few years solely exists for one thing: to get eyeballs on advertising content.  We frequently hear concerns from clients worried about how easy and fast it is for people to create content with AI, it doesn’t feel worth prioritizing content that stands out from the crowd.

Thankfully, Google still values useful, helpful, and authentic content designed by humans for humans — not search engines. While Google does not automatically detect and rank AI content lower than human-created content, its existing spam filters can detect when a website is simply churning out a stream of AI content automatically in an attempt to influence search engine rankings.

Keep this in mind if thoughts ever start to creep up that using AI for your SEO content is somehow “cheating.” If you were plugging in a generic prompt for an SEO blog post, copying what your AI tool gave you, and publishing it straight to your site, sure. But by taking precautions to make sure AI is just used as a tool to boost your content efforts and replace a human writer, you can keep your authentic brand voice front and center as you create SEO content to help reach your goals. 

What’s next?

For more guidance on how you can use artificial intelliengence in creating SEO website content, check out our blog post on the do’s and don’ts for AI in healthcare.

If you’re interested in incorporating artificial intelliengence into your SEO efforts but aren’t sure where to start, contact our team today to learn how we’re using AI to create engaging, effective, and authentic healthcare content. 

Our Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey, now in its 12th edition since 2005, provides a snapshot of how healthcare organizations across the United States manage their marketing programs in the face of new technology, updated regulations, and changing consumer desires. 

As with any trend, our survey recognizes there are some organizations that find it challenging, for various reasons, to adopt the latest and greatest in marketing tactics. 

On the other hand, some respondents adapt to new trends and technology quickly, investing in them early on and using them to their advantage as soon as possible. 

We funnel these early adopters and self-identified marketing trend-setters into our Leaders category, the organizations paving the way for what will become commonplace in healthcare marketing in the coming years. 

Aside from their self-reported scores, what sets Leader organizations apart from their Average and Laggard counterparts? And, perhaps more importantly, how can you leverage their prowess to find marketing success at your organization? 

In this article, we dive into the strategies that take the teams in our Leaders category to the next level, and how you can put them to work to reach your own goals.  

What’s holding healthcare organizations back? 

Before we dig into the trends and tips demonstrated by our Leader organizations, let’s recognize the hurdles that often hold the Average and Laggard groups back. These include: 

• Shrinking or shifting budgets 
• Ongoing staffing challenges 
• Digital platform capabilities 
• Other organizational barriers 

If your marketing efforts are hampered by one or more of these factors, don’t worry —Leader organizations didn’t get where they are overnight. It takes time to build a robust marketing strategy that delivers the results you’re looking for.  

Even if you can start putting one or two of these tips into practice, you’re taking the first steps on your journey to healthcare marketing success. Here are a few of the things Leader organizations prioritize, and how you can start implenting them at your organization: 

1. Invest in digital media

As you probably could guess, our Leader organizations invest a great deal more in their digital marketing efforts than organizations in the Average or Laggard category — Leaders invested $1.8 million in digital media, per our survey results. 

But it isn’t just a matter of having more money in your marketing budget. Leader organizations allocate a larger portion of their budget to digital marketing initiatives. Organizations in our Laggard category spent just one-third of their budget on digital media initiatives, compared to Leader organizations, which put nearly half of their budget toward digital media. 

What does this mean for you? Regardless of your organization’s size (or your marketing budget), investing in digital over traditional media is the right choice. Our Leaders reported spending 37% more on digital initiatives today than they did in 2021, so if you’ve been waiting for a sign to start focusing more of your marketing budget on digital, this is it.  

By our next survey, your organization may be one of our Leaders enjoying the benefits of digital media, such as: 

• Adapting and adjusting your marketing program quickly 
•  Reaching a wider audience 
• Targeting your audience by demographic 
• Increasing patient, employee, and job candidate engagement 
• Reducing conversion costs 
• Generating easily measurable results 

By emphasizing digital media, you can reach your audience where they’re most often looking for information: online. 

