In the healthcare industry, many people are involved in the decision-making process. These individuals have different roles, goals and agendas. Because of this, it’s hard to know who to target and even harder to know which tactics and channels to use to reach them. Fortunately, there are some strategies that will help you along the way. Here are five of our best tips for reaching healthcare decision-makers…
Create a Wide Range of Healthcare Buyer Personas
Decision-making in the healthcare industry rarely — if ever — involves just one person, so it’s so important to develop a wide range of buyer personas and to create messaging that’s tailored for each. Your campaigns might target decision-makers such as clinicians, department heads, hospital executives, administrators or other healthcare professionals. You may also need to create content for fact-finders — people who gather and present information and insights to decision-makers.
As you can see, you’ll need quite a few buyer personas to target all of these different people and roles. It may seem overwhelming, but partnering with an experienced healthcare marketing agency simplifies the process and helps make sure you’re communicating with everyone you need to reach.
Connect and Engage on Social Media
About 55% of B2B buyers search for information on social media, but not all social platforms are created equal. Some are better-suited for B2B outreach than others. Thanks to its superior targeting capabilities, LinkedIn has established itself as the leading B2B social media network. Twitter and Facebook are also effective platforms to reach healthcare decision-makers, but when it comes to lead generation, paid campaigns tend to be most effective on those platforms.
These three tactics can help improve the effectiveness of your social media strategy:
- Develop a hashtag strategy. This is a solid tactic to improve Twitter and LinkedIn engagement. Using tools like Hashtagify or searching LinkedIn for industry terms and topics can help you figure out which hashtags are commonly used by your target audience and industry leaders. Hashtags alone are not enough though.
- Rely on connection and interaction. Your sales reps should personally connect with individual contacts on social media and follow the company pages of your target accounts. Interact with their social content in a natural way, avoiding sales pitches. Discover and join LinkedIn groups that your audience frequents. Participate in discussions and share quality content that is tailored to that particular group.
- Use social media retargeting ads. These are especially helpful for healthcare marketing. First, create social content for your buyer personas. If your target prospect engages with your content and visits your website, use retargeting technology to show them relevant advertisements on social media (and other channels).
Across every platform, share valuable content that will appeal to all of your personas across various stages of the buyer’s journey. Monitor and analyze which social media content is garnering the most engagement and driving traffic to your site, then use that information to inform your future social strategy.
Use Your Blog to Establish Authority
Most company websites host a blog, but many businesses don’t use it to its full potential. Blogs should not only drive traffic to your website and establish new leads, they should also nurture prospects and build relationships.
One way to do this is to have blog posts authored by your sales reps. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your reps will write the content, but it does mean they can build authority by sharing it to their social media audience or emailing it to targets. Get your marketing team to create blog posts that speak to the sales team’s prospects. Communication and alignment between departments are key to getting this done.
You might also reach out to prospects about contributing their knowledge and expertise for a blog post. For example, if you’re writing a post about healthcare administration, reach out a prospect in that role to see if they’d be interested in providing a quote or personal story. This way, you’re not only creating valuable content, you’re also engaging with and building a relationship with a prospect.
No matter what else you do, be sure to create content that your audience will truly love to read. Here are a few tips on finding blog ideas that will be valuable to your prospects:
- Look for trending keywords. Do your Keyword research before writing a post. Find trending industry topics and keywords using tools like Google Trends, Ahrefs and SEMrush.
- Ask sales and customer service. Your customer services and sales teams are invaluable when it comes to knowing your customers’ and prospects’ common questions and pain points. Use this knowledge to cover topics that they will care about.
- Find out what they’re talking about. What content are your prospects interacting with on social media? What are they sharing? Quora, Reddit and other online forums often have industry-specific subreddits/spaces where you can find out.
Create high-value content so your company blog becomes a go-to resource for the industry, and you’ll soon find your industry authority soaring.
Build Partnerships With Industry Influencers
Relationships always matter, but they’re especially essential when it comes to healthcare marketing. Build rapport with a wide range of people in the industry, including journalists at leading publications and industry influencers. If journalists consider you an industry leader, they’re more likely to reach out to you for quotes or comments.
Writing guest posts or editorials can be a highly effective strategy to help you build brand awareness and authority. Guest blogging can also be a good SEO tactic, as long as you’re writing for credible websites that have authority, high search rankings, a healthy number of visitors and an audience that is relevant to your product or service.
Create a list of publications that each of your buyer personas is likely to read then research the submission guidelines for guest posts or editorials. Search for the editor’s contact email to make an introduction and send your pitch. You can also foster relationships with journalists by sending comments about and kudos for a relevant article they’ve recently published.
An established healthcare marketing agency can be a big help here, as they have already built relationships with many journalists and influencers in your space.
Leverage Personal Relationships and Referrals
It can feel uncomfortable to ask customers for referrals or reviews, but if they’re pleased with your service or product, they’re typically happy to help. And that, in turn, helps your future prospects because 82% of B2B decision-makers start the buying process with a referral.
Personal relationships and networking also help immensely when it comes to healthcare marketing. If you’ve noticed that one of your LinkedIn connections or a current customer knows a valuable prospect, ask for an introduction. Even better, ask your customer if they’d be willing to write a testimonial then have your sales rep send that testimonial to nurture the relationship with their new connection.
Healthcare marketing can be challenging, but with aligned sales and marketing teams, a smart social strategy, authoritative content, personal relationships and a bit of help from the experts, you can achieve your goals. See how working with an experienced healthcare marketing agency can help.
