11 Healthcare Industry Trends your Agency Needs to Use
As a marketing agency, your clients rely on you to stay on top of the latest industry trends. This can be incredibly challenging, especially when you have clients from multiple industries and need to follow each trend. Despite the challenges, you cannot skip this knowledge, as it ensures that you use the best possible tools to appeal to your clients’ clients.
To make your role as a marketing agency easier, we have gathered some of the most important digital trends in healthcare. This prevents the need to conduct your research on trends. Instead, you can simply start to incorporate the most important trends into your agency’s marketing solutions.
What are the Major Healthcare Industry Trends for Digital Transformation?
You will notice that some of the major healthcare industry trends overlap with those from other industries. This comes from the fact that certain technological advances can apply to any industry. At the same time, there are also many unique trends for digital transformation that you will only find in healthcare.
Texting your Patients for Payments
People are increasingly relying on their mobile devices for everything, including payments. Patients want the convenience of being able to pay for their healthcare in any way that they choose. New technology like texting patients for payments allows yet another option.
This method enables your clients to easily and quickly get paid without hassling patients or directly interacting with them. As a bonus, patients are more likely to open texts than answer phone calls or open letters requesting payment. This boosts the response rate, so your clients don’t have to hassle patients for payments. Podium Payments is a convenient way of achieving this. You get to cut out games of phone tag, and patients do not have to wait on the phone to pay.
Patient reviews are incredibly useful for your clients. They show potential patients that their healthcare practice delivers excellent care and customer service, encouraging them to make an appointment. The challenge tends to be collecting the reviews, as patients are sometimes too lazy to leave them.
The Reviews tool from Podium overcomes this by asking for reviews and sending a link to them via patients’ preferred method of communication: texting. Remember that text open rates tend to be higher than other communication methods, increasing the chances of patients leaving reviews. There is also an option to automate the process to save your clients’ time.
Turn Website Traffic into Patients
One major trend affecting healthcare and other industries is the increasing use of technology to convert website traffic into potential patients. In other industries, this is a conversion into clients. One of the simplest and most effective ways to achieve this is via a Webchat, like the one from Podium.
Webchat takes advantage of people who are already interested in your clients’ practice by gaining their attention and gathering information. Think of Webchat as a way to capture leads with a focus on people who have already expressed an interest in the practice. It also lets you continue the conversation at a later time, meaning you don’t have to push conversions on the first interaction.
Your healthcare clients will use various methods to attract patients, but one of the most effective methods is video content. Since its arrival, video marketing has grown significantly. Patients appreciate the ability to watch a video to learn more about a healthcare clinic. It provides a personal touch or connection, helping to encourage conversions.
To take advantage of this healthcare industry trend, work with your clients to create a range of video content types. There should be educational pieces, introductions to the team and doctors, advice, FAQs, and more. Post the videos on your clients’ websites and their social media pages.
Healthcare is one of the industries where clients will almost always be local. This makes it essential for healthcare providers to focus on local SEO when choosing SEO keywords. Google has an increased focus on local SEO, especially in the medical field.
Your marketing agency can take advantage of this by ensuring you include local SEO in your strategies for healthcare professionals. To optimize your local SEO, pay particular attention to the business SEO, Google Business Profile, on-page SEO optimization, and backlinks.
All healthcare providers should have a social media presence, as that is where the audience is. Most practices already have a page on Facebook and maybe on Twitter, but that is not enough. For the best results, you want your clients to have an active page.
Manage it well and keep it active. Use the page to share content from the website, including videos and articles. Use it to engage with current and potential clients. Think of it as an extension of customer service and another way to ensure patients are happy or to bring in new patients.
The following image shows just how important a strong social media presence is:
Account for Voice Search
In the healthcare industry, patients are increasingly relying on voice search over other methods to find information. Between smart home devices like Alexa and using voice searches on their phones with Siri, more people embrace this method of finding relevant information without having to type anything. To put the size of this audience in perspective, consider the estimate that over 43 million Americans have a smart speaker.
To take advantage of this healthcare industry trend, make sure that your marketing efforts include natural language. You want to incorporate question terms, such as “how” and “why,” to take advantage of the format most people use during voice searches.
Ensuring a Mobile-Responsive Website
Another megatrend in healthcare mirrored in other industries is the focus on mobile-responsive websites. More patients than ever before use your clients’ mobile websites, so you need to ensure that they have the complete website experience when they do.
Google’s search algorithms prioritize mobile-first websites. Additionally, your clients will simply miss out on gaining new patients and have a high bounce rate if their website does not load properly on mobile devices.
Artificial Intelligence Combined with Advanced Analytics
Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics have been part of healthcare marketing for years, but they are even more important than ever before. Using these tools makes it easy for your clients to better understand their patients.
Your marketing agency can use AI technology that is increasingly becoming available to better appeal to your clients and follow healthcare trends. You will have a better idea of what potential patients want out of an interaction, making it easier to provide that and convert leads.
Personalize the Media Content to Patients
Yet another crucial healthcare industry trend is the shift towards personalizing the media content your company creates to appeal to the patients. Some of this comes from including more content such as videos and webinars, as this helps create a more personal connection.
Other options include creating a podcast if you and your client have enough time and resources to do so. A much less time-and-resource-intensive option is to try live streams. With a live stream, you give patients to connect directly with the practice and doctors. They can engage via comments.
Offering More Services Remotely
Between the pandemic and natural advances in technology, more patients are demanding the ability to engage with healthcare services remotely. They want to be able to text their doctor or nurse and get an answer. They want detailed information on a patient portal. They want quick response times. This also goes back to the previously mentioned Podium Payments, which allows you to text patients for payments.
To take advantage of this, create a patient portal that is easy to use and take advantage of the various tools at your disposal, from any channel .
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Is the Healthcare Industry Growing?
Yes, the healthcare industry is growing. Experts predict that healthcare profits will grow by about 5% through 2024. Of healthcare sectors, healthcare IT and MedTech will have the quickest growth.
In addition to the overall growth in healthcare, there is a dramatic growth in terms of tools and technologies, such as marketing and communication software. These tools help healthcare businesses increase their revenue and patient base. Experts predict a growth rate of 13% from 2016 to 2025 in healthcare enterprise software. By 2025, that market should reach $76.45 billion.
Why Healthcare Industry Trends are Relevant to Your Marketing Agency
Your marketing agency needs to be aware of the top healthcare industry trends, as it is essential to embrace and incorporate them into your strategy. By following the trends and using the technology at your disposal, you will achieve the results your client desires.
If you are interested in partnering with a company that can help accelerate your sales and promotion while harnessing these healthcare industry trends, consider the Podium Partner Program.
