Healthcare marketing is as different from general marketing as the healthcare industry is from the general “business world.”
The customers you’re courting are completely unique, with specialized educations, needs, and problems that you need to understand if you are to market to them successfully.
Effective B2B healthcare marketing needs to approach these clients and this industry differently, and we’ve got the statistics to prove it.
Here’s a look at the unique statistics your company needs to understand in order to implement effective B2B healthcare marketing strategies.
1. SEO and Blogging are Vital to Your Online Presence
If you are concerned that blogging and search engine optimization don’t truly factor into generating leads and closing B2B healthcare sales, you’re missing out on an opportunity.
Eighty percent of American Web users look online for health information according to Pew Research. That’s more than 200,000,000 people!
When you get down to specifics, there’s no doubt that your buyers fall into that majority. You can reach them with aggressive, targeted digital marketing.
Unfortunately, B2B healthcare marketers don’t approach SEO and blogging the way they should: only 58 percent of healthcare marketers use blogs versus 74 percent of all marketers (Content Marketing Institute).
That’s where your opportunity comes in, as a company blog is an excellent opportunity for you to share your knowledge and expertise with your prospects and lead more qualified traffic to your website.
Social media can also be a valuable tool in the B2B healthcare marketing arsenal.
Americans spend three times as much time on social media as on email (CBS News), 26 percent of all hospitals in the United States participate in social media (DC Interactive Group) and 2 out of 3 doctors use social media for professional purposes (EMR Thoughts).
What’s more, those doctors often prefer an open forum as opposed to physician-only online communities.
These statistics are just to say that there is a world of networking opportunity online: real healthcare clients seeking information and insights into the healthcare world. Insights that you and your B2B healthcare marketing team can speak to and engage with.
Finally, if you’re more focused on building your business’s online reputation with the branding and messaging you already have, social media can help there, too.
The Mayo Clinic gained 76,000 podcast listeners after it started using social media (Infographics Archive). Sixty percent of physicians' most popular activities on social media are following what colleagues are sharing and discussing (Health Care Communication).
Getting your B2B healthcare marketing strategies into the spotlight are sure to cause a traffic-heavy ripple effect back to your website and into your online marketing funnel.
If you’re looking for the best place to get started, Facebook should be your go-to first step. After surveying more than 1,500 United States hospitals with an online presence, a WHPRMS study found that Facebook is the most popular platform of them all (WHPRMS).
Targeted B2B healthcare marketing presents unique challenges, and taking advantage of online marketing is a unique opportunity for companies selling to others in the healthcare industry.
