Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends To Drive Your 2021 Strategy

By David Thompson

Sep 03, 2021 12:39 PM EDT

Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends To Drive Your 2021 Strategy(Pixabay) (Credit: Getty Image)

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a digital marketing transformation. Right now, every single major competitor is investing heavily in this area to find new ways to use digital marketing tactics as they evolve and grow their business. With so many players involved, there are a lot of things that will shape the future of Medical Marketing Trends. In this blog post, we'll cover five key trends driving the industry today and what you need to know about them for your 2021 strategy.

11 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends to Follow

Reviews Are a Top Ranking Factor on Google

Google is constantly changing the algorithm that determines which sites rank well and what results they show. Right now, reviews are a top-ranking factor on Google-increasingly so with each new update to their search engine algorithms. In fact, it's estimated that more than 90% of all user rankings for local businesses are affected by online ratings and reviews. If you don't have strong customer review scores or any rating yet, this needs to be your first priority when planning out your digital strategy.

Video is the Preferred Way to Consume Content

In 2017, video accounted for 74% of all consumer internet traffic (Cisco). It's also the preferred way to consume digital content. With so much attention on this area, it's something you need to be focusing on as your strategy evolves and changes in 2021 and beyond. Pro tip: consider leveraging short-form videos like these that are more likely than not going to go viral on social media.

Mobile is Where Most Users Spend Their Time Now

More than half of users' time online is spent using a mobile device. That represents around 90 minutes per day (HubSpot). In fact, now 47 percent of marketers report their website isn't even responsive-a term used when designing sites across different platforms, including desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. This trend isn't going to slow down anytime soon. As a result, you need to consider how your digital strategy evolves and changes accordingly if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

Focus On Local SEO

In the past, SEO focused on driving rankings for keywords that were usually national in scope. In 2021 and beyond, though, businesses will need to focus more on their local market-driving up organic search results for terms like "best [insert your city] dentist" or "[your business name] near me." This is a trend you need to be aware of as one of the top-ranking factors in Google's algorithm now includes proximity searches.

Micro-Influencers Can Extend Your Social Media Reach

It's not enough to just have an influencer campaign anymore. That used to be a major tactic in the past, but now marketers need more than that-they're looking for micro-influencers: highly targeted and niche experts with smaller followings on social media like Instagram or Twitter. Why? Because they can extend your reach much further without breaking the bank (Merkle). If you want one of these campaigns at the top of your 2021 strategy list, then start thinking about how you're going to go after them right away because marketing is changing with every day that goes by into 2020.

Make sure this content is unique! Google will punish duplicate content heavily!

Content Marketing For Organic Traffics

Content marketing is critical for driving organic website traffic. But it's something that can get lost in the mix-as other priorities like social media or SEO come into play. However, when you consider how crucial a role content marketing plays on your site as one of the top-ranking factors (HubSpot), then it becomes more important than ever before to make sure you're investing heavily here with this strategy at the top of your list for 2021 and beyond.

Promote Your Brand With Video Content Marketing 

At Project Nurture, we've seen first-hand through our own client work just how powerful video content can be for promoting brands online today: from small mom-and-pop shops all the way up to major corporations looking to stand out from the competition. If you want to take your video content marketing efforts and digital strategy up a notch higher, then now is the time to invest in this area if you haven't already done so because it's not going anywhere anytime soon-in fact, it's only getting stronger.

Pro tip: Remember that short-form videos are much more likely than longer ones or live streams on social media like Facebook Live (BuzzSumo).

Social media is the place to engage with your patients

Social media is becoming more and more of a focus for healthcare providers as the platform with the highest engagement rates. A recent study found that Facebook users are most likely to engage on social media, followed by LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter (HubSpot). The takeaway here? Consider how you can engage with your patients through these channels if you haven't already because it's an area that could be one of your biggest differentiators in 2021 going forward.

Measure Your Digital Strategy Effectiveness

Marketing analytics tools have become critical to measuring the effectiveness of any digital strategy: especially when looking at things like return on investment (ROI) across all marketing efforts, including PPC ad campaigns, organic search rankings, or content marketing strategies. The one for you may vary depending on your needs, but the key here is to look at how you can measure and report against this data in a meaningful way-something that's not going away anytime soon.

Claim and Unify Local Business Directories 

Claiming and unifying your business listings across local directories is another tactic that's critical for 2021. These types of sites are now appearing at the top of Google search rankings, meaning they have a greater chance to influence where you show up in display results-which has become more important than ever before as voice-activated searches continue to grow. 

This means it will be even more important to make sure these types of opportunities go hand-in-hand with any other strategy moving forward in order to maximize how you're seen on mobile devices when people are looking for things.

Voice Search For Growing Healthcare Marketing Trends

Voice search is growing exponentially, which means it will be an important part of every digital strategy moving forward: whether you're in the healthcare industry or not. This can mean everything from using specific keywords that people may use when asking a voice assistant (like Alexa) to find something like "dentist near me" to optimizing for local SEO listings, so your business comes up first if someone's speaking into their phone, "Where's my Uber?"

© 2024 VCPOST, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics