Healthcare has officially entered the mobile age — it’s time for medical organizations to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly.
According to Flurry Insights, Americans now spend more than five hours per day consuming digital content on their smartphones and tablets. That’s more than 150 hours per month!
How are they filling all of that time? In addition to texting, calling, social media perusing, and basic internet browsing, more and more people are turning to their smartphones to conduct in-depth research on serious issues. Healthcare has become an increasingly mobile industry, with more than 62% of smartphone owners using their devices to look up information about a medical condition and/or treatment. As mobile’s role continues to grow in the patient path to treatment, medical marketers need to adjust their strategies if they want to remain visible in an increasingly competitive market. Here are three key areas to be aware of as we move into the second half of 2017 and beyond.
1. Click-to-Call Advertising
Patients are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to conduct searches for local healthcare providers — in order to secure their business, medical practices and hospitals need to make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch for more information or to book a new appointment. Click-to-call (CTC) advertising enables seamless, one-touch dialing for patients the moment they stumble upon your medical brand when conducting an online search. In other words, a prospective patient will see your ad, tap the number on the screen, and be automatically connected with your staff.
From a consumer perspective, that’s a whole lot easier than navigating your website and hunting down a phone number — especially when they’re on-the-go. Unsurprisingly, 70% of consumers make use of CTC ads, which account for 60% of all product and services-related phone calls.
2. Social Advertising
Today, the average U.S. consumer spends more than two hours per day on social media platforms (that number skyrockets to a mind-boggling nine hours for teens!) It therefore follows that if you want to get someone’s attention online, social networks are a good place to start.
Importantly, consumers are increasingly relying on social media platforms like Facebook when making important life decisions — in fact, 90% of individuals between the ages of 19 and 24 say they would trust health information that they find through social channels, and 40% rely on information they find on social when making decisions about treatment.
Social ads are a great way to boost the visibility of your practice or hospital among your target demographic. Facebook’s powerful targeting capabilities and massive audience make it particularly well-suited for healthcare marketing, enabling providers to hone in on niche audiences with personalized messaging in order to attract new patients at minimal cost.
3. Accelerated Mobile Pages
Back in 2015, the Google and Twitter-backed Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) project was born out of a desire to help web publishers build pages and ads that are “consistently fast, beautiful and high-performing across devices and distribution platforms.” In short, they recognized that mobile was on the rise, and developed AMPs to improve the mobile browsing experience. e engaging experience on mobile and desktop.
While Google has stated that AMP content isn’t factoring into page rankings (yet!), it provides value in other areas — in addition to improving the user experience with faster load times and easier navigation, a recent Search Engine Journal survey found that 50% of internet users are much more likely to click on an AMP link than a regular one.
These three strategies are all cost-effective, simple to implement, and will likely make a big difference when it comes to boosting your practice or hospital’s marketing ROI. At the end of the day, there’s no shortage of patients out there who are in need of your services — you just need to make sure your marketing efforts are being made in the right areas.
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