Update Your Content
The first healthcare marketing ideas worth taking advantage of is updating your content. In a study done by Single Grain, they doubled the traffic generated from nearly 20 posts simply by updating their content.
In fact, here’s a screenshot of just one blog post that took off after an update, and you can see that the results compounded over time:
However, the first step to updating your content is choosing which pieces of content you should update. If you have hundreds of blog posts, is it really worthwhile to update all of them? Fortunately, there is data available to show which pieces of content produce the highest ROI.
In a study done by Single Grain, blog posts that previously performed well tend to perform much better post update than posts that never performed well. Therefore, always focus on updating top-performing posts and 301 redirect posts that never performed very well.
The only exception to this is if you have a post for a main product or service keyword that isn’t ranking well. For example, if you offer addiction treatment, you should always update content for keywords like “addiction rehab in (city)” and “inpatient rehab in (city).”
In this case, it’s worth analyzing the top-ranking posts for that keyword and then rewriting the post altogether.
So how should you actually update your posts?
First, be sure to update any facts, statistics, and methods. For example, if you are located in Arizona and have a page that says marijuana is illegal in Arizona, you’ll have to update that.
However, the real meat of updating content is adding supporting examples, filling it out with deeper information, and identifying what value competing pages add that yours lacks.
Therefore, while you never want to copy any competitors, it’s a good idea to Google the keyword your post is targeting and get an idea of what most competing pages are talking about that your page lacks.
Similar to weeding a garden, your posts need to be kept up to date. After about a year, it’s worth revisiting your most important pages.
Improve Your Title Tags
Many marketers have discounted the importance of keywords over the years. This is because Google has become increasingly advanced at understanding what a blog post is about.
However, including a keyword in your title tag is still one of the easiest ways to boost your rankings. In fact, when you Google virtually any keyword with substantial difficulty, the first page of results almost always includes title tags with exact match or similar keywords:
However, including keywords isn’t the only way to improve your title tags and therefore increase traffic to your website.
While you should never promise something that you won’t deliver in your content, a well-written title that piques your target audience’s curiosity can dramatically increase your CTR. It will therefore increase your rankings in the search results.
BuzzFeed is known for producing stellar headlines that grab the reader’s attention. You can use their formats for your own blog posts. For example, here is a BuzzFeed headline you could easily use as a template:
Instead, you could write something like “15 Things Plastic Surgery Patients Wish They Knew Before Selecting a Surgeon.”
Notice that it’s much more enticing?
Partner With Influencers
Several major brands in other industries have built their businesses around influencer marketing. For example, the billion-dollar company Gymshark earned the majority of its early customer base through influencers.
However, the healthcare industry hasn’t adopted it nearly as much as other industries providing an excellent opportunity for marketers that are open to new ideas.
Better yet, there are hundreds of influencers in healthcare-related industries that would likely be more than willing to collaborate with you. For example, celebrity trainer and YouTuber Magnus Lygdback recently did a collaboration with a sleep professional.
Through this collaboration, Dr. Michael Breus earned an extra 14,000 views, and many influencers are happy to collaborate at no charge.
So how do you find these influencers and reach out to them?
First, look for influencers that have previously spoken about the subject in which you are an expert. For example, if you are a sleep expert, you may look for influencers that have previously spoken about the importance of sleep. Just search their name and “sleep” and see if any content comes up.
If they have mentioned it, then it’s easy to reach out to them with a quick email or DM like this:
Hi (influencer),
I recently came across your video on sleep. I definitely agree with what you said about X, Y, and Z. However, you may not know about A, B, and C.
I’m a registered sleep psychologist and was wondering if you’d be interested in collaborating? I’d be happy to tell your audience more about how they can optimize their sleep to lose weight by doing A, B, and C. I’ve done several clinical trials on this and would be happy to share the research.
Thanks,
John
While not all of them will respond, you’ll probably have several that will be willing to do a collaboration. A handful may even do it free of charge.
The smaller the audience, the more likely they will be open to a collaboration, so aim for a few hundred thousand subscribers.
Finally, you also want to be sure that their audience is loyal. If it’s an Instagram model with lots of followers, but you notice that those followers aren’t very loyal, you probably won’t get the conversions you’re looking for.
Internal Linking
There are thousands of SEO tactics. It’s easy to find yourself trying to do everything and ultimately spread your resources too thin.
