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8 Pay-Per-Click Tips for Healthcare Advertising on Google

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Google pay-per-click (PPC) is a means of advertising on Google. Given that Google is the world’s largest search engine – commanding some 86% of the market – a successful Google PPC campaign can be a great way to extend your business reach and raise your profile.

For healthcare manufacturers, well-planned PPC ads can help drive traffic to a website, convert customers, and boost sales, ultimately increasing the bottom line and improving market share.

This e-guide explains how you can benefit from healthcare advertising on Google and get some top tips for using Google ads for healthcare below.

The Benefits of Healthcare Advertising on Google

You might think that there’s no need to pay for advertising using Google PPC, given that your healthcare manufacturing or distribution business can likely be found via the search engine anyway. Think again. Paid healthcare advertising on Google offers unique advantages.

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) can indeed help your website climb the Google rankings, making it easier for a potential customer to find you online. However, Google’s algorithms only prioritize the highest quality websites when determining organic search rankings.

Getting that “free” traffic generally requires an extensive investment of effort and money devoted to optimization. Unless you’re an SEO pro yourself, you’ll likely want to hire an expert.

What’s more, building a solid SEO profile takes time. Take backlinks, for example. The more high-quality, well-ranked, reputable websites link back to your website, the higher your website will rank in Google search results.

However, getting other websites to link back to you doesn’t happen overnight. You have to generate high-quality content first and establish a reputation as a trustworthy source worth linking to. Google PPC offers a more efficient alternative.

Finally, PPC also gives you more control over how your listing appears in the search results. Paid ads are listed above the organic results on Google. You can see them marked with the word “Ad” in a small box. Even with the “Ad” label, getting this front-page placement is critical to getting people to click.

One survey showed that the vast majority of Google users stay on the first page of Google results, with 75% of users clicking on the first or second result that comes up. Only a meager 7% of searchers look beyond the first page of results.

Unless your organic SEO efforts are top-tier (which, as mentioned, demands significant effort, money, and time), scoring a first-page results ranking could be tough.

8 PPC Best Practices for Google Ads for Healthcare

This quick e-guide highlights some best practices for healthcare advertising on Google.

1. Educate Yourself About PPC

If you’ve never used PPC advertising before, take the time to learn about the process. Once you set up your Google Ads account, you can set up a PPC campaign. You set a budget (e.g., daily, monthly, etc.). Whenever someone clicks on your ad, this eats into your allotment (hence the term “pay-per-click”). You can target your ad using keywords. If you haven’t already set up a campaign, you can do so here.

2. Set Clear Goals

One of the significant advantages of PPC is that you can track the results. You will be able to see exactly how many clicks you get on your ad. You can then see whether the number of clicks aligns with subsequent conversions. Decide what you want “success” to look at beforehand. For example, do you want to increase website traffic, boost sales, or raise general brand awareness?

3. Include Negative Keywords

Many PPC newbies focus solely on what keywords they want to rank for. However, it’s just as important to specify which keywords you don’t want to rank for. Someone searching for these so-called negative keywords is unlikely to be interested in your product or company – and thus unlikely to take any action that will meet your end goal.

4. Define Your Keyword Matches

There are three main types of keyword matches:

  • Exact: An exact keyword match will allow your ad to appear in the results only when the precise given keyword is input, e.g., “cardiovascular stent.”
  • Phrase: A phrase match will allow your ad to appear in the results if the keyword appears as part of a general search phrase, e.g., “cardiovascular stent provider.”
  • Broad: Finally, a broad match will allow your ad to appear in the results even if the precise keyword isn’t used, but a synonym is used, e.g., “coronary stent.” A broad match is only recommended if you have a large budget.

5. Create a Compelling Ad

There’s no point investing in PPC ads if you aren’t going to make them great. Your ad copy should be concise and convincing. The goal of the ad copy should be clearly defined, with a well-defined call-to-action. Logically, the copy should also be closely related to your chosen target keyword.

