7 Medical Marketing Trends for 2021

As you plan for this year, we wanted to highlight some online medical marketing trends that you may want to implement to help grow your practice in 2021.

1. Digital marketing is overtaking traditional marketing. 

No surprise here – patients are on the internet. The greatest growth is taking place in mobile apps, social media and digital ads. Check out these stats:

• 77% of patients use search engines prior to booking appointments.
• Search drives nearly three times as many visitors to hospital sites, compared to visitors from other referral sites.
• 44% of patients who research hospitals on a mobile device schedule an appointment.
• Before the moment of conversion, patients typically search on symptoms and condition terms.

2. Patients are becoming avid researchers.

Today’s patients do their homework before visiting a doctor. You’ve probably noticed this trend and it’s not going away. In fact, patients not only research their conditions and treatment options on the internet but also take responsibility for their own health and the decisions that affect it. According to Pew Research:

• One in three American adults has gone online to figure out a medical condition.
• 72% of Internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year.
• The most commonly researched topics are specific diseases or conditions; treatments or procedures; and doctors or other health professionals.

3. Time to get mobile-friendly.

If your site is not mobile-friendly, this should be the first thing you do! There’s no question that it’s full steam ahead on mobile marketing these days. Plus, Google recently announced its mobile-first algorithm is expected to launch in early 2018. This means that Google will prioritize mobile content and use it to decide how to rank search results. Read more about why you will benefit from a mobile-friendly site.

• 69 % of digital media time is spent on mobile.
• Check out these mobile-friendly stats.

4. Digital advertising is on the rise.

If you have not yet dabbled with digital advertising, 2021 is definitely the time to do it. Leverage the ad-targeting tools that are available through Google and Facebook, such as location-based advertising. Ad targeting will show your ads to the right users at the moment they’re in your area of interest. You can experiment with different ads to see which ones perform better. Digital advertising is less expensive than you may think. Now is the time to start implementing digital marketing to help grow your practice in 2021.

• Facebook’s advertising revenue for the first half of 2017 was $17.4 billion, up 47% year-over-year.

5. It’s time to get social.

With more than 2 billion people on Facebook, it continues to dominate social media use. Connecting with patients and establishing relationships online allows you to build credibility and trust with the online community.

6. Video is the way to go.

Video is critical in the future of digital marketing. It’s predicted that by 2019, the video will represent over 80% of all internet traffic. You can also boost your SEO by adding video to your landing pages and website.

• Customers would be 4x more likely to watch a video about a product instead of reading about it.
• Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.

7. Personalized content is expected.

Personalizing content to your patients is not only nice to have, people, are expecting it. Patients will be more open to content specifically tailored to their needs and where they are in the decision-making process. In fact, the Digital Marketing Institute reports that 66% of consumers say they are extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if they feel like a person rather than a number. This same philosophy is applicable to the doctor-patient relationship.

• Personalized content performs 42% better than non-personalized content.

Sources:

1. Pew Research Center | Health Online 2013
2. MarTech | Customer & Digital Experience
3. Forbes | Facebook's Strong Ad Revenue Growth To Continue
4. Video Marketing: The Future of Content Marketing
5. The 2015 Video Marketing Cheat Sheet [Infographic] -Animoto
6. Create Compelling Video Experience | Brightcove
7. Research: State of the Connected Customer | HuffPost Impact
8. Memberships | Hubspot