Healthcare marketing has traditionally taken place offline, which made sense a decade ago. Today’s world has changed, and healthcare digital marketing is a necessity for those who want to make it in 2014. According to Pew Internet, nearly three quarters of American Internet users have sought out health information online during the past year. An integrated marketing strategy is a great way to capture the attention of these people and build your business for the future.

The Limitations of Offline Marketing

Traditional offline marketing is a brutal medium for healthcare for two reasons. First, there’s only so much you can say in a conventional advertisement. Doctors can say they’re the best and pharmaceutical companies can say their pill works, but they don’t have the time to say why. Second, the necessary disclaimers can make offline marketing a nightmare. Watch any commercial for prescription medication and all you’ll see is a list of potential side effects. Again, it’s a great way to get your name out there, but it doesn’t show people what they need to know.

How Digital Marketing Helps

Healthcare digital marketing is the future, and the reasons why offline marketing is so limited are the very reasons why online marketing excels. Whereas a doctor might only have a 15 second TV spot or an ad in the community newspaper to promote his or her business, the Internet provides so much more. That same doctor can now create a website that discusses his or her practice and that contains patient testimonials. They can also keep tabs with patients via email, cultivate social media followings and create YouTube videos to inform patients about ways they improve their health. All of these methods incorporate two-way communication and lend themselves to being shared with others.

That last point is key. Most doctors are chosen by patients through word of mouth, such as a patient raving to his or her friends about the quality of their physician. An integrated online presence can do so much for the word of mouth of a doctor, a medical practice or any healthcare product. Furthermore, a solid Web presence and active social media accounts do a lot to break down the traditional barriers between individuals and their healthcare, such as the perception that doctors and healthcare companies only care about patients when they’re being paid to do so.

How to Market Digitally

Digital marketing can seem simple, but it’s really not. A lot goes into the appearance of effortless marketing. Here are some ways you can enter the digital age.

• Email Marketing. It might seem like an obvious thing to use email in digital marketing, but email marketing is a science. Instead of emailing your entire list of customers, you’ll break your customer list into segments based on their gender, age, risk factors or other criteria.

• Landing Pages. Your email database comes from your landing pages, which include a “call to action” asking the customer to provide their information in exchange for something of value. Usually this is an article, an ebook or a coupon. The form on the landing page captures the information you’ll use to mine your client base and send emails.

• Search Engine Marketing. There are two ways you can game the search engines to feature your site ahead of the others. The first is to purchase ads on the sidebars of search engines, such as Google, that will come up when potential customers search for specific terms. The other way is to utilize search engine optimization (SEO), which means customizing the copy of your website to include these search terms, resulting in your site becoming a more prominent result for that search.

• Social Media. Some people associate social media with informal communication and a lack of privacy, but it’s actually a great way to promote healthcare. Social media promotes interactivity and customer engagement; it also encourages people to share your ideas and offerings with others.

Integration

The benefits of online healthcare marketing are clear, but they shouldn’t be the sole means for communication with a customer base. The population in the most need of healthcare is older people, a demographic not exactly known for its technological savvy. Healthcare professionals should embrace digital marketing wholeheartedly while still maintaining current forms of offline marketing, so long as those marketing methods have proven themselves to be successful.

Healthcare is one of the few areas where Internet marketing isn’t the dominant form of communication, but that’s changing before our very eyes. Embracing healthcare digital marketing now will ensure that you’re ahead of the curve, meaning that your competitors will be following you into the online world. Through an integrated marketing campaign, you’ll not only be able to double your reach, but you’ll also head off competitors and show customers that you’re a leader in the industry.