Are You Prepared for These Healthcare Marketing Trends?
As technology evolves and patient behavior changes, healthcare marketers need to adjust their strategies to stay ahead.
By Katie Bridges
As research and technology evolve, the world of healthcare marketing is always changing. Seismic industry shifts in 2020 transformed how providers, payers and patients approach healthcare. To stay relevant in a shifting healthcare landscape, it’s crucial to predict and anticipate healthcare marketing trends.
Trends in Patient Behavior
1. A Renewed Focus on Preventive Care and Screenings
Regular office visits, health screenings and testing can save lives. A recent study showed only 8% of Americans undergo preventive screenings. In 2020, mammography rates plummeted and nearly half of Americans delayed primary care appointments and preventive screenings. As a healthcare marketer, you know all too well the value of preventive care, which is why encouraging patients to engage with their primary care providers and schedule screenings will be a vitally important part of your healthcare marketing strategy this year.
2. Widespread Adoption of Telehealth
While there may have been some hesitation to engage in telehealth pre-pandemic, patients and doctors alike are now on board. According to a McKinsey report, 58% of physicians view telehealth more favorably now than they did before 2020. The American Medical Association reports that 25% of patients used telehealth in 2022, compared to just 5% prior to 2020. As the adoption of telehealth continues, communicators should be thinking about how to evolve its messaging from a necessary method of care to a convenient, everyday option. That includes ensuring you have the content and digital assets needed to communicate its benefits to patients.
3. The Rise of Mental Health Services
Public perception of mental health disorders and treatment is changing. According to the American Psychological Association, 87% of American adults agreed that having a mental health disorder is nothing to be ashamed of. At the same time, concerns about mental health are growing. According to a survey, 9 out of 10 adults said they believed that there’s a mental health crisis in the US today. As patients continue to pay more attention to mental and behavioral health, it makes sense that healthcare marketers will focus on mental health awareness campaigns and marketing communications directing patients to those services.
4. Expanded Wellness Offerings
One of the biggest shifts in healthcare over the last few years has been a focus on wellness. Instead of: How do we best treat sick patients? It’s become: How do we keep people healthy? As healthcare systems continue to expand their wellness retail services, it’ll be up to healthcare marketers to get the message out, taking cues from B2C marketing practices.
Healthcare Marketing Trends
5. Personalization Through Content
Traditional B2C brands have been investing in personalized marketing for years, and today’s consumers indeed expect it. Healthcare marketers should be following suit. But personalization is more than simply adding a person’s name to an email. It’s about delivering a truly personalized content experience — and that begins with understanding your audience and delivering the right content at the right time. That could mean building content-driven email automation journeys or fueling your PPC campaigns with high quality content that provides answers to the questions users are searching for.
6. More Inclusive Marketing
This goes beyond ensuring the photos on your website are diverse. Much like personalization, this is about understanding your audiences — all of your audiences — and ensuring you’re speaking to their needs and concerns. Health needs and attitudes toward healthcare providers may vary by audience, and it’s important to understand that as you craft content. It’s also important that your audiences can access your content, which is why accessibility will continue to be an important consideration in 2022 and beyond.
7. Physician-Focused Content
Physicians are a unique audience — highly educated, extremely busy and specialized. They’re also inundated with content, whether it’s from their employers, from the journals they read or from colleagues and associations. Healthcare marketers that break through the clutter will do so by providing highly relevant, timely content they can trust, as Vanderbilt University Medical Center has done. The articles in their content hub fuel emails and PPC campaigns. Plus, their content helps increase visibility of their physicians within their community and aids in their reputation management strategy.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
We can help you bring your marketing efforts into the future — strategically and with your specific audiences in mind.
Katie has almost a decade of editorial experience, spending most of those years as an editor at regional magazines. A Georgetown University grad, she helps guide digital and print content programs from concept to completion for C/A clients such as Vanderbilt Health, Niagara Falls USA and Phoenix Children’s Hospital Foundation. She has written for Garden & Gun, Washingtonian and Arkansas Life, among others.
The mother of two young girls, Katie can most often be found on a hiking trail with her family (Sedona’s a favorite). She’s a Southerner through and through, and the only member of the C/A team who uses the word “y’all” with abandon.