Any conversation about wellness marketing also begs the question, “What are the best strategies for healthcare brand marketing?”
Because health, wellness and fitness are intrinsically intertwined as part of an ecology that supports an avatar I like to call the New Empowered Health Consumer.
And marketing your services and products to the new empowered health consumer demands that you transcend any fixed mindset you may hold about best practices in healthcare marketing.
And at the heart of every strategy I’m revealing today? The audience, the user — not the provider. Because it’s patient-centered, customer-centric messaging and tactics that will win the day — not just top-down branding.
Top Healthcare and Wellness Marketing Trends to Take Your Strategy to the Next Level
Before I unpack all these different strategies, let’s take a moment to appreciate how digital platforms have altered the way brands and marketers think about “word of mouth.”
Clearly, personal relationships still drive the way brands and customers connect on the local level, despite the persistence of traditional marketing campaigns like OOH and broadcast commercials.
That said, let’s consider how you might leverage more digital tactics in your marketing mix:
Visual Marketing for Healthcare Brands
Visual marketing sounds vague. Let’s be specific here. From a digital marketing perspective, the channel that most reflects the principles of visual marketing?
Display media & native advertising.
As a marketer, you can dial in your context and your audience. Who gets to see your ads and where they’re going to see them.
This can be a powerful channel for your marketing mix, and it can fit into a couple of different funnel positions.
But what makes the most sense from a strategic perspective is to use display as a retargeting measure. To show your offer to users who’ve already seen or interacted with your ads.
This has a more direct impact on ROI than say waging display advertising at the top of your funnel to generate brand awareness.
Social Sharing for Healthcare Brands
Getting users to share your content in a media landscape of limited organic reach is like hitting a bullseye. If you can create content that compels readers to share, you can amplify your reach exponentially.
Creatively hitting this goal? That’s the hard part.
You could go for short-term wins like a digital raffle that incentivizes shares for more entries. You could invest in trying to get some kind of buzz off the runway on Twitter by backing something relevant and current.
There really are a lot of ways to increase social sharing. It comes down to the unique position and goal of your brand on social media.
Reviews and Referrals
I cannot overstate the importance of social proof.
Reviews on Google via Google My Business pages fuel SEO markers. Social media reviews and feedback on platforms like HealthGrades and Yelp serve to democratize access to candid information about healthcare products and services.
As your company grows, it can be valuable to invest in a reputation management solution like TrustPilot or BirdEye. New platforms like Psydro have entered the marketplace as alternatives to some of the high costs associated with other SaaS that manage user feedback.
Even as medical practices continue to rely on their network of referral partners, their patient’s networks are very valuable. Increasingly, people go online to their network and crowdsource solutions to problems.
Video Marketing for Healthcare Brands
We’re still seeing a significant growth trend in Facebook ad revenues attributed to video marketing.
Videos still deliver high engagement rates, so the growth trend makes sense.
As users tend to prefer video over written content, platforms will respond in kind by making it more attractive for marketing to leverage video content.
Influencer Marketing
If you need to borrow someone’s audience and amplify your credibility simultaneously (think breaking into new markets) — influencers may be a powerful way to accelerate the process.
Given the changes in influencer marketing over the past couple of years, it’s impossible to predict the future impact of this channel, but celebrity endorsements are nothing new. People tend to trust those they admire, so this is akin to the word of mouth tactics I mentioned before.
Personalized Self-care
Supplement brands like Formula are doing very interesting work on personalization using their inbound funnel. Their ads point to a quiz that will allow you to understand your situation and get your unique prescription of supplements, dialed in based on your input and goals. This tactic feels personal. And the execution backs it up — social proof, an easy user experience and the pull toward a more energetic life. But Formula’s approach to personalized self-care is just one example.
Quiz funnels are just one form of lead acquisition. What about increasing customer LTV? One quick way to consider raising that value is to take a look at the data in your CRM. What offers could you create to retain or upsell your current customers? Think predictive reminders for reordering, subscription models, and the like. Again, it’s putting the user first by reducing barriers and making the purchase decision easier.
Facebook Lead Ads
Speaking of inbound marketing and funnels, Facebook Lead ads can be a cost-effective way (even in 2020!) of acquiring new patients and customers. There are three chief variables that influence the success of your Facebook ads:
- The Audience
- The Image/Video
- The Copy
Provided you have an offer that the marketplace desires, these are the three levers that can make or break performance.
The difference in a $10 CPC and a $3 CPC can be as simple as improving the copy on your Facebook ads.
The right audience who sees the right creative, supported by persuasive copy — this is what you need to yield results.
So whether you’re using Facebook Lead forms or your own landing pages, it’s worth taking a “test and iterate” approach to paid advertising, not just on Facebook, but anywhere you buy media.
Because what worked last year or last week? It may not work today!
Wellness and Fitness Apps
Companies like Peloton and Mirror are blurring the lines between hardware and apps bringing a gym-like experience to the home. But wellness and fitness apps are nothing new. MyFitnessPal goes all the way back to 2005. And that one is near and dear to me — I’ve tracked my calories there for years and have used it to shed 60+ pounds.
The question for your business is simple.
How could an app reduce friction and create a better user experience for your customers or patients?
We’re talking booking appointments online, online shopping, store/facility locators — all mechanisms that streamline.
Final Words
At Response Mine Health, I do a lot more than run a wellness marketing company. The truth is, we function with the level of sophistication you’d assign to a hedge fund — simultaneously deploying a diverse arsenal of tactics to optimize revenue while minimizing risk and prospecting for new opportunities to help our clients grow their market share.