As the industry evolves from B2B to B2C, here’s what every healthcare company should be watching—and why.
Healthcare. It’s arguably the most rapidly changing industry around. More and more, consumers are taking charge of the decisions affecting their health. And to do that, they’re turning to online resources for information about care providers, health conditions and treatment options.
Healthcare companies should be ready to meet consumers there. Though they’re relatively late to the marketing game, the shift to consumerism means it’s time to play ball. After all, improving the patient experience through effective marketing can also mean improving profits. As these companies pivot to marketing to consumers, it’s critical that they market smarter, not just harder. The way to do that is to watch the right data. Here’s how:
Let consumer demographics guide you.
To know how and where to reach your audience, you first have to understand who they are. Start with a question: Who is the consumer? Then answer it by diving into several data sources, including your healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) system. It will point you toward actionable insights concerning patient habits and preferences, enabling you to identify and track specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you achieve your marketing goals. You can also examine social media demographics, your email list and website audience.
Monitor your email click-through rate.
Sure, CTR helps measure the effectiveness of digital campaigns, but that’s not all it does. It also indicates how your company is doing at establishing and nurturing a two-way relationship. That’s especially critical for healthcare companies, whose livelihoods depend on their ability to build loyalty and trust with consumers.
Analyze your (successful) competitors.
Identify your top three to five competitors and look at what they’re doing. What’s working for them? Why? Would it work for your business too? That’s actionable data at its finest. A word of caution here: Don’t hem yourself in. Just because you’re not doing the same things as your competitors doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. But it’s always a good idea to examine healthcare industry standards and benchmarks to keep tabs on how your company is measuring up.
Measure your digital campaign ROI.
People are always talking about reports, but what good is reporting if it doesn’t turn dials for your business? This is where those KPIs really come into play. Your marketing efforts should 1) cross channels (think website, email and social media), and then 2) work together to bring consumers to the same spot. If you’re not tracking each individual channel, you can’t know which ones are working … and you can’t adjust course to fix what isn’t.
Bonus tip: Use those ROI measurements to inform your marketing budget allocation.
What’s the best use of your marketing dollars: content, digital marketing, media creation? This is all evidence-based work. But to get to the heart of it, it takes teams of experts working together. At iostudio, our content creators, developers, account supervisors and analysts collaborate to set up mechanisms to capture the right data, curate it and turn it into intelligible, valuable action.