Healthcare Marketing: Going Beyond the Headlines to Gain New Customers

Evaluating current statistics connecting headlines and SEO punch, you'd think a catchy headline is all you need to increase medical website marketing numbers. For example, MOZ cites that 80% of readers never make it past headlines and that if a headline resonates with a reader, it can increase website traffic by 500%.

However, highly touted tips for creating "good" or "catchy" headlines don't often jive with the sensitive, serious, and often scary subjects that bring prospective clients and patients to healthcare-oriented websites.

Therefore, our medical friends, you have to find that delicate balance between using headlines to generate interest and scan-ability without offending or skimming too shallowly over topics deserving of more serious, in-depth coverage.

Inbound Marketing: Make Walking the Tightrope Look Easy

It's sort of like walking a tightrope, creating SEO-savvy headlines that cut to the heart of matters while still inspiring a sense of connection and engagement – around topics that may involve undesirable medical conditions, diseases, and death. See what we mean about a tightrope walk?

Inbound marketing is the ticket to an easier tightrope walk from Point A to Point B, with Point A being first contact and Point B being the conversion of a new patient or client. There's still a lot of walking to do after Point B, but getting across that first stretch is key.

Here is how you can use both keywords and headlines – centered around the information customers and patients are searching for online – so you can lead them on an enlightening journey right to your waiting rooms or front desk.

1. Understand the nuances of the attract-engage-convert cycle.
   Healthcare marketing requires a crystal clear understanding of the process required to attract visitors and convert them to customers/patients, with nary a sales pitch to be seen. This requires an attractive and easy-to-navigate website that leads prospects intuitively along a well-crafted content extravaganza. In sales, we call this the "sales funnel."
   
   In your case, it's better to think of it as a nurturing and supportive walk down a nature path with a well-educated tour guide, where the tour guide (you) is the one who gets the badge when they sign up for another tour.
   
   
2. Create compelling offers.
   The information people are looking for is often very intense, laden with research findings and statistics, and/or difficult to swallow in big chunks. Trying to include it all in a couple of blogs or a Facebook posting is going to either completely miss the mark or bore them to tears. Instead, create compelling offers using sweeter, easier-to-digest informational "pills" to chew on, all of which lead to additional compelling offers that motivate readers to download more in-depth content related to their specific needs.
   
   This is their version of signing up for the next tour – deepening visitor engagement and trusting you to deliver the information they need.
   
   
3. Use heartfelt and authentic content.
   The people have spoken, and they do not like clinical approaches. Harvard Business Review writes: "We must move away from a supply-driven health care system organized around what physicians do and toward a patient-centered system organized around what patients need."
   
   In a world of provider-insurance-pharmaceutical mergers that are difficult for industry professionals to keep straight, consumers want heartfelt and straightforward content created specifically for them.

Small to medium-sized medical practices have an advantage, being able to create highly-customized videos and social media content that fosters direct connections between patients and their prospective (or current) healthcare providers.

When you repeatedly practice this tightrope walk, paying careful attention to what works and what doesn't, medical website marketing becomes a graceful, balanced affair. You'll succeed at providing unique content to those who need it, in the doses that are most palatable to them, resulting in qualified leads.