2. Establish a multichannel presence

More than 90% of our Leader organizations reported that they’re at least somewhat satisfied with their ability to create and manage content across multiple channels, including web, social media and email.  

Across all three categories, at least 20% of organizations we surveyed feel very satisfied with their multichannel results, which is a positive sign that putting the time and effort into a multichannel presence is worth it no matter where your organization is on its marketing journey. 

By creating and distributing content through a variety of digital channels, you can reach new audiences of prospective patients and employees you may not have been able to connect with before.  

If you’re looking for a low-stakes place to start, our Leaders responded that they especially feel good about their social media programs. Posting more regularly on social media or being more strategic with the type of content you post will give you an easy and low-cost way to communicate updates about your organization, answer patients’ questions, and tell your story through images, infographics and video. 

Which brings us to another area where our Leaders report feeling confident… 

3. Tell your story through video

Our survey results showed that video production is gaining momentum in the healthcare industry — and our Leader organizations are at the forefront of this cinematic surge. 

Video is an engaging, dynamic way to provide information to people visiting your site and tell your story visually instead of just relying on content. Whether you’re sharing patient stories, employee spotlights, a welcome message, a facility tour, or other video content, investing in some video production is a fantastic way to take your content marketing to the next level.  

4. Connect through social media

Our Leader organizations also reported feeling positive about their social media programs’ performance.  

If you’re not regularly updating your social media pages, you’re missing out on a key opportunity to foster communication between your organization and patients, visitors, and prospective employees. Not only does social media offer you a direct channel to interact with your consumers, but it also provides another platform where you can share blog posts, company news, videos and more. 

5. Keep your website current and fresh

A robust content marketing program isn’t worth much without a visually engaging, easy-to-navigate website to go along with it. 

This year’s installment of our survey saw overall interest in website redesigns on the rise after a few years of web efforts stalling out while healthcare organizations grappled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Organizations in our Leader category, as you might expect, feel less pressure to redesign their sites now since they either recently completed a redesign (23.1%) or are content with their website performance for the time being (48.7%).  

When it comes to the platform their website is built on, Leaders were also most likely to have recently re-platformed (17.9%), compared to just 5.1% of Laggards..  

If you’re one of the organizations that put web design and platform updates on hold due to cost or staffing restraints caused by the pandemic, it’s possible you’re still not quite at the point where you can launch a full website redesign and platform update.  

If that’s the case, there are some initiatives you can pursue (depending on the capabilities of your platform) to help make your website more engaging and accessible without the cost of a full redesign and re-platforming: 

• Mobile apps: Our Leaders are either creating mobile apps in-house or outsourcing the creation of apps that provide another way to guide patients and visitors to the information they’re looking for. While custom apps aren’t typically high on our non-Leaders’ list of marketing priorities, those organizations that can afford them see tremendous value for consumers. 
• Health content: Take a page from our Leaders’ playbook and make your website’s blog or content section a go-to source for wellness information and brand journalism catering to current and prospective patients alike. 
• CRM: One way our Leaders are making the most of their marketing dollars while addressing recent HIPAA constraints is by optimizing their customer relationship management (CRM) software and automation to focus on strengthening relationships with existing customers. 
• Communication features: Having an online chat, call center integration, and online care navigation to help visitors find what they’re looking for are website features we saw gain a ton of momentum in this year’s survey results. 
• Single Sign-On: SSO is another “nice-to-have” feature that requires ongoing maintenance and investment but can go a long way in creating secure digital experiences for patients. 

By introducing these features to your website, you can ensure it stays a valuable tool for your audience without diving into a full redesign. 

6. Create personalized experiences

Thirty-seven percent of our Leader organizations have implemented a web personalization program to create custom experiences for consumers. That’s compared to just 10% of Average organizations, and 0% of Laggard organizations. 

If your organization hasn’t pursued any sort of personalization program before, now is the time. Personalizing your visitors’ web experiences can provide an incredible return on investment, helping patients make more informed health decisions, strengthening your brand loyalty, and improving consumer satisfaction. 

