Introduction:

As the healthcare industry continues to be overwhelmed by the pandemic and the mass exit of healthcare professionals from the traditional hospital setting, physicians must focus on looking forward. As they shift away from the traditional hospital setting, many are identifying new ways to practice and treat patients. In 2020 and 2021, marketing dollars have shifted toward addressing better safety protocols, more personal protective equipment, and higher staff salaries. Now, in 2022, physicians are looking to stabilize their practice and return to consistent growth.

As the industry continues to deal with the challenges of COVID-19 and budgets begin to stabilize back to the pre-pandemic level, many practices are looking at how to grow in this new world. Patients’ standards for treatment have changed as well as patients’ traditional beliefs about the healthcare system. Over the course of the last two years, traditional marketing tactics have also evolved.

Read on to learn more about the top five healthcare marketing trends in 2022.

1. Personalization

 From a digital marketing perspective, we’ve been seeing a personalization of emails, shopping carts, and suggested purchases increase over the last five years in the e-commerce industry. We’ve all been susceptible to the “suggested items for you” section when shopping online. Well, the trend has finally hit the healthcare market. Patients are looking for this same level of personalization. They want their physicians to really understand their preferences, their needs, and their health issues. In order to deliver this type of marketing, segmentation and personalization are going to be major trends in 2022.

Marketing will need to be more targeted and personalized, and the blanket approach to marketing will no longer pass the test for many patients. Patients will feel more connected, more loyal, and more trustworthy the more physicians connect directly with them. Here are some key ways to achieve this detailed personalization.

Automating outreach

Connect with patients via email or SMS after and before an appointment. Reach out to patients currently in your CRM—those you haven’t seen in a couple of years or who have missed their routine appointment. Send a personalized email or text reaching out to them about how they’ve been. Ask how your practice can make connecting, booking, or visiting the patients easier. Test your message to a small cohort of patients and track the feedback, appointments booked, and types of patients replying. 

Send a message after the patient visit to see how they’re feeling. Make a connection through these small gestures to increase loyalty and visibility. Many of the common CRM systems can help automate these messages to ease staff resources.

Understanding preferences

One critical part of marketing personalization for your practice is to understand your patients’ communication styles. Some patients might prefer an email over a text message. Make sure you have up-to-date consent and preferences for each patient. These records should be verified and updated at least once a year to make sure you’re respecting patients’ privacy. Keeping up-to-date records also signals to the patient that you’re a trustworthy practice that understands their privacy. You can now communicate with your patients in a more connected and meaningful way.

2. Digital Outreach

83% of the world population has a smartphone and 52% of the world’s population are mobile internet users (https://review42.com/resources/smartphone-statistics/)  What does this mean for healthcare practices? This means that your mobile outreach should be a key part of your marketing strategy. Here are some key ways to engage with patients digitally.

-        Telehealth

            The pandemic was instrumental in increasing patient and healthcare industry adoption of telemedicine. Although this technology was available pre-pandemic, most practices were not completely set up to utilize this technology in an effective manner. However, the pandemic pushed this strategy toward common use, and it’s here to stay. Depending on your patients’ average age, most patients who used telehealth technology in 2020 and 2021 say they will continue to use the technology going forward. From a marketing standpoint, practices can use this technology as a new service offering to increase patient loyalty and convenience. You can also extend office hours by delivering treatment and advice from home comfort.

-        Text Messaging

This one seems like a no-brainer lately, but if your practice is still wondering if it should text their patient; the clear answer is yes. Over 95% of text messages that are sent get opened, according to Twilio (https://www.twilio.com/learn/call-and-text-marketing/best-practices-text-sms-marketing). In addition, there are many benefits to using text messages to communicate with your patients, from reduced no-shows to increased trust. Be concise, compliant, and engaging when reaching out to patients. This strategy really allows you to have the right conversation at the right time with your ideal patient.

-        Webchat

This strategy has been around for a while now, but in 2022 it’s taking on a new twist. This is better known as web to text, and it provides the potential patients an even easier call to action. Now patients can connect with someone from your practice within a couple of minutes of interacting with your website. You can even create automation to connect with patients after hours. You can now interact with ease instead of leaving a potential patient hanging with a one-way scripted reply.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a powerful driver for organic growth. This is one of the only strategies that you own from top to bottom. This is one that you have full control over. As privacy and algorithms continue to change, you can deliver the message when and how you want with email marketing. Email marketing is a way to stay in touch with your patients and provide meaningful health information when they’re not visiting the office. Some things to remember when starting your first email campaign: stay HIPAA compliant, send a communication at a consistent time and day of the week, sell a new service, or ask for a booked appointment. Use automation and software solutions to build HTML emails, and automate the process. Overall, these emails can re-engage patients to come back into the office or even book an appointment online.

4. Reputation Management

Understanding how you and your practice show up online is becoming a top priority for many healthcare clinics. Your clinic’s website is an important part of looking presentable, but patients are also reading reviews on sites like Yelp and WebMD and getting the inside track on how your practice works. Reading Google and Facebook reviews are a critical part of the process of finding a doctor for most patients. The increased consumerism in the healthcare industry has driven most healthcare professionals to pay close attention to the reviews they receive from current patients.

Practices that incorporate a review process in their communication with patients will see an increase in their five-star rankings and provide new potential patients a better understanding of what type of practice they are.

Set up a process to capture reviews from patients within 24 hours of the appointment. Review and monitor reviews on Yelp, Facebook, Zocdoc, Google, and WebMD. Comment on negative reviews to show you’re looking to improve or manage the negative experience.

Patients may also find your practice on other sites outside of the more common sites like Google. Manage your listing and make sure your information matches. This signals to search engines that you are who you say you are and will increase your organic ranking.

5. Understanding the Data

As a physician, you understand how to read and analyze data, but one critical data point for your practice has been missing in recent years, and that’s your marketing return on investment. In today’s competitive market, you have to be able to understand what’s working and what’s not working to be able to pivot. As privacy laws and regulations around social media continue to change, marketers and physicians need to be able to change and update their marketing strategy on quarterly bases.

Understanding the practice’s financial goals and marketing resources before deploying any marketing strategies can help minimize spending and wasted resources.

Reviewing key metrics like marketing spending, ranking results, reviews, and campaign success on a weekly basis can help practices gain a competitive advantage.

Tackling the trends in 2022

Start by focusing on key goals for your practice. Identify key performance indicators and start to measure them on a regular basis. Once you know what you want to improve, start by deploying one of the trends above, whether that’s email marketing, reputation management, or digital outreach. Start with one, and perfect it before moving on to the next strategy. Partner with a marketing agency or physician liaison to help execute the strategies above. The strategies may look simple to deploy but often need daily attention to perform at their best.