Do & Don’t of Healthcare Digital Marketing during COVID 19

COVID-19 has changed the healthcare industry faster in the last three months than in the last 50 years. With a lot of medical practices temporarily shutting down and elective procedures are put on hold. 

What can an organization (Small, Medium, or Large) can do to quickly fill the funnel with patients who are ready to get an appointment? Digital Marketing must be accelerated for a strong rebound as soon as possible. But How to do it? the answer in most cases is here.

Scale your telemedicine services

Thank relaxed regulations in many countries the demand for telemedicine has skyrocketed in the past 3 months, it has been absorbing a significant demand for outpatient appointments. Organizations should heavily promote telemedicine services so that your patients know what are the services you offer remotely and how to access them. It’s an effective way to continue your patient acquisition and retention efforts even during the pandemic.

On the other hand, before you start the campaign make sure you direct patients to the right resources and care delivery options based on their individual needs and your system capacity. Telemedicine is still at its nascent stage, so just before you launch any campaign, it is important to understand doctors or consultation provider’s capacity to fulfill the patient’s demand. Otherwise, you are just creating new patients for your competition.

Reach Out to Your Existing Patients

Your organization must have worked hard to win the trust of your patients. To retain the trust of your patients and to trigger word of mouth among the existing patients, we need to reach out to them. There is four main way of reaching out to your customers

1. Email Newsletter

2. Sending Bulk SMS (Only in allowed countries)

3. Social Media Pages – Post, Stories & Ads

4. Organization Websites

What is the valuable information you can share with your customers? 

• Make sure you inform your patients about your new working hours and what are ways where they can approach you for a consultation or procedure. 
• If you are providing telemedicine service let them know how can they contact you.
• Measures you have kept in place to continue to prevent the spread of the virus. Patients feel safer by knowing some precautions are still in place like:
  • Social Distancing Guidelines in the waiting hall.
  • Face masks must for all patients and staffs
  • Sanitization efforts in clinics
  • Separate entrances for high-risk patients or immunocompromised patients
  • Highlight even the daily routine safety measure you always take.

Don’t Pause all digital marketing campaigns

What are services you can stop and what are the marketing campaigns should we proceed.

Essential Health Services should stay in the market

Health-related issues continue to occur that are not related to COVID-19. We don’t recommend pausing essential digital marketing campaigns, especially search engine ads in google and other search engines for essential healthcare services such as cardiovascular services, Nephrology Services, Dental Emergency, Gynaecology, Oncology, etc. If your organization “go dark”, patients looking for specific procedures and care will not find your organization. Instead, they will either find a competitor or generic messaging. You need to be there for a patient who is raising their hands. 

Moreover the ROI for the Essential Healthcare Services ads has increased substantially since people who are searching for essential services during this period, are more seriously in getting the services. Adding to that due to the lack of competition the cost of the ads has also come down considerably, meaning this is right time to do the ads.

Invest in the Long-Term plans

A lot of health professionals now find time to enhance their digital presence, take this opportunity to invest in long-term plans. Many of your competitors will freeze and do nothing. Even if you are not looking to attract patients in the current situation, you still perform some activities like search engine optimization, organic social media, creating videos, content for your website, etc, which would attract patients in the long term.

All essential acute healthcare service lines should stay active.

The online search has increased considerably especially for acute essential healthcare services. For all the acute healthcare services, you always need your presence in the market. Keep both digital ads and Google Search ads going. Yes, no one sees an online ad and goes for surgery the next day, but if you freeze now, you will see an impact on the patient’s volume down the line. 

Freeze elective digital marketing tactics.

During the pandemic, you want to available for the patient you are seeking for you, on the other hand, you do not want to reach out to patients who are higher in the marketing funnel. We recommend stopping promoting elective procedures to patients who aren’t looking for them and don’t promote any in-person related activities such as conferences, seminars, etc.

The pandemic has taken a hit on many hospital revenues very hard, but engaging with patients now is the only way to accelerate your post-pandemic recovery. We will continue to share information and steps for healthcare organizations to bounce back to normalcy. If you have any questions about how to promote telemedicine or kickstart campaigns for essential services, please feel free to contact Harvee Healthcare.