Marketing teams in the medical industry have been asked to do more with less due to shrinking marketing budgets. As healthcare executives slash media spending ahead of an anticipated recession, medical practices and their marketing teams need to be more creative in their advertising strategies. Selecting a healthcare marketing agency skilled at optimizing these types of campaigns is critical to success.
Are You Wasting Ad Dollars on the Wrong Patients?
One of the most common marketing mistakes medical practices make is not segmenting their patient data, which leads to wasted ad dollars. Understanding who your potential patients are and what they need at a given moment enables targeted outreach programs that will be more successful in driving conversions.
Target the Right Patients at the Right Time
Enhanced patient targeting can be achieved by dividing your ideal patient population into smaller, more manageable segments based on patient demographics, purchasing behaviors of OTC and prescription medications, and ICD-9/10 diagnoses.
Customized campaigns based on these hyper-targeting segments speak to a potential patient’s unique stage of the care decision-making process.
For example, patients who have already received a diagnosis and are at the later stages of their care decision-making process are likely focused on finding the best surgeon rather than comparing treatment options. These patients can be targeted with customized content that showcases your practice’s surgical success rates or patient testimonials.
On the other hand, patients who have been diagnosed but are still in the early stages of their care decision-making process need educational content that helps them understand their condition and various treatment options. These patients can be targeted with webinars, eBooks, or blog posts that provide this type of information.
Targeting Patients with a Limited Marketing Budget
When ad dollars are tight, where should the bulk of your marketing budget go to maximize mROI (marketing return on investment)?
The Patient’s Decision-making Process
There are four general stages of the patient journey:
- Awareness: The patient becomes aware of a problem or condition they may have.
- Consideration: The patient begins to research potential solutions and providers.
- Selection: The patient narrows down their options and makes a decision on which provider to use.
- Treatment: The patient begins treatment with the chosen provider.
Target Qualified Patients Who are Actively Seeking Care
While it’s best to target patients across the entire care continuum, acquisition campaigns are most successful when the primary focus is on the Consideration and Selection stages. This is where patients who have been referred to specialists are actively selecting providers for first-line treatments and procedures.
These targets are most likely to book a consultation to learn more about their treatment options and select a provider, making them ideal prospects for conversion.
To reach patients in the Consideration and Selection stages, medical practices can utilize a variety of marketing channels, including:
- Google search ads
- ICD-9/10 code targeting
- Prescription brand behavior targeting
- EHR/EMR patient database targeting
- Condition and procedure-specific webinars
Get the Most Out of Your Marketing Budget with Levo Health
At Levo Health, we specialize in helping medical practices make the most of their marketing dollars, so they can do more with less. Utilizing a multifunctional team of designers, media buyers and content strategists, we can implement any number of patient acquisition strategies customized to our clients’ needs and budgets.
Why waste ad dollars targeting the wrong patients? Instead, implement data-driven marketing strategies with measurable results from the patient acquisition experts at Levo Health.
Contact us online or call (813) 235-0830 to get started today.
