4 Rules To Promote Your Healthcare Business

Are you struggling to promote your healthcare business? There’s a strong chance it’s because you’re taking a very traditional approach to proceedings, but that won’t work here. Healthcare companies are harder to promote and market because of the industry they’re in. Still, you will see more success if you follow these four golden rules: 

1. Work with healthcare experts

Life will be much easier if you hire some healthcare marketing experts to help with everything. It can seem like an extortionate expense, but the healthcare industry is so complicated. You can’t design a marketing campaign in the same way as you would for an office-based business or a business in the retail industry. It won’t work because of the unique demands of this particular sector. 

You need expert help from people who’ve marketed healthcare companies in the past. They’ll help you understand the different platforms to focus on, how you should approach content marketing, the various words you should or shouldn’t use, etc. It will feel less like you’re swimming against the current if you’ve got some experience personnel onboard. You don’t need to outsource or hire an entire agency – freelancers can be just as beneficial. 

2. Always ensure you maintain HIPAA compliance

Ah yes, HIPAA compliance. It’s everyone’s nightmare in the healthcare industry, but you can’t avoid it. As a quick recap, HIPAA compliance refers to how your business handles patients’ data. It’s a crucial data privacy and protection rule that forces you to have certain things in place that prove you’re looking after their private information. 

Failure to be compliant will result in heavy fines, but did you know that your digital marketing campaign can lead to non-compliance? It’s all to do with how your website gains, stores, and shares information – plus everything else that happens along the sales funnel. The easiest way to avoid any drama is by conducting your digital campaign via a HIPAA-compliant marketing platform. Plenty of these exist, and they are designed to ensure that you meet compliance at all times, while still promoting your business effectively. 

3. Focus on building trust and credibility

If you search for general marketing tips online, you’ll see loads of articles and blogs explaining what it takes to make your business noticeable. Unfortunately, most of those tips are irrelevant for healthcare businesses. It’s way easier to promote a business in this industry if you focus on building the following: 

• Trust
• Credibility

The first is done by being honest and open about everything. Don’t hide information behind consultations or contact detail requests. Be upfront about all aspects of your services – this includes pricing, what you can/can’t do, and any proposed benefits. Use data and studies to back up any claims and make it impossible for anyone to mistrust you. 

All the while, trust builds an element of credibility, which you can reinforce with accreditations. Show people that you’re licensed or have certain qualifications. It brings a level of authenticity to your business – and this can be done simply by adding badges to your website. 

Don’t sleep on SEO either! It’s just as relevant for a healthcare business as it is for all other businesses. Getting your website into the top positions for different searches builds both trust and credibility. Users always associate the top few sites with authenticity and reliability – if you’re down at the bottom, it’s hard for anyone to trust your medical expertise. 

4. Always be empathetic 

Change the way you speak to people through your content to ensure it’s empathetic. As much as you want to create a credible persona, you can’t blast it in people’s faces. Your target audience needs to feel like you care – that’s how you get through to them. 

Begin by truly getting to know your customers and what they’re looking for. As a healthcare business, the chances are they need help with a medical problem or something similar. This puts them in a vulnerable position, so you need to market with empathy and show that you understand them. Frame your whole campaign around empathy by getting across that you understand their main pain points and are here to help. 

It makes people feel at ease from the get-go, and they are more likely to continue enquiring about your business than a healthcare company that’s way too promotional. 

You should see a pretty clear difference between these rules and some of the general marketing tips you’ve read online. Promoting a healthcare business is all about knowing your audience and what matters the most to them. It’s also about being aware of the industry and calling upon help to ensure you don’t run afoul of regulations!