Using a demand generation funnel in healthcare marketing strategy can lead to great dividends as it reduces patient acquisition costs while increasing the number of patient acquisitions.

Introduction

Patient acquisition today is one of the costlier propositions for any healthcare business that’s trying to grow bigger. Finding new patients can be hard as the number of hospitals across the US continues to grow – over 6,000 by the latest count. This growing body of healthcare organizations constantly competes with each other to add more patients to their business. Only through retaining old patients and acquiring new patients is a healthcare business able to grow.

However, it is easier said than done. The organic patient acquisition can be a trickling rate due to the abundance of choices that patients get when it comes to choosing a healthcare provider today. As a result, most of the acquisitions come from different marketing campaigns. These campaigns can be costly, especially when you are competing with a lot of other healthcare facilities in a small area. Through these marketing campaigns, healthcare businesses spend anywhere from $100-$350 to acquire just a single patient.

While the cost of healthcare spending per average patient is above $10,000 in the US, that doesn’t represent the median figure of healthcare spending for most practices. The real revenue that most new patient generates is magnitudes lower and as a result, most healthcare practices are losing money when they spend money on expensive marketing campaigns.

This dynamic of acquisition cost and median revenue is why healthcare businesses have started to look to marketing practices like demand generation as an alternative.

Demand Generation

Demand generation is a marketing process where a business attempts to increase its certified inbound leads (individuals who are keen on the services being given by your healthcare brand). Demand generation uses the power of engagement and targeted intervention to influence individuals who would be most interested in the services that a business provides.

Demand generation creates demand in the potential patients by engaging with them and informing them about the problems they may have and revealing the solutions to the same problems. Demand generation covers a host of different activities that improve customer engagement and create long-term interest in a business.

You can learn more about demand generation’s basics in our other blog.

5 Demand Generation tips

Demand generation marketing for healthcare can be complicated but doesn’t have to be. BraveLabs lists five simple, non-technical yet effective ways that healthcare businesses can start to integrate demand generation into their marketing strategy.

1. Improving Local SEO

As stated above, there are a lot of healthcare institutions that are present in the US today. For many urban areas, there can be a plethora of healthcare providers to choose from. But patients today aren’t selecting their healthcare providers in the old-fashioned methods anymore. Individuals now look for healthcare providers based on what the internet tells them. If your healthcare business is able to optimize its SERP (search engine results page) ranking based on local searches from patients, your business stands a much higher chance of being the one that acquires a new patient.

2. Giving solutions to the problems

Nearly 70 percent of US adults look up medical information online and over one-third try to diagnose their medical conditions using information available on the internet. By providing the information that your ideal leads would be looking for, you are able to position yourself in the right place on the internet while also cementing your authority as an expert in that particular field of medicine. These customers who find you through your information will be more likely to convert to a qualified lead for your business.

3. Dial in a content strategy

In a market full of alternatives, you need to position your healthcare business as a prime authority while ensuring that all prospective customers have heard about you. You can do this by creating brand awareness and establishing domain authority (note; we are talking about the non-SEO meaning of the term).

Your business is able to achieve both goals through the use of a carefully planned content strategy. Through the publication of medical content, healthcare businesses are able to build credibility and disseminate their name to a larger audience. Blogging, social media posts, and videos are essential parts of a successful content marketing strategy for healthcare businesses.

4. Nurturing leads

So, your business takes the above three tips to heart and starts to see an increase in the number of leads. That’s the end of the story, right? But as you wait on the increased acquisitions to realize, nothing seems to happen.

That’s because demand generation isn’t just about finding and creating leads. Demand generation necessitates the creation of proper lead nurturing strategies till the time that a potential customer enters your healthcare facility to become a paying customer.

5. Partner with an expert

Demand generation strategies like account-based marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, and more can give extremely high ROI. But most healthcare businesses that aren’t the size of mega-hospitals will neither have the budget nor the time required to dedicate entire teams to the process.

That’s why partnering with experts in healthcare marketing is a value-based proposition for healthcare businesses. Healthcare businesses are able to reap the benefits of demand generation without the investment of setting an entire process for it.

Conclusion

A healthcare business needs patients to grow and demand generation presents an organic way to go about doing so in an ethical manner. Through demand generation, healthcare businesses are able to bring down their patient acquisition costs and are able to grow their business.

Through the above five tips, healthcare businesses can get the ball rolling on connecting with potential patients that are going to be more likely to convert to qualified leads.

BraveLabs provides healthcare businesses with the tools and resources they need to engage in a successful demand generation campaign. Contact BraveLabs to learn more about how you can grow your business with demand generation.