6. Ensure Your Landing Pages are Relevant to Your Ads

Your ad is creating a promise. Make sure that whatever landing page your consumer clicks on delivers that promise. For example, if you advertise a specific product, you want to ensure that the user is directed to that product page, not your general web page. You want to minimize the number of clicks your website visitor needs to convert.

7. Monitor Your Results

As mentioned, one of the most significant benefits of Google PPC is that you can track the results. Track your conversions regularly and adjust your ad campaign (e.g., keywords and negative keywords) accordingly. You can use Google AdWords Search Query Reports to gather valuable details to determine what keywords you aren’t using might help you capture more visitors.

8. Abide by Google and HIPAA Guidelines

Last but not least, whenever you’re undertaking any digital marketing in a healthcare campaign, make sure you’re abiding by HIPAA guidelines. Additionally, note that Google ads for healthcare and medicines are subject to unique rules. For example, remarketing isn’t permitted (in which you basically “follow up” and target people who have already visited your website).

Increase Your Market Share with Share Moving Media

Share Moving Media is a full-service media company that helps healthcare manufacturers and distributors increase market share. We work with a diversity of media, from print publications to webinars and more. With a holistic approach to healthcare marketing, we can help you raise your company’s profile.

Get more digital marketing in healthcare news by signing up for our newsletter, The Marketing Minute. Contact us to collaborate.

5 Lessons for Healthcare Suppliers from Population Health Analytics

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Population health analytics is a great boon to healthcare suppliers and distributors with the potential of driving their businesses forward.

The collection of patient data from different demographics improve the services provided to hospitals and distributors. Healthcare supply analytics benefits significantly from the data furnished by population health. It helps identify areas where specific products have great demand.

As a medical supplier, you need to forecast the healthcare demands on the horizon. Analysis of this data can help make the supply chain more efficient, reducing overhead expenses from stocking up on supplies that medical providers don’t need.

Global market size for healthcare analytics, which includes population health, will grow to around $40 billion by 2025. This developing demand in the healthcare industry makes it more crucial to increase your awareness about population health.

What Health Suppliers Should Know About Population Healthcare Supply Analytics

Value-based care is at the core of population health analytics. The benefits of correctly matching a patient to a health provider can be extended to medical suppliers – matching suppliers’ capabilities with the providers’ needs.

These five things can help you understand the impact of population health analytics on your business and the health industry:

1. What is Population Health Analytics?

Population health covers a broad area that’s not always well-defined. However, management and analysis of its data have a clear goal. It improves the health of the communities and specific groups of people, addressing medical problems on a large scale.

The information gained by providers from this type of health analytics can give medical suppliers an insight on how to match their customers’ needs.

Population health investigates the following fields:

  • Health outcomes and distribution in a population
  • Patterns of health determinants
  • Policies and interventions at both individual and social levels

Widespread health problems such as heart disease and diabetes require population health data to help create effective health solutions.

Population health analytics seeks to bridge the gap between financial and clinical aspects of the health industry. Medical errors pose health risks to patients and have severe implications in other areas, such as psychological issues for healthcare professionals and financial losses for the health institutions. Data collected from various disciplines, including those gathered outside the health sector, goes through population health analysis.

As a result, analytics will help standardize clinical approaches, identify the right healthcare products to combat community-wide illnesses, and reduce cases of medical errors.

2. Analysis of Claims Data

Population health includes claims data, which are readily available and have a structured and standardized format. However, the data is retrospective consisting of a month or year-old information. Even so, it still helps providers to study patients based on their claims history. 

Claims data help providers understand their patients better with information such as:

  • Patient demographics
  • Dates of service
  • Diagnosis codes
  • Cost of services

Analysis of claims data helps healthcare professionals learn any major health issues their patients face and how they usually pay for their treatments.

While not complete in and of itself, claims data provides an excellent starting point for healthcare analytics.

3. Importance of Electronic Health Record Data

Electronic Health Record data, also known as EHR, fills the gap that claims data cannot provide. A vast majority of hospitals focus on implementing EHR in their infrastructure. It allows for a better understanding of patient-oriented information such as vital signs, medications, allergies, lab data and imaging, and immunization dates.

