The healthcare niche has one of the biggest markets in the online industry. It is highly competitive, saturated, and very difficult to obtain your target audience’s trust, especially since it is their health that’s at stake. Established healthcare brands and organizations are also expected to comply with the requirements or regulations set by the law.
But the biggest challenge that online marketers in the healthcare industry must overcome is to establish your brand’s credibility in your specific niche. And it all boils down with your strategy on how to develop trust between your organization and your target audience. Here are some of the best marketing practices being used by websites in the healthcare industry:
Craft the Perfect Content
High quality content is a well-established standard in online businesses. But for healthcare websites, content must be perfect. It must be 100% accurate, updated, and beneficial for your readers. The key is to focus more on supplying your audience what they want and need, and less on trying to sell or promote your product. Save those things for your product pages instead.
The perfect content in a healthcare website contains three things: a problem, a solution, and a precise description of who it is for. It must have a clear question in mind, packed with information on tips and actionable steps, and contain a CTA or call-to-action by the end. Highlight these key points and make them as clear as possible. This should increase the value your readers will get from your content. Remember these when creating several content forms such as blog posts, checklists, and even eBooks.
Make sure your content is optimized for the mobile audience. This is crucial for ensuring user experience now that more search traffic is coming from mobile devices than desktop computers. Also make sure each published post is solid with complete information and actionable steps to avoid leaving your readers hanging, unless it is a blog that’s about news or event updates regarding your organization.
Answer Common Questions
To maximize the relevance of your content, start by answering common questions related to your specific niche. You can also offer diagnosis or symptom-checking tips for common conditions. Popular healthcare websites such as WebMD are perfect examples of this for the general audience, but you answer questions that are specific to your field of expertise.
As a healthcare website, you must make it easy for your audience to find the answers you are looking for. In Imagine Chiropractic’s website, you can see how they neatly organized the most common questions that their visitors probably have in mind. Instead of focusing on selling their chiropractic services, they focused on answering questions that are related to the entire niche instead. And to ensure that their visitors are fully satisfied with the information they receive, they included a section filled with links to useful resources and partner organizations.
Personalize your Brand
For your website, make sure your strategy hinges on trust-driven content. A common practice is to tell your brand’s story in an “About Us” section. This could focus on an entire organization or a doctor – depending on who the site is built for.
Dr. Paul Belt applies several trust-driven content strategies on his cosmetic surgery website. This includes a detailed introduction about his story, his professional background, as well as other resources that can build his credibility (papers and media articles).
Having a “face” that the audience can trust is crucial for marketing a healthcare website, which is exactly what “humanized” brands such as Dr. Paul Belt’s site is doing. Not only does it drive trust, it also gives potential patients and customers the impression that they’re dealing with real people whose aim is to help and not a corporation that’s seeking profit.
Offer Social and Professional Proof
Another reliable strategy to develop trust and encourage your audience to work with you is to show off your accreditations as a practitioner/expert in your niche. You should also offer social proof from testimonials and links to your social media pages as a crucial aspect of your trust-driven content strategy. These are some of the practices you can find in established sites such as Per Wickstrom’s website, Best Drug Rehab.
To help develop trust, you should offer detailed and believable testimonials that are descriptive of the experience your previous patients had. You can be as in-depth as possible to make testimonials sound more authentic. For new organizations, you can start building up your brand’s face value through different social media channels.
Remember that about 41% of patients are willing to base their decisions on social media influence when it comes to choosing healthcare companies. This is why you should strive to maintain an active social media presence. In addition to the opportunity to communicate directly with your target audience, you could also build them up and establish your authority as a healthcare provider by sharing valuable content and resources on a regular basis.
