The Do’s and Don’ts of Healthcare Advertisements: Your Go-to Guide
It’s hard for people to care about healthcare. There are more than 900,000 businesses in the healthcare sector. A person cannot follow all these companies, so they only remember a few of them.
Healthcare advertisements are your best way to stand out from the throngs. But you have to be smart about the advertisements you run.
Who should you target with your ads? What should your ads contain? What are some common mistakes that healthcare companies make?
Answer these questions and you can create a great healthcare marketing campaign that your customers will remember. Here is your quick guide.
Do Keep Your Healthcare Advertisements Local
Even if you are a national company, you should focus on local advertisements. People do not want to go to doctors that live far away from them. They want doctors who are members of their community and understand local issues.
At a minimum, you should use visuals reflective of local communities in your advertisements. Show the fronts of popular restaurants and use photographs of parks and streets.
If you are running an SEO campaign, you should use “near me” keywords in your marketing. Each of your healthcare ads should mention where your offices are located.
You should do geotargeted searches. Make sure your ads air on networks within your coverage area. Local news networks are good, but be careful when you use partners of national companies so your ads don’t air elsewhere.
Do Not Lie
Healthcare marketing must be truthful. Never make claims about your products or services that you cannot prove.
Regulations in medical marketing are stringent. You must abide by federal and state regulations, regardless of what they may be. Your legal team should look over your advertisements and work with your marketing team on their process.
Many people regard medical advertisements with suspicion. They assume that a company is overstating the benefits of a drug or operation.
You can win these people over by providing accurate and clear details about what you do. Overexplaining tends to be better than underexplaining. You can start a blog where you can lay out details at length.
Do Adjust Your Advertising Campaign Over Time
Testing your advertisements allows you to reflect the ongoing concerns of your audience. You should run focus groups with your advertisements and see what they think.
While your campaign is ongoing, you should examine metrics to see how your ads are performing. You need to maximize what is good while minimizing what is bad. Doing both may require changing your ads drastically, which you should do.
Online trends occur faster than television and print trends. You should check your social media pages on a daily basis. You may have to change hashtags or visuals at a moment’s notice in order to reflect new desires.
Do Not Be Cliched
Cliches are rampant in healthcare advertisements. Many companies use generic images of doctors in white coats, standing beside families. People are so familiar with these visuals that they mean nothing to them.
Try to find ways of making your advertisements stand out. Using local visuals is one way of doing so.
Developing a creative company logo is another way. Your company should have a logo that conveys what is good about your company. You can use bright colors to suggest a sense of hope and purpose.
Take the colors and textures in your logo and put them in your advertisements. Someone who sees the advertisement will be reminded of your company before the logo appears on the screen. This will help with brand awareness and loyalty.
Do Establish Yourself as a Leader in Healthcare Management
People want to go to the best and most experienced doctors. An easy way of attracting people is to promote how your company manages its healthcare operations.
Many organizations like to talk about the awards they’ve won. This is an easy way of catching people’s attention, but few people understand what those awards mean. By talking about your company’s processes for management, you can prove why you have won your awards.
You can also write about health clinic management tips online. You can give advice to hospitals and offices on how they should run things. This lets you build connections with other institutions as well as seem more legitimate online.
Do Not Market Your Doctors
Many healthcare organizations adopt a doctor-first marketing strategy. They promote the services of their individual doctors and publish directories on where they work. This may make your organization seem more human and appealing to a big group of people.
In reality, it can make your work confusing. Some people don’t understand that an organization can represent a group of doctors with different specialties.
Focus on your organization as a whole and what it can do. You can use your doctors as individual examples of your services. But keep the focus on your brand.
When you are deciding which doctors to use, you can look to physician data management. Figure out who your most popular professionals are and put them forward.
Do Make the Best Healthcare Advertisements
Healthcare advertisements can be tricky. You want to target local customers with ads that reflect their concerns. You cannot misrepresent yourself in any way.
Your ads should change over time, especially if you are on the internet. Your content should be original, appealing, and vibrant. Create a beautiful company logo that reflects on your services well.
Lean into your management strategies so you build credibility with your audience. But focus on brand awareness, not your individual doctors.
Keep up with the latest healthcare marketing trends. Read more healthcare marketing guides by following our coverage.