14 Great Health Care Marketing Ideas

Even though people utilize health care services regularly, the market is still competitive in every community and if you don’t stand out, then people will choose to utilize other providers to meet their needs. You need to market yourself in an effective way that communicates to people that you care about them as a person, not just as a patient.

To begin, that means you’re going to need to begin building relationships with your local community. Get to know people, recognize their special days like birthdays or anniversaries, and make the focus be about them, not about the dollars and cents that they’re able to provide or may need to pay.

Best Health Care Marketing Ideas That Work

1. Call Someone
There is nothing more effective in modern marketing than to call someone to see how they are doing. This will also let you know how well someone may be, allow you to follow-up on a recent visit, and provide a higher level of service that will communicate that you care.

2. Treat People Like Family
People are more likely to make you their provider of choice if they have a level of trust that is similar to what they feel with their own family and close associates. To create this trust, you may have to put trust in them first and treat them like you would your own family to receive the favor in return.

3. Create a Referral Network
Referrals are the fuel that will keep your health care practice running on all cylinders, but don’t make the mistake of focusing on just one type of referral. If you have specialist work that gets done, then solicit work from general providers, but also create a referral network through your patients as well. This will give you two sets of ambassadors to speak of all the good you do.

4. Become the Niche Expert
If you’re viewed as the health care practice with the most expertise in your community, then people will automatically seek you out because you’ll be perceived as the best. This comes down to value. When you can provide people with quality services, useful information, and the tools they need to find better health, then you prove your expertise.

5. Where Are Your Patients?
Knowing what your target demographic is will take you a long way toward profitability because you’ll be able to specifically tailor a marketing response. If your health care practice wants to focus on families, then you’ll take a different approach than providers who will be targeting people with a specific illness.

6. Utilize a Good Newsletter
Part of being in a relationship with someone is making an effort to keep them up to date on what is going on in life. If your health care facility publishes or emails a newsletter out to patients that sign up for one AND makes them available in waiting rooms, you’ll be able to establish many cornerstones every day with the efforts that you’re making.

7. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate
One of the biggest problems that any marketing plan faces is that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and so the message is not concentric. Integrate all of your marketing ideas together so that they can work together. If you’re overlapping on your efforts, then you’re just wasting time and money.

8. Get Your Employees Published
Personal expertise speaks to professional niche expertise so actively work to get your employees published in local, regional, and even national publications. The more that the local media, medical journals, or science publications take notice of your people, then more your local target demographics will take notice as well.

9. Upsell What You’ve Got
Just because you’re providing health care doesn’t mean you can’t upsell your services or provide specific products that will help improve someone’s quality of life. If you provide foot services, for example, then think about selling shoes that could relieve pain.

10. Direct Mail Works Wonders
Direct mail marketing can help you in a variety of ways. Postcards can be announcements to tell your local community of new doctors or new services. Personalized letters that talk about how your health care agency can help a household will help to add to a relationship that is being built. Even traditional brochures or other marketing form letters can get a specific message across that you want people to know.

11. Ads Need To Be Memorable
Radio and TV advertising can be effective if the material can be memorable. Having people remember your ad is a good start, but you want them to remember the content of your advertising even more. When you can accomplish this, then you’ll be able to stay at the top of their minds and be the first stop they make when there is a health care need that you can meet for them.

12. Experience Counts
People are more inclined to choose an experienced doctor over an inexperienced one in the same field and that can be to your advantage. If you have a provider that has been helping patients for a long time in a specific way, then use this strength to help your target demographic to compare and contrast your facilities with your competitors… because you’ll win.

13. Press Releases Bring Free Attention
Local media outlets love good stories about successful businesses, so make sure you keep your local press up to date with everything good you’ve got going on. If you’ve won an award, make sure your write a press release that talks about how important that award is. If you exceed your budget expectations, talk about it. Get into the practice of submitting at least one PR every quarter, more if the need arises, and develop local press contacts so you have relationships there as well.

14. Don’t Stop!
Marketing can often be a lot of “No” and rarely a “Yes.” If you give up, then you’re giving up any possibility of getting a new source of revenue. 99 people might turn you down, but #100 might love you so much that you get excellent word of mouth advertising and those referrals are priceless. Never give up.