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Local marketing strategy for healthcare industry

With the rise of online technology, more and more consumers are using geoservices like Google Maps and Yelp to find local healthcare providers. This means that healthcare businesses need to have a strong local marketing strategy in order to attract these consumers and compete in their local markets. A well-designed local marketing strategy can help healthcare businesses improve their visibility and reach on geoservices, making it easier for consumers to find them.

What’s inside

  1. What is local marketing for the healthcare industry?
  2. Local marketing strategy for healthcare organizations: 6 key components
  • Use the power of Google Business Profile
  • Focus on reviews
  • Use Google Posts to show expertise
  • Make visuals for for you
  • Monitor your competitors’ activity
3. Summary

What is local marketing for the healthcare industry?

Put simply, local marketing for medical organizations ensures that the organization is easy to find on search engines, on maps and other digital services.
It is important for healthcare businesses to keep a listing in Google Business Profile full with relevant information because it helps potential patients find and learn more about the center, hospital, etc. By providing accurate and up-to-date information, such as the center's address, phone number, and hours of operation, potential patients can easily find and contact the center to schedule appointments or ask questions.
Additionally, including detailed information about the center's services and facilities can help potential patients understand what the center has to offer, and can make it more likely that they will choose to receive care there. Furthermore, keeping the center's listing up-to-date can also help improve its search engine rankings, making it more likely that potential patients will see the center when they are searching for relevant products or services.
Local marketing can help your healthcare organization or medical center attract and build trust among potential clients. In this article, we share 5 steps that can help you start working with local marketing or boost your efforts if you’re already implementing it.

Local marketing strategy for healthcare organizations: 6 key components

We cover 5 easy-to-follow steps that can help clinics, medical offices, hospitals, ambulatory and birth centers get the most of local marketing.

  1. Use the power of Google Business Profile (GBP)

When it comes to local marketing, Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a must-have tool. Google launched it to allow businesses to take charge of the way they appear on Google Search and Maps. GBP makes it easy for marketers to add, update and always keep the organization-related information relevant. When clients are looking for a medical center, more often they search for it on Google. Did you know that Google is the #1 search engine in the world? And there are over 97 billion local searches a month that result in 1.5 billion visits of business locations.
Those centers in the top of local search results are likely to get more visitors, calls and appointment bookings. The good news is that your organization can hit the top, too.
Let’s start small. If you don’t have a listing in GBP yet, go ahead and do so. The next step is to add all relevant information. Make sure to include:
  • Business name
  • Address and exact pin location
  • Category: it describes what your business is about. In 2022, there are nearly 4000 GBP categories. You can choose one primary business category and 9 additional.
  • Service area
  • Opening hours
  • Phone number
  • Website
  • Photos
  • Attributes
Listings that contain relevant information are more likely to hit the top of local search results, and, ultimately, increase the chances of conversion from listing view to appointment booking.
Keeping the information up to date is easy when you run a single or a few offices or branches. In case you manage a large healthcare organization, adding, editing, and removing information can become a very time-consuming process.
That’s why we at BrandWizard came up with a range of special tools to help you add and manage locations, as well as keep information full and up to date. We use a large dataset to identify how many of your locations are missing, add them to 30+ popular location-based services and manage existing ones.

2. Don’t overlook GBP attributes

Google Business Profile attributes provide businesses with a consistent way to share information about their products and services. These attributes can help potential patients learn more about the healthcare center and what to expect when visiting.
Some examples of Google Business Profile attributes for a healthcare center include:
  • Appointments: Whether the healthcare center offers appointments and how to schedule them. It would be great to add the opportunity to book an appointment right in the GBP listing.
  • Insurance accepted: The types of insurance accepted by the center.
  • Services offered: The specific healthcare services provided by the center, such as primary care, pediatrics, or urgent care.
  • Parking: Information about parking options near the healthcare center.
  • Accessibility: to Whether the center is wheelchair accessible or has other accommodations for people with disabilities.
  • Payment options: The types of payment accepted by the center, such as cash, credit, or insurance.
  • Languages spoken: The languages spoken by staff members at the center.
  • Telehealth options: Whether the center offers telehealth services and how to access them.
The more detailed a business's listing is with attributes, the better it will be able to rank in search results for specific attribute-related searches.

