Value-Based Health Care Facilitates Value-Based Marketing by Karina Tama

Health care has been undergoing enormous change since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. As a digital marketer, it’s been intriguing to watch how those changes have affected the ways that health care providers have responded with marketing approaches.

Before the health care changes, providers employed a fee-for-service model. Hospitals and other providers had small budgets for marketing, but they didn’t really need larger ones. Board directors often questioned if they needed to advertise at all. I remember seeing the same types of traditional ads that other industries were using -- print ads, TV commercials, radio ads and big billboard signage. Occasionally, I’d get some direct mail for health care in my mailbox.

The changes in the health care industry mean that health care providers now get reimbursed for value-based care. Essentially, they get paid by helping people stay healthy and preventing the need for more expensive treatments. The switch has caused a major shift in how digital marketers in health care must approach their craft.

Digital Marketing Transitions Advertising From A Luxury To A Necessity

The changes in the approach to the market have forced hospital boards of trustees and CEOs to review their budgets and make strategic decisions about funding allocation for patient outreach and marketing. Quality care is still the primary goal in health care, and marketing is quickly rising on the list of priorities.

Just as health care providers like to see results when their patients’ health improves, I’ve learned that the chief executives of hospitals desire to see results from the funds they’re allocating toward digital marketing efforts. Despite feeling increased pressure to perform, I’ve never been one to back down from a difficult challenge.

By showing them how search engines boost their rankings and how good content and social media channels lead to patient conversions, I’ve been able to prove to board directors and senior executives that digital campaigns work.

Four Steps To A Health Care Digital Campaign That Gets Results

I’ve developed a four-step process to help health care organizations get people to take notice of their health care needs.

1. Boost Rank In Search Engines

Health care providers that are looking to attract patients will find a willing audience using search engines. According to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, about 80% of internet users started with a search engine to find information on a health-related topic online. And research by Google found that 44% of patients who looked on their mobile devices for a hospital followed through and scheduled an appointment. 

That information tells me that paying attention to search rankings is money well spent by health care providers. By tagging webpages with relevant keywords, writing informative page descriptions and creating strategic HTML titles, search engines will prioritize the health care provider and make it equally visible on mobile devices.

2. Create Inbound Content With CRM Planning

Using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you’re able to draw patient data from a variety of sources to learn more about what terms and information patients are looking for and how they tend to go about getting it. You can effectively use automation in conjunction with this data. And you can also use it for multichannel strategies and strengthening engagement with prospects and patients.

The CRM dashboard tracks my results for email, direct mail, social media and texting. The data helps me decide what kind of content to produce, so my audience gets the right content at the most optimal times. Content that is relevant and of high quality still produces the best results, so there’s no skimping on professional, informative content.

Prospects become patients when the right content meets the right marketing channels at the right time.

3. Get Active On Social Media

Social media is the place for health care providers to be because that’s where their potential patients are. Social media channels are the perfect places to engage patients in discussions and support physicians. They’re also the perfect places to educate the public about health topics, which can lead to overall improved health outcomes.

4. Adjust Your Digital Campaigns Based On The Data

One of the great things about attracting patients to health care sites is that they use various types of data while they’re searching. That makes it much easier to craft digital marketing campaigns. If the results aren’t trending as well as you hoped, review and analyze the aggregated data. Within a few minutes, I can pick up on different data, quickly change my campaign strategy in real time and watch the results in action.

Before the changes in health care, marketers often put their best foot forth using the traditional marketing ads of the day and hoped for the best. There was really no way to measure the results. Today, I’ve been able to get buy-in from senior executives by offering real results from the return on investment of their marketing dollars.

Once you have the opportunity to demonstrate how their names and practices have risen to the top of the search engine, how you’ve used data to determine the most popular topics and how active their social media campaigns have become, it’s easier to get buy-in from the top executives and board members who control the marketing funds.

Value-based care created a major change in today’s health care, and it’s also given digital marketers an opportunity to produce value-based results.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/10/03/value-based-health-care-facilitates-value-based-marketing/#677e93e35702