However, internal linking is still one of the 80/20 SEO tactics that is super simple to execute. Internal linking produces excellent, lasting results.
So what should your internal linking strategy look like?
First, structure your content in a way that it is arranged categorically. While I wasn’t able to find an excellent example of this in the healthcare space (meaning this is an excellent new opportunity!), I did find an excellent example in the marketing industry.
This blog, Backlinko, is all about SEO and content marketing. However, rather than just having one massive blog on SEO, there are various categories within SEO. This includes link building, keyword research, and technical SEO. Each blog post is sorted into one of those categories
This way, it’s easier for Google to understand what your blog post is about. In turn, it will help it rank higher.
To do this for a healthcare website, you could structure your blog by illnesses or treatment options.
For example, even if you have a very niche industry, such as facial plastic surgery, you could separate the blog into categories such as:
- Pre-Surgery Preparation and Information
- Procedure Information
- Recovery and Post Surgery Information
Note that while tagging your posts for various keywords (such as “content marketing” and “SEO”) is a good idea, you should still structure your content so that it is visually obvious to the reader which posts are in which categories (such as the Backlinko example above).
However, internal linking is more than just categorizing your blog posts clearly.
If you have a post that is ranking poorly, you can add an internal link to it from a top performing post.
For example, this post mentions keyword research tools. However, rather than providing a thorough explanation of what a keyword research tool is, he adds an internal link to his other post about keyword research tools.
Similarly, you can add a few links to the footer of your website.
Given that the footer is considered part of your homepage and your homepage is often the strongest page on your website (because it has the most links), this can give key posts and pages on your website a boost.
The only note is that you should avoid adding too many to your footer (no more than about five) as that can make your website appear spammy.
Video Marketing
YouTube is the second largest search engine. So, it’s no surprise that video is becoming one of the most effective marketing strategies available.
However, that isn’t the only reason why video marketing is one of our favorite healthcare marketing ideas.
First, video allows your customers to meet you virtually, and it will build trust much more quickly than a phone call or blog post, which will help you increase conversions and shorten consultations.
For healthcare in particular, building trust is critical. Most people choose their provider based on how much they like and trust the person. As 70 to 93% of communication is nonverbal, creating videos is an easy way to automate the trust-building process.
So how should you leverage video marketing?
Start by analyzing the most commonly asked questions that come up during consultations. From there, create one video (about 5-10 minutes) answering that question just as you would in a consultation.
From there, you can upload the video to YouTube, start a channel, and even repurpose clips from the video across social media channels.
Even if you have nothing more than an iPhone to record the video with, start recording even just one video per month, or batch record three to four at a time.
If you need a video editor, you can always hire someone on Upwork to edit it for you.
Most people give up too soon, or try too many different formats. However, if you stick to one format and post consistently, you’ll see results over time.
SMS Marketing
While some healthcare marketing teams have started using SMS, it’s still a wide-open space with room for growth.
The first use case for SMS marketing is appointment scheduling and reminders.
However, there are plenty of other things you can do with SMS in healthcare. For example, it is a great way to stay in touch with your customers if you have an upcoming event, new developments in your clinic, or other news.
However, perhaps the most valuable aspect of SMS marketing is that patients can text you! For example, if they want to know clinic hours, they can just send your clinic a quick text.
To start an SMS campaign, you can use a tool like Simple Texting.
The only issue is that it is not HIPAA compliant, so you may not reveal any sensitive patient information.
Nonetheless, it’s an excellent way to keep your audience engageed and get them back into your clinic.
Master BOFU Keywords
If you offer addiction treatment in Boulder, Colorado, ranking for keywords like “drug rehab co” and “inpatient rehab in Boulder” is a no brainer.
However, we consistently see most healthcare facilities failing to optimize their main pages for these keywords.
Some don’t rank because they don’t do any SEO. Others don’t rank because they focus too much on the technical aspects of SEO.
In general, ranking for these keywords is usually a content issue. However, it’s relatively easy to fix.
So how do you fix this?
First, be sure to include any common FAQs that come up on the phone and during consultations.
Typically, a thorough explanation of what the treatment is, who it’s useful for, and (if possible) some patient stories/reviews is a good baseline for every BOFU keyword.