3. Focus on reviews

Now let’s talk about online reputation. Reviews are the second most important ranking factor in local search and are very important for decision-making. And when it comes to health issues, their importance doubles as reviews are a firsthand account of the customer's experience with the product or service. Positive reviews build trust and credibility, and can encourage other potential customers to make an appointment.
How to get started with review management? The strategy is simple:
  • Reply to all reviews: positive, negative, and reviews without text.
The worst thing companies can do is to ignore negative comments. On the other hand, responding to negative reviews and showing your clients that you care on all platforms will ensure that you continue to grow their loyalty. Moreover, you can turn a negative comment into a positive one. We share tips & tricks in our big guide to review management.
Big guide on how to manage positive and negative reviews
Discover how to respond to reviews to make your customers fall in love with you brand
Read more
  • Generate positive reviews
Don’t have reviews in your listings? Don’t worry, you can manage it. But before we proceed, we must highlight that all reviews must be from real customers as search engine algorithms are very good at identifying fake ones.
So, how to encourage people to leave reviews? You can ask them in person or by SMS after their visit to your medical center. When you start a conversation about reviews, it makes your clients feel that their feedback is welcome and valuable.
You can also place QR-codes at your medical office or center. When you’ll have a bank of reviews in your listing, you can pick a couple of the best ones, print them out and display them in your location. This trick might make your clients feel more inclined to leave a review of their own on your page.
  • Make it easy for your clients to leave reviews
Make sure you fill out all important information in your listing so people can identify your page efficiently.
Reviews are extremely helpful not only for patients and clients but for healthcare organizations, too. They can alert any issues or concerns that need to be addressed in order to improve the customer experience. Basically, every piece of feedback — good or bad — is a gift that you can learn from.
  • Analyze customer reviews
Analyzing to customer reviews is a crucial part of running a successful business. By doing so, businesses can gain insights into what their customers like and dislike about their offerings, and use that information to improve their offerings and better meet the needs of their customers. Additionally, customer reviews can also serve as a form of social proof, helping to build trust and credibility with potential customers who are considering doing business with the company.

4. Use Google Posts to share expertise and important updates

"Google posts empower the owner of the GBP profile to post content straight to the search engine results pages. Posting on Google Business Profile is for the prospects who are already looking for you, unlike the prominent social media platforms." No one could explain what Google Posts are better than Google itself.
Google Posts offer multiple advantages to businesses:
  1. They increase the visibility of your listing. According to dbaPlatform, listings with posts get 50% more impressions than those without posts
  2. Show what you can help your clients with
  3. Keep your existing customers updated about your offers, events, news, and updates
  4. Engage new clients and turn them into loyal ones
Wondering what to post about? There are plenty options, and some of them include:
  1. Tips for successful medical exam preparation
  2. Recommendations for healthy lifestyle
  3. FAQ about common health complaints
Posting is not a sprint but a marathon, and we suggest making a long-term commitment to it. Here come 5 tips to can help you make the most of Google Posts:
  1. Post regularly. It's a good idea to post regularly (e.g. once a week) to keep your brand consistent and provide your clients with up-to-date information.
  2. Use emojis to structure the content and make it easy-to-read for your clients.
  3. Include keywords. Make sure to include words and phrases that could grab their attention and make it worth reading your post. This advice will also help you choose the best time to post on GBP as there is no statistical guidance on it.
  4. Add UTM codes to track and monitor the effectiveness of your posts.
  5. Share special offers or discounts in your Google Posts.

5. Make visuals work for you

High-quality and relevant visual content is really a game-changer that helps you stand out from the crowd. It also helps to rank higher on local search results. Google says that GBP listings with photos get 35% more website clicks and 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps.
Moreover, visual content is considered as more trustworthy than other online content. The results of research conducted by Northwestern University reveal that 59% of customers think visual information is more important than textual information across categories. In the healthcare industry, visuals work as an additional communication channel that helps you build a positive image among your potential and existing clients.
One type of visual content that a medical center should consider posting on their Google Business Profile is photos of their facilities. This can include pictures of the exterior of the building, as well as interior shots of the reception area, exam rooms, and other areas where patients receive care. These photos can help potential patients get a sense of what to expect when they visit the center.
Another type of visual content that can be effective is videos. These can be short clips that highlight the center's services, such as surgery or physical therapy, or they can be longer videos that provide more detailed information about specific procedures or conditions. Videos can be a great way to provide information to patients in a more engaging and accessible way.
However, not only you can add photos to your listing. Your customers and competitors can do it as well. Sometimes, the photos that they add are completely irrelevant or even fake, which can badly influence the overall listing appearance. The good news is that you can take visuals over your control.
You can add and monitor visual content manually, or you can automate this activity with BrandWizard’s Photo Management tool. It’ll notify you about newly uploaded photos from all location-based services and you’ll be able to filter visuals by location, publication date or tags, as well as submit complaints for irrelevant visual content to get it removed from your business listing.

6. Analyze your performance

Analyzing key metrics is essential for businesses that want to make the most of their local marketing strategy. By analyzing the data provided by Google, businesses can gain valuable insights into how users are interacting with their profile, and use that information to improve their online presence and attract more customers.
One of the key benefits of using analytics is that it allows businesses to track the performance of their Google Business Profile over time. This includes metrics such as how many people are viewing their profile, direction requests, website clicks, and calls. By monitoring these metrics, businesses can identify trends and patterns that can help them optimize their profile and improve its performance.
To simplify things for marketers, BrandWizard came up with an Advanced analytics tool that collects all important data into comprehensive dashboards, thus helping organizations make data-driven and evidence-based decisions.

Summary

Local marketing is an important aspect of promoting a medical practice or organization. By claiming local listing and optimizing it for local search terms, potential patients in the area will be more likely to find the medical office when searching for relevant medical services.
In this article, we’ve covered the most important aspects to make local marketing work for your organization:
  1. Use the power of Google Business Profile
  2. Don’t overlook GBP attributes
  3. Focus on reviews
  4. Use Google Posts to show expertise
  5. Make visuals for for you
  6. Analyze your performance
BrandWizard is all about making local marketing easy and more efficient. That’s why we combine the power of technologies, AI and machine learning algorithms to create tools that take online reputation and online presence to the next level.
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