Sector sensitive to change, health remains a conservative industry where we continue to hear sentences like this: “We are not aimed at young people. Our audience does not learn from blogs or social networks”. Or “Our purchasing cycles are too long and complicated. We should focus on healthcare marketing rather than creating web content that will not attract”.
However, the potential of the Internet opens up new possibilities for these niche sectors, which until now had to focus on traditional methods of prospecting: attracting, motivating, and convincing a customer in the health sector has never been so easy.
Referencing your site to be accessible
Due to very long purchasing cycles and a change in the behavior of their potential customers, B2B healthcare marketing agencies are now faced with new marketing and sales issues. The healthcare sector is all the more affected by these constraints in that it faces prospects (doctors, hospitals, or pharmacists) who are difficult to access since they are active all day. You can forget the phone or other traditional prospecting methods.
Healthcare Marketing Agency, a company that offers an innovative solution for implants, has opted for a digital prospecting strategy to attract and convince dentists who are difficult to reach. Discover the system and the results obtained in this case study.
The first step to increasing your turnover through the Internet is to take care of your online presence so that prospects come knocking alone at your door. To do this, improve your natural referencing on Google by implementing healthcare SEO services on specific and technical keywords that do not only revolve around your products or your brand. Ask yourself the question: what questions does my prospect ask themselves before the purchase, and how can I accompany him in his reflection? This is based on the foundations of digital prospecting and inbound marketing.
If the natural referencing of a site is almost mandatory in the era of intense digitalization, the B2B health sector benefits from another commercial lever: paid advertising (or SEA). However, in 2015, in the United States, only 2.8% of the total SEA practiced over the year came from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industrial sector, and these figures are even lower in France.
The SEA, therefore, has an undeniable potential for attraction, and there are still great opportunities today to place yourself as influential at a lower cost. But this referencing, natural and paying, can only be beneficial if it is accompanied by a regular communication strategy centered on prospects’ needs without dwelling on the medical product itself.
Blogging to establish your expertise
To optimize its referencing and thus become more visible to search engines, it is also necessary to regularly publish content with high added value. Consider creating a blog! When you know that 58% of healthcare marketers have a blog, compared to 74% of marketers in all other sectors, it is clear that digital represents a real opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition. Please take advantage of the fact that it still tends to rely on traditional marketing and sales methods to get ahead.
Do not hesitate to multiply the formats best to meet the needs and psychology of your prospects. For example, video testimonials are all the rage, while clinical case studies and white papers inspire confidence and expertise.
You can, therefore, easily share educational content on health issues on social networks (following the Inbound marketing strategy). On the other hand, as soon as content mentions your product or brand, it will be necessary to make it accessible to professionals only, and for that, limit its access thanks to a form.
Invest in social networks to meet prospects
It’s not just about creating original and relevant content. You also have to make it visible and distribute it effectively on the web! However, against all expectations, the most fertile channels for the health sector seem to be social networks and emailing, far ahead of professional forums or online resource centers.
Indeed, according to an EMR Thoughts study conducted in the United States, 2 out of 3 doctors use social networks for professional reasons; they are also fond of open communities than closed forums. So, even if we know that France and the United States are not at the same level and that the legislation is different, we notice that health professionals are already getting started:
So, where to position yourself on the web? Trends are developing quickly, and we see prospects invest on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and even more playful sites such as Pinterest or Instagram – depending on their profile. In addition, social platforms specializing in the health sector are emerging, such as healthcare marketing agency, which is beginning to attract doctors from all over the world.
Moving from a B2B healthcare marketing agency
The B2B sector is changing at breakneck speed, and salespeople face a challenge: prospects choose their solutions or products without recourse to them, in a dehumanized way, through the Internet. However, the health sector is where people are at the center of all concerns.
In this sense, it is about finding a way to connect with the customer in a deep, interesting, and varied way. So we nod and applaud this marketer who understands that the decision to sign a contract always comes from a human, even in B2B and especially in B2B healthcare marketing agencies, which is very similar to B2C.
This strategy and it’s very prolific results demonstrate the absolute need to recreate a human sensibility in an extremely digitized world. So far from the total objectivity of science (whether it be the science of the human body or that of marketing and commerce), it is the individual who today takes precedence and allows the health sector to keep fit in the face of digital challenges!