EHRs can go deeper into detail, giving information such as provider impressions of their patients, records of patients’ concerns about misdiagnoses, and care processes patients received.

The availability of EHR datasets can help healthcare providers learn specific population health information, including:

  • Patients with high blood pressure readings that are at high-risk levels
  • Number of patients taking multiple medications which could have contraindications
  • Number of pediatric patients who did not receive the recommended dosages because of missed immunization appointments

However, the plethora of data that EHRs provide is also the source of its downside. Analysis requires additional workflows to make the data structured. Some of its fields contain static PDF files, imaging reports, and lab results. These data need further processing before going through analysis.

Since data entry can be overly complex, some users end up taking shortcuts. They could leave default values in place or copy old data and paste them for each new visit.

Fortunately, EHR continues to undergo optimization. A large segment of the healthcare industry is redesigning EHR to accommodate current global challenges as well.

4. Value of Socioeconomic Data

Socioeconomic status can impact a patient’s experience on the healthcare they receive, such as the waiting time and quality of doctor care. Population health analytics can help in addressing every patient’s holistic needs using socioeconomic data. Environmental, community, and social data are vital in telling the whole story behind a patient’s condition. 

Further analysis of specific groupings organized by location, ethnicity, and age are  possible using socioeconomic datasets, such as:

  • Local healthy food choices
  • Average income
  • English proficiency
  • Transportation access
  • Education levels

Health management programs immensely benefit from socioeconomic data, giving them information on addressing specific groups’ health needs.

5. Challenges Addressed by Population Health Analytics

Population health analytics aids healthcare professionals in taking proactive measures when providing treatment. For instance, the results of data analysis can give a prediction on the possibility of acute kidney failure in hospitalized patients.

Some of the challenges that population health analytics address are:

  • Increased healthcare costs
  • Inaccurate patient data
  • Inability to recognize developing health threats

The analysis can also identify what types of medication are in high demand for a specific group. It can help point out ineffective prescriptions that are soon to be obsolete. 

Information such as these is crucial to medical suppliers, allowing you to focus more on providing healthcare solutions that your customers currently need. You can also have a better forecast as to which products will be in high demand in the future.

Population Health Analytics Improves Healthcare Supply Business

These five lessons from population health analytics can help you improve specific business processes. You can strategically tailor your approach, significantly reducing risks from investing in products that won’t sell.

Share Moving Media provides webinars and training to help healthcare manufacturers and distributors address their clients’ needs. Contact us for more strategies on how to boost your business effectively.

7 Strategies for Picking the Right Healthcare Marketing Influencers

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When you think of influencers, medical supplies isn’t typically the first industry that comes to mind. But picking the right influencers to enhance your healthcare marketing strategy might just be the smartest thing you do this year. 

Just put yourself in the mind of your buyers and decision-makers. For starters, they’re busy.

A recent survey found that 76% of B2B medical supply buyers rate ease of finding information as their top priority. 

Meanwhile, 50% of all medical supply buyers are Millennials and 57% of all buying teams have already made a purchase decision before they ever reach out to your sales team.

The point is, you need a strategy to get your content and info in front of your buyers’ faces before they even think to ask for it. That’s why influencers in healthcare marketing are so critical today. 

Picking the right ones, however, is another battle. Here’s how to narrow your search.

How to Nail Down the Best Healthcare Marketing Influencers for Your Niche

Think long term as you pick influencers for healthcare marketing. Remember, they’ll be uniquely representing your company and products. 

You’ll have better ROI and avoid costly faux pas if you spend time researching and strategizing now.

1. Bigger Isn’t Always Better with Influencers in Healthcare Marketing

The follower count means nothing if the influencer isn’t relevant enough to your niche. 

For example, people like the Kardashians are considered mega-influencers but you’d never want them promoting your content to their millions of followers because it wouldn’t deliver results. 

It can backfire too – like when Kim Kardashian promoted a morning sickness medication on Instagram without following pharmaceutical disclosure regulations. 

