Image Alt

Maximizing Inbound Marketing in the Healthcare Industry

Maximizing Inbound Marketing in the Healthcare Industry

Cutting through the noise and getting your voice heard in the healthcare industry can be tricky, but inbound marketing has breathed new life into this field.

 

While this industry once lagged behind when it came to content strategy, more and more marketers in the industry are realizing its potential. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of Internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year. This feeds into the “I don’t know but I can try to find out” mindset that most people have when it comes to health-related questions. In addition to this, Pew found that 77% of those seeking healthcare information online began their session at a search engine. So what does this all mean? It means that people want to be informed about their health before they see the doctor, and they are turning to the digital world for that information.

Inbound marketing is simply the practice of attracting potential clients through information that gains your prospect’s attention. Rather than annoying your audience through traditional advertising such as television or radio ads, an inbound marketing strategy relies on demonstrating your knowledge of the industry by publishing content your prospects are interested in. This means that the next time folks are searching for information, they land on your site and can ultimately become leads. Inbound marketing also has an advantage over traditional advertising in that it attracts qualified leads, rather than just anyone who might be “kicking tires.” Conversant Bio, a leader in tissue procurement for pharmaceutical research, was able to increase its leads 2.5x month over month, but more importantly, marketing qualified leads increased 7x month over month.

Any successful inbound marketing program starts with understanding your buyer personas. This is more than just segmenting a portion of the audience and creating messages that cater to that group. A buyer persona is a story, a hypothetical ideal customer who is looking for exactly what your company provides. Inbound marketing focuses on the consumer, and aims to interact with potential clients by providing them with relevant and useful content they would be searching for, so it is important to keep this buyer persona in mind when you are creating content. By providing premium content offers such as e-books and whitepapers, you can start accumulating contact information from the people visiting your site. These offers can range in what they provide, but an example might be The New Mom’s Complete Survival Guide to Flu Season. All someone has to do to get access to this offer is provide their name and an email address where it will be delivered.

After you have gathered these email addresses you can move these individuals from prospects to clients with the use of automated emails. This is the best way to stay in touch with your customers, and give them an update on what’s been happening in your business. Staying in constant contact with these prospects is the best way to build and maintain relationships that will help you nurture them into becoming clients. This will allow you to continually provide your leads with information they would be interested in through targeted emails. By using HubSpot, an integrated inbound marketing platform, Avella Specialty Pharmacy was able to multiply their web traffic by 4x, and increase online conversions by 38%.

Once you have successfully turned a prospect into a client, the work is not done. The final step in the inbound process is to delight customers and turn them into promoters, and ultimately a megaphone for your business. It is important to continually send emails to your current clients to maintain the relationship that you have built through excellent service.

The entire process put together looks like this:

inboundmarketing_diagram

Inbound marketing can help any business, regardless of the industry, connect with potential and current clients alike. These days, people are searching the web for anything and everything, and inbound marketing takes advantage of this. With a little bit of effort, and the right inbound strategy, any business can turn its website or blog into a lead-generating machine.