Grow Your Homecare Business by Leveraging the Power of Digital

Author: Gautam Mane

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

 – Charles Darwin

Businesses are no exception. As the healthcare landscape evolves, consumer expectations and patient demographics are changing fast. People are now looking for healthcare providers who offer transparency, convenience, and two-way communication. And as healthcare costs have risen, healthcare consumers have become particularly selective.

As per Deloitte’s 2020 global healthcare outlook – global healthcare spending is expected to rise at a CAGR of 5 % in 2019-23. Meaning, your homecare business can find new and better opportunities in the future. Therefore, you must find improved ways to make the most of them.

How the Healthcare Landscape has Evolved

Over the years, the healthcare ecosystem has become more complex owing to factors like –

• Complicated market regulation policies
• Changing patient demographic
• A rise in chronic diseases
• Technological advancements
• Lack of skilled labor
• Entry of non-traditional healthcare service operations

The primary focus of healthcare has now shifted from prevention to early detection and intervention. Moreover, as technology-enabled solutions are making care models more user-friendly, consumers are demanding new, convenient solutions for patient care.

Given the landscape, traditional marketing methods are less effective now. If healthcare businesses want to drive revenue and expand reach, they need to ramp up their marketing efforts. And by leveraging the power of digital, they can make a start.

Today, your homecare business needs more than an advertising-jingle persona. Like your consumers, it needs to start and join conversations online.

Why Go Digital?

“But on the internet, it said…”

You’ve heard it before, right? Customers are savvy now. For most healthcare-related problems, they are searching the internet for signs, symptoms, diagnosis, and whatnot. They seek online reviews before coming to you. Clearly, consumer choices have transformed the way the healthcare market functions today.

As consumers extensively search for healthcare solutions online, digitizing your business becomes fundamental to its growth. Your potential customers are accessing customer reviews, ratings, and referrals to assess your services beforehand. As a result, healthcare consumers have become very particular about which services they want to use.

This is why going digital is the key to your business success. Below, we take a look at different digital marketing strategies you can use to expand your homecare business.

Harness Social Media 

For your homecare business, social media can work wonders. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more are a great way to engage existing and potential customers via interactive content. Use social media to network, participate in community forums, share blog posts, promote medical knowledge, among others.

By becoming active on social media platforms, you can easily establish a strong online presence – retweet, repost, share, respond, do QnAs, and interact with your community to build meaningful customer relationships at a minimal cost.

Blog to Educate and Engage 

Educational content is an effective way to attract new patients and caregivers in 2020 – never forget, “content is king,” especially in the healthcare space where everyone searches the web to educate themselves about current industry trends.

Your blog posts can include patient-care study cases, new diagnostic challenges, medical breakthroughs, regulation policies, the latest healthcare technological advancements, and more. In this way, you can easily attract and engage potential customers for enhanced brand awareness.

Optimize for Better Search Results

In the age of information, you cannot ignore the power of search engines. Proper SEO can drive organic traffic to your website. Make sure to use appropriate keywords for all your website practices as they can rank your organic content higher on the search pages and promote your brand.

In addition, you can optimize your web pages to be mobile-responsive for easy smartphone navigation. Put your homecare business on local listing sites and free forums as well to improve your search rankings.

Get Personal

Why personal? Primarily, for two reasons –

• Patients are no longer passive participants. They are now demanding personalized healthcare products and services.
• Healthcare is a deeply personal topic. If your marketing messages are not personalized, you won’t reel in potential clients.

For effective patient targeting, you can use a healthcare CRM platform. Leverage all-inclusive patient data to understand your target personas and create personalized campaigns accordingly. In this way, you can engage your ideal demographic through relevant content and reach them via preferred communication channels.

Create a Referral Program

Referrals are powerful marketing tools with no overhead costs, especially since customer referrals have a higher influence over purchase decisions. Get referrals from trusted healthcare professionals and existing customers to boost your client base faster.

People trust personal referrals over ads, no matter how attractive. Add incentives to your referral programs; offer complementary services or brand items like bags, mugs, and the likes – let the lip service work for you.

Revamp Your Email Strategy

Email continues to be the most effective yet affordable communication channel for healthcare marketing. Even so, the success of your email campaign is directly influenced by your email strategy and factors like:

• deliverability rate
• Email content
• CTAs

Use quality data to back your email campaigns. Most importantly, optimize your emails for mobile devices to bring back solid ROIs. Emails must be crafted with care, carefully navigating sensitive information to incite positive responses.

Use Customer Reviews

Online reputation is vital for your homecare business. Today, peer review drives growth, especially in the healthcare sector. To boost your homecare business, you should harness word-of-mouth marketing tactics. No one loves customer reviews and ratings more than search engines.

By using customer reviews, you can impact your search rankings positively. Your website’s domain can stand out on a busy page and result in higher click rates. Best of all, customer reviews are more trusted by people than paid ads, which translates to better brand credibility and appeal.

Start Planning Now!

As the digital landscape evolves, so does consumer behavior, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Given the current healthcare scenario, the power of digitization can certainly turn the tables in your favor – online activity can drive enhanced revenue and boost your homecare business to grow faster.

At the same time, you need to use both new and traditional marketing channels for better gains. You should not neglect traditional communication channels such as flyers, display ads, direct mails, and print as advertising on relevant medical journals and local newspapers is still a potent tactic to attract prospective clients.