It’s a time of opportunity in the healthcare software industry. An emphasis on value-based care is shifting the way practices operate in this ever-growing market. Even small practices are looking for ways to secure patient records; relieve physicians overwhelmed by paperwork and outdated processes; manage prospects and referrals, and speed up billing.
Healthcare software solutions have made all of these demands possible; in fact, the global healthcare IT market is expected by Meticulous Research forecasts to grow 13.8% annually between 2019 and 2027—that will put the market over $511 billion. Nonetheless, carving out a place in the healthcare software market can be challenging in terms of visibility and timing. Digital healthcare marketing for software should be centered on a strategy that can give you growth potential and a clear trajectory. In this industry, you can’t afford to lose track of your audience as they move about online.
As a leading healthcare digital marketing agency for software companies, we have seen first-hand how digital marketing strategies benefit healthcare software and SaaS companies.
You no doubt know how your software is different from anything else in the healthcare software space. Unfortunately, the vast efforts it takes to develop software, design branding, and refine competitive advantage will only matter if you are taking digital healthcare marketing for software seriously.
A digital marketing strategy assures you have an advantage in a customer's mind when they are at the moment of making a purchasing decision. That’s because your digital marketing strategy makes your product easy to find and distinguish. We assist companies with crafting a voice that is helpful and trustworthy while contributing relevant insights. What was once an impression on a blog becomes a click-through on a PPC, a white-paper download, a submitted email address, and finally, a qualified lead.
If you are wondering how working with a healthcare software digital marketing agency could help you, ask yourself if you are guilty of any of these:
Consider that customers in your field may operate on a slow purchasing cycle. You should give any digital healthcare marketing for software strategy 6 to 12 months with steady efforts to evaluate progress. Whether your company has the bandwidth to get your strategy on track, or you need some degree of outside help, make sure these top five critical services are accounted for in the resulting plan.
Did you know over 90% of search traffic goes to the sites listed on the first Google search results page? SEO should be a priority in every digital activity. Your search ranking is a good metric for how consistent and relevant your content is, as well as both the amount and quality of site visits and content shares you are receiving. Managing your SEO is more than securing a first-page spot in the search results; it means monitoring major competitors, improving the back end of your website, and implementing long-tail keywords to make new impressions.
A digital marketing strategy uses SEO activities and keyword insights to inform PPC campaigns, social media posts, content marketing angles, and other forms of marketing. Keyword research must be ongoing to maintain an understanding of audience priorities. A new HIPAA rule change, healthcare legislation, CMS standards, and other variables will change some search avenues for your product. Working with a healthcare digital marketing agency ensures your company will be on top of relevant changes.
How can you stay true to your brand and take advantage of new relevant search terms? That is the concern of SEO and keyword analysis. As long-tail keywords may change and lose prominence, it is also important to keep up with negative keywords, or those that may be deceptively outside of your market are either not accurate or are ineffective at reaching your audience.
Content quality is the litmus test that tells customers if a company is investing in digital healthcare marketing for software strategy. According to a study published by HMSS specifically examining healthcare IT buyer behavior, 97% of respondents had taken action after viewing high-quality healthcare technology contained within the previous 3 months. This action could have been downloading a white paper, sharing information with a colleague, doing further research, or beginning a purchase process.
Long-form content establishes credibility: it is a way of demonstrating expertise and showing good faith by offering the customer something of value upfront. According to this Hubspot study, 47% of buyers viewed between 3 and 5 pieces of content before reaching out to a company sales rep. As part of a digital marketing strategy, long-form pieces such as blogs, white papers, infographics, webinars, and pdf guides can feed social media channels and be coordinated with other sales promotions.
The difficulty for a smaller company is that content takes a lot of time to create, an effective website with traffic on which to publish it, and a plan for each piece of content in the broader strategy. This is where a digital marketing specialist can help, but only if that party understands A.) the industry B.) your company and C.) how all elements in a digital content strategy are interconnected.
Hiring an experienced healthcare digital marketing agency delivered momentum for Prevounce, a preventive services software company. In just one year, Spot On helped them boost non-paid traffic by 1,400% and achieved top-10 in search results for 50 keywords. Learn more here.
While content marketing usually refers to long-form content, social media can drive traffic to those resources and maintain relationships with both valuable influencers and your customer audience. Thus, social media alternates between two functions, as a credible content source, and as a marketing/sales adjunct. The trick is that it has to be done with a consistent voice appropriate to the medium, and with an emphasis on social—in other words, you should have someone dedicated to being responsive to your customer's questions and comments. Healthcare software agencies are experts at crafting and creating social media engagement.
Social media should be arranged in a content calendar that includes themes and specific sales messages coordinated with PPC and email campaigns. You can also arrange for a firm or a designated person to catch up on messages, tags follow, and mentions several times per day or set up alerts. SEO insights can be used to create effective hashtags or to frame messages in a way that they are more likely to be shared.
Does PPC marketing seem like an enigma to you, almost like a lottery that you have no choice but to play? Ineffective PPC tactics point back to a lack of coherent strategy. With proper goal setting, audience targeting, and monitoring, PPC works very well.
Obtaining better prices for cost-per-click and achieving higher click-through rates are great, but only if you are getting conversions. A healthcare software digital marketing agency like Spot On knows how to use insights from keyword research to choose the best lower-cost long-tail keyword ads that will be highly specific to your audience’s needs. They will also A/B test new ad ideas, re-evaluate goals, tweak copy, and experiment with campaign times.
The success of PPC ads can also hinge on how well your site is designed. We can walk you through conversion rate optimization, for instance, to make sure you identify (measure) and achieve your micro and macro conversions. Ultimately, PPC marketing and content marketing should be seen as complementary activities.
Simply obtaining an email address can mean a new prospect is advancing through the sales funnel. Relevant whitepapers and free checklist downloads are great ways to obtain addresses. Working with a healthcare software marketing agency that understands who this audience is can help you further email them relevant offers and promotions without getting relegated to their junk bin. With a solid strategy in place, you can segment your email lists in ways that will be effective for planned campaigns.
When implementing a healthcare software marketing strategy, we always come back to campaign-generated data to move forward with a clearer picture. This especially applies to your audience segments. At Spot On, one of our advantages is that we are a vetted HubSpot partner, using one of the most powerful marketing interfaces regularly to help you refine an approach to new customers and leads. HubSpot partners generate data that is proven to be consequential, and they are vetted by HubSpot HQ in terms of knowing how to interpret it to improve ROI. Because we know the audience better, we can modify the overall strategy and use data points in every activity above to refine specific tactics.
As you can see, there are many interconnected parts to digital marketing that simply can’t be neglected. If you are letting some of these key elements slide, let’s talk about your digital marketing strategy together. Our digital marketing agency has a staff of marketing professionals and writers with unique experience in marketing healthcare software who can help your company realize immediate improvements as well as long-term lasting impacts.