Even within healthcare, massive influencers tend to have broader audiences and a huge chunk might be consumers. 

Pay little attention to the follower count. Instead, start with a healthcare influencer’s engagement like comments, shares, and clicks. 

2. Analyze the Audience of Potential Influencers in Healthcare Marketing

Engagement must come first. All your target accounts and audience segments might follow someone, but if they aren’t engaging with the influencer’s page then what’s the point?

That’s why your next step is to analyze their audience insights. 

Tools like BuzzSumo can help you work backward. By setting up social listening alerts for keywords and topics, you can see who shares what and whether their audience engages with them. 

Agencies can also help you hedge your bets across internal influencers at offices and hospitals with strategic magazines and journals.

3. Vet Each Healthcare Influencer’s Healthcare Experience

The point of partnering with influencers in healthcare marketing is to build trust in your medical supplies and products.  

Influencers don’t work for your company. They do, however, still represent your company and products. You can’t remove the risk completely, but you can mitigate it with background research.

Ask yourself, would your end-users and buyers trust this person? Experience in their field is key.

Vet their work history and education on LinkedIn just as you would when hiring someone for a job. You might be surprised how easy it is to falsify work history at massive companies. 

4. Consider the Influencer’s Experience Working with Brands Too

Kim K had plenty of experience working with brands but no experience working in pharmaceuticals. 

Don’t laugh. You could run into the opposite problem with healthcare influencers: plenty of medical experience but none in modern marketing.

For example, overly promotional content from influencers doesn’t build trust or deliver results.

Experienced influencers in healthcare marketing understand the subtleties of sparking interest in your product without looking tacky or desperate. 

5. Look at Audience Personas to Build a Comprehensive Influencer Strategy

Ideally, you should already have detailed audience personas mapped out:

  • Doctors
  • Nurses
  • Medical assistants
  • Other professional end-users
  • Medical students
  • Patients 

Remember to include each professional persona’s firmographics, like their hospital size, job role, market share, pain points, and specialties. For patients, include basic demographics along with other qualities as they relate to your product, like health conditions, insurance provider, health concerns, and pain points.

Use these detailed personas to target each one via the right influencers in healthcare marketing.

Building an influencer strategy through these personas ensures your content will reach all the most important touchpoints.

6. Study How Each Influencer Writes and Interacts with Their Followers

Successful influencers need charisma to keep their followers engaged. It gets complicated because different audiences want different personalities from influencers.

Analyze the tone of an influencer’s posts – are their followers receptive? 

What do their followers say in the comments and how does the influencer respond? 

Carefully considering the influencer’s tone and comments first tells you if they’re committed to keeping their audience engaged. Second, it also helps you decide if they fit your brand’s values and culture.

7. Make Sure Your Goals Align with Your Potential Healthcare Influencers

Look at your healthcare influencer shortlist. 

Have any of them effectively retired from medicine to work as professional influencers? 

Do they seem committed to integrity and sharing their knowledge, or are they only interested in the cash-advertisement exchange?

You could certainly ask your influencers in healthcare marketing these questions during an interview call. However, you can also glean plenty of insight just by analyzing their online presence and background too.

Don’t Force Influencers into Your Healthcare Marketing Strategy

Landing relationships with healthcare influencers who have large followings might sound tempting but massive reach alone won’t build you a sustainable strategy. 

You’ll enjoy the best results for your medical supply manufacturing or distributing company if you take time researching the potential influencers in healthcare marketing and picking the right fit. 

Your prospective buyers and your company’s reputation should always come first. After you’ve built a shortlist with those factors considered, you can finetune potential influencers based on your goals and content. 

Just remember, the influencer’s audience analytics demand just as much vetting as the influencer’s background. 

Share Moving Media has helped countless manufacturers and distributors reach thousands of the right decision-makers through targeted publications like Repertoire, The Journal of Healthcare Manufacturing, and Efficiency in Group Practice. Contact us now to talk!