7. Be strategic with your staffing

Staffing is another area hit hard by the pandemic, especially for smaller organizations where the resources to employ a full marketing staff just aren’t there. 

Our survey results found that Leader organizations employ twice as many digital marketing professionals as their Average counterparts and two and a half as many as Laggard organizations. 

If you don’t have the resources for full-time employees, outsourcing is another option that can help you stretch your marketing dollars a bit further. Our Leader respondents outsource 10% more than Laggards and use that outsourced labor to help fill in the gaps for projects like developing mobile apps, web hosting, and search engine optimization.  

8. Measure your results

No matter where you are on your digital marketing journey, perhaps the most crucial piece of advice we can give is to track analytics to help you demonstrate the success of our efforts. 

Our results found that Leaders are typically better at showing the outcomes of their efforts across the goals tracked in the survey compared to their Average and Laggard counterparts.  

For more information, check out our post on the role digital analytics plays in healthcare marketing. 

Want to see what else our Leader organizations are doing to set themselves apart?

Check out our full 2024 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey eBook for more Leader insights and full results from this year’s survey. 

Need an expert partner on your healthcare marketing journey?

If you’re ready to begin your journey to become a healthcare marketing Leader but need help figuring out where to start, Geonetric is here to help. Our team has 25 years of experience helping healthcare organizations like yours innovate and evolve their marketing programs to respond to changes in regulations, technology, and consumer preferences. 

Geonetric has helped healthcare organizations across the country launch more than 500 websites and intranets and transform their content marketing programs to generate more conversions and strengthen patient connections. Contact us today to get started! 

Real-life narratives help your health system build relationships with prospective patients, job candidates, donors and other members of your community.

Let’s explore the differences between the two types of communication and see where storytelling can supplement your marketing efforts. 

Marketing: The Science of Influence

Marketing is overtly promotional.
It pushes out messages your organization creates or approves to persuade audiences to:

• Schedule an appointment
• Apply for a job
• Make a donation
• Become a hospice volunteer
• Do other tasks that benefit your health system

 
Audiences’ openness to marketing varies depending on their current needs, mood and familiarity with your brand.

Storytelling: The Art of Empathy

Compared to marketing, storytelling is less overtly promotional. Its primary goal isn’t to drive conversions, but to inspire, inform, or entertain audiences. Everyone, from children to senior citizens, loves a good story. The movie, TV and book-publishing industries exist because this ancient art form touches something fundamental in human nature. Stories come from your target audiences’ neighbors, coworkers, friends and loved ones and satisfy our innate curiosity about other people. Authentic, well-told stories foster an emotional connection to your brand.

How to Use Stories

So, where do stories fit into your communications strategy? Consider these examples.

Strengthen Ties to Your Community

Patient stories help build relationships at a time when confidence in healthcare organizations is spotty. Americans’ trust in healthcare companies ranges from just 50% to 70%, depending on their race and political affiliation, according to a 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer report [PDF]. But think of the times you and your loved ones have asked each other to recommend a provider, clinic or treatment option. You trust that people in your position (fellow patients) have your best interests at heart. As a communications professional, you can put this principle of social proof to work by highlighting healthcare consumers’ positive encounters with your organization.

Bronson Healthcare did so by using VitalSite functionality to create a content hub called Bronson Positivity. It features thousands of submissions that came directly from patients and families. By publishing full names and leaving these stories in the writers’ own words, Bronson Healthcare gives the stories a high level of credibility. They’ve received tens of thousands of views in the past year, thanks to the health system’s strategic promotion of the hub and strong community interest.

In addition to building trust and boosting site traffic, stories have a powerful role to play in patient education. Research shows they can help increase kidney donations, reduce fears about childbirth and help women retain information about breastfeeding. Informed, empowered patients are exactly who your health system wants.

