Healthcare marketing is about 2 years behind any other industry because of a few reasons. First, HIPAA laws dictate how patient information is stored and used, and second, the FDA has regulations about how healthcare organizations can market their products.
More and more clinicians are turning to digital resources to both diagnose and treat, with 86% of clinicians using a mobile device for daily office activities, and patients are turning to digital resources to research hospitals or doctors. As a marketer, you should be taking note of this and integrating digital marketing into your healthcare marketing strategy.
But how do you effectively market the healthcare industry while still sticking to the FDA and HIPAA regulations.
Here are a few tips:
Don’t be afraid of HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has a lot of clinicians and marketers scared, because of the hefty fines involved for ignoring its various rules and regulations. But as CEO Valerie Jackson of Futures of Palm Beach sees it, “These rules are mostly about patient confidentiality and don’t have to interfere with using successful examples of treatment for marketing purposes. Complete patient anonymity is the key. Once marketers understand that, they can plan their campaigns accordingly.”
What Claims are Being Made?
Joanna Laurson-Doube of Medical Marketing & Media says, “The compliance of any medical marketing material that is brought onto a new market should be considered on many different levels. Is the type of material appropriate? What is it allowed to state? What information needs to be included? Are all the claims 100% accurate? This is all before you even consider the style.”
Face to face, not B2B
Can today’s marketer just sit in front of a keyboard and let the Internet do all their work for them? Not when marketing healthcare services. Edward Cejka is the CEO of Inspirations for Youth & Family. He explains, “We cater to a niche market of young people, and I send our marketers out to site visits all over the country in order to find out what other services are doing and to let them know what our specialty is. We get a lot of referrals from other rehabilitation centers that way.”
Accessibility is key
Nick Motu is Vice President of Marketing for the world-famous Hazelden Foundation. He is convinced that quick access to a healthcare professional is a major marketing tool for healthcare clinics. “People researching our facility are usually in a lot of pain and discomfort,” he says. “They need immediate answers to questions and professional assistance that does not ask about their insurance or ability to pay upfront. Whether they decide to use our facility or not, we want them to go away feeling we are dedicated to their health and welfare. This pays huge dividends in word-of-mouth referrals.”
“Now Accepting New Patients”
Sometimes it’s the really simple things that can make a difference.This language is both reassuring and urgent. The prospective client knows there is room for them -- but the ‘now’ suggests this may not always be the case. Make sure all your marketing material displays this statement prominently. Otherwise you’ll lose customers simply because it’s human nature to equivocate with important decisions and people are prone to tell themselves, “Oh, they probably don’t have room for me right now anyways.”
Or, as Albert Schweitzer wrote: “One simple pebble can start an avalanche.”
