Every effective marketing campaign has a natural sense of authority. This is especially important in the healthcare field, where the services offered can impact people’s lives. To establish authority in healthcare marketing, you need to produce content that enhances your image as an expert in your area. Here are some tips to consider for your next marketing efforts:

Super Blogs

There’s no better way to share reliable information than through blogs. In today’s marketing landscape, having a blog is essential. They are affordable, simple to manage, and flexible. You can create a blog, promote it on social media, and even host it on a larger healthcare site. The first step to writing a good blog is to choose a topic. This is most effective by imagining your ideal patient: is it a baby? A worker with back pain? Schoolchildren? Families? The best marketers can visualize their target audience and tailor content to meet their needs.

You’ll be able to broaden out your target market once you have a load of targeted, published blogs. You need to write the thing once you find a topic. This is where authoritative healthcare marketing falls apart, because doctors being doctors tend to talk over their patients instead of talking to them. Everything you publish, whether it’s a blog or brochure, needs to be concise, easy to understand, and original. The most authoritative articles are the ones that people remember over a similar article, even if the first is less technical.

The goal is to have your name and brand associated with a piece of information. This helps people connect, “Oh, I need to get a flu shot by late September because of XYZ…Dr. You said so.”

Another goal to shoot for is getting your blog or article linked to by others. This is called crosslinking and is a natural way for search engines (i.e. Google) to pull up your site after a similar query. This is a technical process, but always remember that quality beats out quantity when it comes to marketing.

Publications

Outside of blogs, authoritative healthcare marketing falls on the shoulders of physical and emailed newsletters, brochures, and other forms of multimedia. First off, it is important to again focus on a target audience when publishing broad brand-based information. You want your practice to appeal to the middle of the road crowd, and later you can start shaping healthcare marketing around specific demographics, conditions, and disease prevention.

When you send out a newsletter (either mailed or digitally), it’s important to differentiate it from the thousands of others patients receive. Spend time and even consider outsourcing the design. You want to fill up the content with understandable facts, tables, charts, infographics, pictures, and other easy to remember information (for brand recognition). In regard to content, ensure there are no errors or discrepancies. Consider having a non-healthcare expert read it over to see if he or she understands the point of the publication.

In-House Authority

The patient experience within a practice, even more so than outside influences, is a critical aspect of healthcare marketing. In today’s world, patients and clients often determine how successful a business is. You may be the best chiropractor in the city, but if one disgruntled patient had a bad experience he or she could turn off ten others.

One way to avoid any negative PR from patients is to practice patient-centered care. This is a new-age technique where healthcare professionals focus on maintaining a patient’s quality of life rather than treating case-by-case symptoms. Most institutions are teaching prospective doctors this method.

In terms of authority, you need to provide patients with the most accurate information possible. This means transparency, because it isn’t easy for a patient to understand doctor-heavy jargon. Make sure that every patient is treated equally and they understand exactly what they need to.

Authoritative marketing is largely how you approach your practice as a whole. Not only is this technique good for pulling patients off the streets (so to say), it helps increase healthcare referrals from other offices. Consider this advice and incorporate it into your own authoritative healthcare marketing campaign.

Photo by:Joanne Del Gigante

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