3 Challenges Healthcare Marketers Must Overcome

Rachel is the Partner Marketing Manager at CallRail, where she works to align integrated and creative marketing campaigns with CallRail’s agency and technology partners.

Marketing in the healthcare industry has its challenges. Every marketer in the industry is all too familiar with the rapidly changing market and a growing need for updated tech. They want to update processes, improve their ROI, and attract more customers, but that's tough with legal limitations such as HIPAA in place and rapidly changing market conditions.

One key way to push through these limitations is to find the right technologies that will allow you to solve your customer’s problems as seamlessly as possible. With that in mind, here are three common challenges and their solutions.
In this article, I highlight a few key ideas to think about when you’re considering how to create a content strategy.

1. Understanding the customer’s journey

Research shows that 72 percent of consumers use online search and reviews to find a healthcare practice. There are countless ways now for a digital customer to find your business: listing sites, referrals, direct traffic, paid ads ... the list goes on. It is difficult to know exactly where prospects come from and what journey they take to booking that first appointment. With consumers touching so many marketing sources, lead attribution is a nightmare.

Solution

By investing in tools that help attribute leads across multiple channels and showcase the full picture of your customers’ journey—from first click to first call and all the way to booking an appointment—knowing which campaigns are driving revenue will be much simpler. Then you can know where to allocate your marketing budget to reach customers at every stage of their journey.

2. Finding time for marketing

In a quickly evolving world, it can seem impossible to find enough time to accomplish all of your goals. Marketers must create, implement, and analyze campaigns, and salespeople then must follow up with these marketing-generated leads and push them to convert in order to generate revenue.

In a study done by HubSpot, salespeople reported that only one-third of their day is actually spent talking to prospects, while 17 percent of their day is spent entering data, 21 percent of their day writing emails, another 17 percent prospecting and researching leads, 12 percent going to internal meetings, and 12 percent scheduling calls. If contacting leads within 48 hours doubles the rate of conversion and salespeople are busy entering data and scheduling calls, you are losing out on potential revenue.

Solution

Automation is key to a successful and efficient sales and marketing relationship. Implementing tools that can automate tasks and reporting are essential in order to allow your people to spend more time with potential customers.

3. Market structure and multiple locations

Several obstacles in the healthcare market make it arduous to develop effective marketing strategies. In the US, third-party companies such as insurers dictate where a customer can receive treatment because insurers often pay the bills. So, although your campaign may be effective in driving quality leads, not all of those leads may be able to schedule an appointment.

As a healthcare marketer, you face the challenge of finding ways to market to third parties and potential customers alike while also dealing with multiple locations, often across the country. With multiple locations, it can be difficult to ensure that the right practice surfaces in your ads and that your leads route to the right place.

Solution

To maximize your lead conversion, it is important to use a hyper-focused inbound marketing strategy along with the right tools that can help you narrow your efforts and target the right audience. These tools can help you geo-target your customers at the local level while also driving them to the proper locations.

Identifying and understanding these three common healthcare marketing challenges will empower you to create new and innovative campaigns that will ensure your marketing efforts are a success.

Join us Thursday, May 30, to learn more about which marketing technology tools are most effective for proving your healthcare ROI.