Healthcare Manufacturers’ Top Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2021

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Successful marketing relies on planning. Strategizing is even more critical in the competitive healthcare field. The medical device market alone is expected to reach $208 billion by 2023, and many companies are competing to dominate this lucrative market.

Getting ahead of the healthcare marketing trends in 2021 can help increase your market share.

5 Essential Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2021

Marketing will increasingly take a consumer-first approach. Businesses now recognize that by meeting consumer demand, they foster loyalty and encourage engagement, which ultimately boosts the bottom line. 

As you create your marketing strategy for the year ahead, take these consumer-first healthcare marketing trends into account.

1. Voice Search is Gaining Ground

Improvements in artificial intelligence and modern voice recognition technology (Alexa, Google, Siri, etc.) are reinvigorating voice search marketing. Instead of typing queries into search engines like Bing and Google, consumers are making requests verbally.

Traditional search engine optimization is geared towards writing. Modern SEO must be geared toward talking. Voice queries are lengthier and more conversational. Instead of typing in “new medical device 2021,” a person might ask, “What new medical devices are coming onto the market in 2021?”

Cater to the consumer desire for voice-driven tech by adapting your SEO – one of the most impactful content marketing techniques you can use. By driving organic traffic to your website, SEO attracts leads that are already interested in your content.

2. Retention Marketing is the New Priority

Retention marketing is expected to be one of the dominant marketing trends for all industries in 2021. This strategy focuses on fostering loyalty among existing customers instead of attracting new customers. This allows for continual sales at a lower cost per sale since you don’t have to invest in lead generation.

Retention marketing techniques like cross-selling and upselling are critical to success. If you have a customer that’s currently only buying one product from your company, look at ways to maximize that profit. Are there other products relevant to their field? Is there a chance to up their existing order?

You can also nurture your customer relationships and boost engagement through non-sales activities. Providing educational opportunities like webinars is a great way to give your clients added value that keeps them coming back.

3. Content is Still King

Content will remain a critical cornerstone of successful healthcare marketing strategies in 2021. Content marketing can include everything from blogs to thought-leader articles in healthcare publications, social media activity, and more.

The key to success is consistency. You have to publish regularly, creating value-added content rooted in keyword research that reflects your target audience’s needs. A mix of long- and short-form content is ideal, allowing you to cater to different media platforms, e.g., a medical magazine versus social media.

To take your content to the next level in 2021, make it interactive. Interactive content captures the user’s attention span for longer. Quizzes, videos, and infographics are all great ways to engage users actively. Visually driven content is also popular and highly shareable.

4. The Chatbots are Set to Take Over

AI technology has improved the functionality of chatbots immensely. In the past, this tech could do little more than give a standard greeting and then direct the user to an alternative resource (like a customer service email) for real help.

Today’s chatbots are fast, responsive, and intelligent. Need proof? The technology is so advanced that it’s been used to conduct COVID-19 risk assessments in 2020, alleviating the burden on overworked healthcare professionals.

Incorporate chatbots into your website to provide your clients with an improved online experience. A chatbot offers immediate assistance, decreasing wait times and increasing customer satisfaction.

5. Nostalgia Marketing Has Customers Looking Back

So far, this list has been all about modern approaches, with a heavy emphasis on tech. Consumers don’t just want what’s shiny and new, however. Nostalgia marketing is a significant trend to watch out for in 2021. This emphasizes human connectivity and authenticity.

To make the most of the nostalgic mood, capitalize on the moment’s cultural trends – or consider reintroducing a discontinued product or service. If you previously held informational podcasts about your product line, for example, consider bringing this back.

Prepare Your Healthcare Marketing Strategy for 2021 Now

Share Moving Media can help you harness the power of 2021’s top healthcare marketing trends. As a full-service media and content agency, we help medical manufacturers keep their marketing current to boost healthcare sales. Our quality content includes blog posts, podcasts, webinars, ebooks, and more.

Sign up for our newsletter for the latest healthcare marketing trends. Want support for your 2021 strategy? Contact us today!