Here’s an excellent example of the top-ranking page for “Rhinoplasty Denver” and you can see that it covers a lot of different questions patients may have about rhinoplasty without overwhelming them with text.
Specifically, here are some of the subheaders:
- What is Rhinoplasty?
- What Can I Expect During my Rhinoplasty Procedure?
- Doctor Credentials
- Why is Rhinoplasty performed?
- Can nose reshaping correct issues with breathing?
- Are you a candidate for nose reshaping?
- Before/After photos
- What is Rhinoplasty Recovery Like?
- What to Expect From My Consultation
- Our Denver Rhinoplasty Surgeon
However, one pitfall is that many SEO’s become too caught up in adding more and more content. Eventually it just becomes a sea of words that’s indigestible to the reader.
Therefore, only write more content if you feel that it will add value to the reader. Also invest in quality design that makes it easy to skim.
If you have a physical location, it’s also important to include that in your content. While it can be difficult to include the physical location of your city naturally into your content, here are a few ideas:
- Use stories from local patients
- Statistics of the issue you solve in that city
- Discussion of your location (5 minutes from the Denver airport)
- How the area impacts the issue (anger management in NY because of…)
While you may not begin ranking overnight, the website visitors you do have will pause on your page to read the content. As dwell times increase, Google will reward you in the SERPs.
Link Building (By Partnerships – Not Link Builders)
Speaking of boosting your presence in the SERPs, links still matter to Google. While there is discussion that it may not matter as much in the future, the basis of link building is rooted in the idea that pages users love naturally accumulate links within the industry’s online communities.
Therefore, my guess is that even if it’s not as prominent in the future, it will still matter to some extent. However, the quality of the links built to a page will be increasingly important.
Therefore, rather than focusing on building links, focus on building relationships with industry leaders.
So how do you do that?
First, don’t ask for people to start linking to you! Instead, approach it as an opportunity to do a collaboration.
For example, can you do an interview with that person and then push it to your social channels? Or, if they have data, you can ask to do a collaboration where you gather insights from their data and then write a guest post for them? Within the guest post, you could link back to a relevant post.
Another clever example is to offer to update content for another industry leader. In return, you can ask them if you can include one (relevant!) link back to your website.
Notice that this is dramatically more valuable to the other party? Their content is updated, you earn a link, and in return, you form a valuable industry ally.
In addition, they will probably be more willing to link to your website naturally in the future.
Patient Surveys
It may sound ridiculous, but the easiest way to grow is to give your patients what they want! Sure, you might not be able to accommodate all of their requests, but you will see trends in what they love about your service and what they would like changed.
This will help inform you on what elements of your service you should highlight in your marketing. For example, if several patients say they love the experience, highlight that on your website and list out the specifics of the patient experience.
Similarly, patient surveys may show if you are attracting the wrong kind of patient. For example, if you advertise that you offer quick addiction treatment, patients may be coming to you with the idea that it will be a quick fix. As a result, you may have many negative reviews and a high churn rate.
Instead, you may have to shift your messaging to a short yet intensive addiction treatment facility. This is so patients are prepared to put in the work. Therefore, they are more likely to leave more positive reviews and you experience less churn.
To execute patient surveys, you can use a tool like SurveyMonkey or Qwary.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing isn’t new, but I’ve still yet to see many patients leverage it effectively.
Of course, this means that there is an opportunity for healthcare companies interested in investing the time required to make it work.
Rather than just posting news updates and reminders on social media, think about what you do when you get on social media.
You want to hear stories about your friends and other people.
So why can’t you do the same for your healthcare business’s accounts?
Therefore, write about patient stories (within HIPAA compliance) of those you have been able to help. These tend to have higher engagement and are the most likely formats to go viral.
In addition, if your other social media posts are performing well, consider posting content less frequently yet improving the quality of it. If your posts typically receive hundreds of likes and comments, these social algorithms will give you the benefit of the doubt when you post something new and show it to more people.
However, if your posts are frequently ignored, they won’t show it to as many people.
I also mentioned above how beneficial collaborations with other social media influencers can be, so take advantage of that as well.
Action Steps
Marketing is becoming increasingly competitive, but all of the ideas listed above are fresh and widely untapped in the healthcare industry.
If you’d rather have an expert execute these steps for you, reach out to Stodzy. One of our team members would be happy to discuss your goals and how you can improve your growth into 2022 and beyond.
