Across industries, the internet has changed the way people do business. Today’s consumers turn to the internet to find the answers to their problems, making healthcare inbound marketing more important than ever.
Marketers used to reach out to consumers to peddle products and earn business. Now, buyers have access to a wealth of information to conduct their own research and seek out solutions to their unique needs. In fact, 93% of all online experiences start with a search engine.
To stand out from the competition and capture market share in the healthcare supply chain, today’s medical sales professionals need to adopt a healthcare inbound marketing mindset.
Keep reading to learn about healthcare inbound marketing and how it can help boost sales and generate revenue.
Key Takeaways:
- Inbound marketing is the use of tailored experiences and content to attract, engage, and delight your audience.
- Inbound marketing involves a powerful content marketing strategy that includes materials ranging from blog articles and whitepapers to videos and podcasts.
- Healthcare inbound marketing is essential to alleviating customer concerns in a complex industry, targeting the right people, and positioning yourself as an industry leader to stand apart from your competition.
What Exactly is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a tactic in which businesses attract customers to their website by creating customized user experiences and content tailored to the audience’s specific needs. Rather than sending out potentially unwanted information to your target market, inbound marketing is all about building meaningful relationships that last. This is important because 65% of a company’s sales come from existing customers.
Types of Inbound Marketing Content
Inbound marketing can take many forms, including:
- Blog articles
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Search engine optimization
Goals of Inbound Marketing
With inbound marketing, the focus is on serving the customer. This means delivering a positive user experience through valuable content that resonates and fills a need.
Healthcare inbound marketing achieves three main goals:
- Attract the right people: Draw people in with meaningful content that builds trust and interests your audience.
- Engage your audience: Provide solutions and expert insights that align with consumer goals and compel people to purchase from you.
- Delight visitors: Offer the support and resources your customers need to ease their pain points and solve their problems.
The more people you satisfy with your inbound marketing, the more those people will spread the word about your business, helping you to expand your reach and cast a wider net. This makes success cyclical. The more you put into your inbound marketing efforts, the more you’ll gain in the long run.
The following video further explains inbound marketing and provides helpful tips and tricks to maximize this tool:
3 Reasons Healthcare Inbound Marketing is a Must
Whether you’re trying to attract hospital distributors, healthcare suppliers, or group purchasing organizations (GPOs), inbound marketing can help generate qualified leads and drive quality traffic to your site. Here are three reasons you should adopt a healthcare inbound marketing mindset.
1. Alleviate Concerns and Boost Confidence
The world of medical distribution can be a highly complex industry. Between technical lab equipment, newly released and updated medications, and ever-evolving government regulations, medical and hospital purchasing often comes with lots of questions. Buyers want to be sure they’re making the best purchase for their company. Healthcare inbound marketing enables you to provide the content they need to build their confidence and influence their purchase decision.
Through audience surveys and research, you can learn what questions and concerns are affecting your target market. Use that information to create content that allays their worries. Publish expert articles, link to reputable resources, and deliver whitepapers and case studies that address specific concerns. Create videos to demonstrate equipment or further explain the features and benefits of the products you sell.
Healthcare can be complicated, but you can help your customer base navigate rough waters through custom inbound marketing.
2. Target the Right People
Buyers are out there right now, searching for the very solutions you provide. Inbound marketing allows you to connect with those people. If you can reach those searchers, who are already in a buying mindset, and convince them that your offerings can solve their problems, you increase the likelihood of conversions and sales. Inbound marketing enables you to not only create powerful content but also optimize that material, so you have more opportunities to align with buyer searches.
Through search engine optimization (SEO) like keyword placement, meta titles, and quality content that delivers value, you can earn higher search engine ranking placement. Since 75% of people don’t scroll past the first page of Google’s search results, ranking among the top results can help boost visibility and maintain a front-of-mind presence among prospective buyers.
Healthcare inbound marketing lets you take a more targeted approach to connecting with potential customers and, as a result, yields more effective results.
3. Position Yourself as an Industry Leader
Knowing what questions your target audience is asking helps you create content that addresses their unique needs. It also enables you to hone in on highly specific topics and conduct in-depth research (and possible case studies) to not only find the answer but to become an expert on that issue.
Delivering expert-level content that links to credible resources and includes factual, current data helps set you apart from your competitors. You’ll position yourself as an industry leader and gain credibility and trust among your readers and your industry peers.
All of this helps you attract a wider audience for a farther reach. You can get your readers to continue following you for more valuable information and recommend you to their own contacts who have similar questions and needs. You’ll broaden your reach, increase brand awareness and recognition, and drive more traffic to your website. From there, you can guide them through the sales funnel with more custom content that meets their needs and helps them achieve their goals.
Develop an Effective Healthcare Inbound Marketing Strategy
Share Moving Media is a content and media company that provides communication and educational resources to businesses in the healthcare industry. Whether you’re in physician office supplies or group contracting, our team can help you create a healthcare inbound marketing strategy that captures market share and sets you apart from the competition.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you create a powerful healthcare inbound marketing strategy!