3 Steadfast Ways Print Marketing for Healthcare Supports Digital Campaigns

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How often do you scroll through your preferred social media feed? Check your email? Tune into a webinar? With the rise of new digital tactics influencing consumer behaviors every day, it’s easy to fall into the fallacy that print marketing is dead. 

No one can doubt the importance of digital marketing channels like your website, search engines, social media, and more. While digital marketing plays a crucial role in your overall sales growth strategy, you can still keep traditional tactics in your back pocket to meet your end objectives.

However, print marketing isn’t a substitute for digital marketing, but rather a strategic partner that compliments your brand and helps you deliver personalized experiences. 7 out of 10 people find print advertising more personal than online ads.

Let’s take a look at how you can integrate your digital and print marketing for healthcare initiatives to drive long-term revenue and customer loyalty. 

Why Should Medical Suppliers Invest in Print Marketing for Healthcare?

You might think print marketing for healthcare is outdated and lacks innovation. However, by marrying digital and traditional tactics, you can develop a robust strategy that meets your customers at every stage of their customer journey. 

Here are a few reasons to consider utilizing print marketing in collaboration with your digital campaigns:

  • Touch: With so much digital noise out there, print marketing thrives on touch and taps into your customer’s haptic memory to build an emotional connection with your brand. 
  • Engagement: 78% of executives agree that an integrated digital and print marketing approach drives the most results and a higher engagement rate with customers.
  • Personalization: You’re able to develop personalized print campaigns based on demographics, location, interests, past purchases, and more, which is instrumental in connecting with physician offices across the country and distributor reps.
  • Trust: In the digital age, 63% of consumers trust and read print ads more than digital campaigns.

What’s the biggest benefit of print marketing for healthcare? You don’t have to choose print over digital. By developing a consistent experience across each channel, you can pair print with your digital marketing strategy to drive results that engage and convert your customers.

3 Ways Print Marketing for Healthcare Supports Your Digital Campaigns

To reach your target audience, you need to develop a powerful combined digital and print marketing healthcare strategy. Here are a few ways both channels work together:

1.Drives Website Traffic

Direct mail postcards and published print advertising is a great way to drive traffic back to your website. Whether you’re targeting specific leads or a larger industry audience, you can send hyper-personalized content directly to their mailboxes that target their pain-points and persuade them to learn more.

For example, postcards act as mini product catalogs that give your customers a snapshot into your full offering. Consider adding a quick response (QR) code and personalized URLs (PURLs) to track who is going back to your website so you can deliver a personalized experience and better report on your return on investment (ROI). 

2.Increases Newsletter Signups

Email marketing provides you the opportunity to send personalized, frequent messages to contacts who are interested in your products. Email marketing provides an average return rate of $42. It’s a great way to showcase your brand, educate customers on product tips, and highlight upcoming events. 

However, it can be difficult to grow a qualified email subscriber list. By utilizing table tents or direct mail postcards, you can consistently promote your newsletter’s benefits and encourage recipients to subscribe. You can also employ your print and email marketing initiatives in your workflow automation to provide touchpoints throughout the customer’s journey. 

3.Boosts Social Media Following

Have you considered sending a print newsletter or sponsoring content in a print ad? Both are great ways to reach your target audience on a more personal level to establish credibility or flagship product updates. These print marketing initiatives are also a gateway to building your social media following.

Since your print marketing already demonstrates your expertise, you can utilize it as a platform to encourage recipients to follow your social media accounts for even more information. Tease out more incentives, product education, and more to work on growing your online presence. 

Combine Print and Digital Marketing to Target Your Ideal Customer

While you might believe “print is dead,” that sentiment couldn’t be farther from the truth as more consumers are starting to tune out digital noise. It’s essential to mix both digital and traditional tactics to engage with your target audience and create a powerful marketing strategy for your medical products. Instead of siloing your strategy, you’ll be able to meet your customer at every point in their journey to boost your bottom line.

Ready to increase your marketing share? Contact Share Moving Media to grow your business through content marketing.