“[Business owners] who can analyse the trends and prepare for the future have the best chances of setting their companies up for success.” Neil Patel, New York Times best-selling author and top influencer on the web.
With a new year comes new marketing trends. Trends that Splice Marketing believe will significantly benefit healthcare professionals and healthcare businesses through:
- Improved engagement
- Improved client / patient communication
- Attraction and retention of patients.
Splice Marketing is here to help you decrypt these 2018 marketing trends and provide you with some tips on how to incorporate these trends into your 2018 marketing strategy.
So if you want 2018 to be about growth and success in your practice or business, start here!
1. Video
Video marketing was a hit in 2017 and it’s expected to be even more popular in 2018.
Splice Marketing is excited about how powerful video will be in the healthcare industry in 2018. Videos will please social media trends, improve your rankings in Google (known as SEO) and most importantly, build trust and rapport with your prospects making them more likely to choose you and your practice over your competitors or you over other practitioners.
Splice Marketing predicts that video will start replacing the patient information flyer. What do you think?
Let’s think of a scenario….
You’re a Cosmetic Surgeon, Orthopaedic Surgeon or even a Gynaecologist.
Save your patients hours of reading time by explaining the procedure through a explainer video.
Currently, patients receive a surgery pack which contains pages and pages of information. 2018 should be about converting this information into a 2-5 minutes video where the surgeon is interviewed and explains the procedure, what to expect and potential risks. The video can be emailed to the patient so you can track and ensure they’ve opened the video or uploaded to your website and the patient given the direct link to the video.
Video will also mitigate the risk of any miscommunication or the risk of the patient not reading the content. Healthcare practitioners can take advantage of the visual medium and show diagrams or use props to explain the procedure.
It will take approximately half a day in total to plan, prepare and record your professional’s explainer video, a few weeks for a professional to edit and then endless uses for the one video.
You heard it here first!
P.S. if you fit this profile and love this idea, check out our video campaign package offer.
Where to start with video
DIY
If you’re just starting out and want to trail video, a smartphone is all you need.
Pair your smart phone with these three items to make your video look more professional –
- a lapel microphone,
- a tripod to hold your smartphone, and
- a light that clips onto your phone.
Try Amazon Australia or eBay for cost-effective equipment.
Want to look relaxed and friendly in the video? While recording, imagine yourself talking to a patient and carefully explaining a treatment technique. Don’t forget to use simple, everyday language they can understand and appear energetic.
Professional Video
If you want a professional, high-quality look to your videos, then engaging a videographer and producer is where you need to start.
Splice Marketing offers professional videography services at a very competitive price so contact us for a quote.
Live Video
Live video is one of the most influential ways to build an instant rapport with your online audiences. If improving your profile is an important goal for you then we highly recommend you start experimenting with live video.
You could start a live video as you walk into your practice – a quick introduction, a wave from the staff and then into your rooms. This brings the in-person experience into the digital world showing patients / clients what they can expect when they come into your practice and the friendly faces that will greet them as they enter.
Or perhaps you present at numerous conferences? Live video is a great way to promote your topics and boost your credibility.
Once you’ve got your video, what do you do next?
There is a multitude of opportunities to promote and feature your video. These include:
- Uploading to a YouTube channel so your video will appear when people search for similar content
- Embedding your video onto your website
- Sharing your video on Facebook or Instagram to educate a broader audience
- Emailing your video to relevant patients
- Playing your video during industry presentations
- Displaying your video on the TV in the practice reception area.
If you want advice on where to start, please reach us on Facebook, we are always up for a chat.
2. Mobile-First Website Design
Google will introduce the ‘Mobile-First’ search algorithm in early 2018.
The Mobile-First algorithm means Google will rank mobile-optimised sites and content higher in search results from no matter what device (desktop, tablet or mobile) the person is using to search for content. To dig a little deeper, it means the “Google algorithms will primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site … and to show snippets from those pages in [search] results.”
What is Mobile-First Design?
Mobile-first is a design strategy wherein a website is built for small screens (smart phones) and is further scaled up to adapt to desktop screen sizes. An advantage being it will also ensure your website opens faster.
To put the importance of mobile-first into perspective, the number of smartphone users grew 84% in Australia over 2016-17. With consumption being always-on, the majority of search and web browsing is happening directly from mobile.
How can you leverage this mobile first trend for your practice?
We live in a world where your patients and prospects access your website through their phones, so it is essential for your site to transition into a mobile-first website. In doing this, you will play a part in delivering accurate and relevant healthcare information to patients as and when they are searching.
If you’re not sure how your website performs on a mobile device, you can run a quick test through Google. Just visit their Mobile-Friendly Test, type in your website address and hit ‘Run Test’.
3. Marketing Automation
Personalised, targeted and timely – marketing automation is all about improving the experience for your patients, both old and new. This affordable digital marketing solution will become the new normal for businesses in 2018.
What exactly is marketing automation?
Hubspot says it best “marketing automation refers to software that automates your marketing for you. The software is designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient way.”
More efficiency in your marketing processes? Think marketing automation.
Splice Marketing recommends email automation as a way to nurture patients after their initial consult. Automation will leave a positive impression on your new patient by sending them an email after their first visit. This email could outline what to expect in the next consult.
Splice Marketing Tip: As a healthcare practitioner, you can create several care pathway emails for different treatment plans and mail these to new patients for more information. Helping the patient with information about the journey shows your practice as caring and increases their chances of continuing to return to you.
Splice Marketing can help you plan, create and automate your care pathway emails, just contact us and we can discuss further.
Final Thoughts
Staying current with marketing trends leads to business success. That’s why Splice Marketing recommends these three trends – video, mobile-first and automation – as they are relevant to the healthcare industry and patterns that you can apply to your 2018 marketing strategy straight away.
Lead the way and help Australia’s healthcare industry evolve by adopting these 2018 marketing trends.