Recruit Job Candidates

Maybe your health system’s careers webpages already feature employee testimonials that give a quick sales pitch about your workplace. These positive employee reviews are crucial for recruitment. However, you can enrich your content by supplementing quotes and soundbites with stories that give tangible examples of how your organization helped team members overcome challenges.

Could nurses on a certain unit describe how your hospital gave them the resources and freedom to innovate in ways that improved patient care or staff satisfaction? Perhaps a department came together to support a colleague in need after an accident. Or maybe you can find a junior team member who achieved professional success thanks to an exceptional mentor or role model.  

Employee stories accounted for more than half the traffic to Cape Cod Healthcare’s careers content in 2023. The organization has published dozens of “Meet Our Team” webpages, each with a video that features several minutes of commentary from a team member. Viewers get to learn about key moments in these clinicians’ professional and personal lives. The engaging profiles give a face to Cape Cod Healthcare, humanizing its brand and making it relatable to a wide range of job seekers.

Encourage Donations

Studies have shown donors give more when thinking of a specific, identifiable recipient rather than anonymous, statistical groups. You can take advantage of this phenomenon. Share the stories of community members whose lives improved thanks to the generosity of your health system’s benefactors.

Avera Foundation did this by publishing the inspiring story of a baby who’s enjoying good health after receiving neonatal intensive care at Avera Health. The #GivingTuesday Facebook post was shared 509 times, creating valuable free publicity for the organization.

Key Features of Every Good Narrative

Regardless of the topic or target audience, you can craft a compelling story by including these elements:

• Characterization – Relatable people are at the heart of any good story. Tell us a little about the personal lives and motivations of the patient, caregiver, team member or other “main character.” Readers or viewers should be able to sympathize with them and see them evolve throughout the narrative.
• Conflict – The people in your story must face and overcome a challenge. Maybe they’re seeking a diagnosis for mysterious symptoms, trying to find specialized care or searching for a meaningful career.
• Plot – The series of events should have a clear structure. A strong plot keeps your audience invested and eager to know what happens next.

Story Formats

Depending on your resources and the availability of the people in your story, you may choose to write a profile, make a video or record a podcast. Each format has advantages.

Written Narratives

Text content is accessible to a wide range of audiences, including people who have slow internet connections or use screen readers to navigate the web. Written copy is keyword-rich and easily searchable, making it likely to turn up in organic search results.

Podcasts

Podcasts provide another layer of authenticity and connection to your organization by allowing an audience to hear a storyteller’s voice. They’re an excellent option for conversations and interviews. Audio-only formats also offer a convenient choice for multitaskers because people can listen while commuting, exercising or doing other activities.

Videos

Videos combine visual and auditory elements, making them highly engaging. They’re perhaps the best option for humanizing your brand and introducing audiences to the people of your health system. Just be sure to use a video player that provides or allows captions for accessibility.

Want Help Getting Started?

Adding stories to your site doesn’t have to involve extensive design, development time or flashy new tools. The task could be as simple as creating a few webpages. But if you’re dreaming bigger, contact Geonetric for creative solutions for leveraging VitalSite, a healthcare content management system that offers a dynamic content hub designed for storytelling and other types of content marketing.

Regardless of your software, Geonetric’s content strategists, writers, SEO specialists and other digital marketing experts are ready to help you engage your audiences. Reach out today to start telling your story!

The world of healthcare marketing is constantly changing, with new technologies, regulations, and patient expectations developing on what feels like a daily basis. So, how are healthcare organizations weathering the storm?

In the 12th edition of our Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey, we pulled back the curtain to look at how more than 200 healthcare organizations and vendors across the United States feel their marketing efforts are going. 

From the Leader organizations rolling with the punches and seeing tremendous results from their digital media investments to the Laggards still waiting for their marketing budgets to return to pre-pandemic levels, our survey captures a valuable snapshot of the state of healthcare marketing. 

Download our eBook to see how your efforts compare with other healthcare providers, and what tactics you should consider prioritizing to help your organization reach its marketing goals. Who knows — with this valuable information, you may end up as one of our marketing Leaders in a future edition of the survey!