Why Content Marketing Is Crucial for Hospitals

Why Content Marketing Is Crucial for Hospitals

by | Apr 28, 2023 | B2C/Direct to Patient

The backbone of any successful marketing strategy is not outreach, but content. You may be able to pinpoint exactly where your target audience lives online, but without compelling content, those efforts will likely go to waste. Why? Because patients are less likely to engage with something that doesn’t directly address their needs. If you’re not placing well-informed and tactful content in front of the right patients, the odds are high that they’ll keep scrolling.

Differentiate Your Brand With Trust-Building Content

Think of your content as your online voice. Sure, your existing patients are familiar with your hospital and your providers, but everyone else is not. The only exposure prospective patients get to your brand is through the content you distribute online. When it comes to healthcare, patients are, understandably, highly selective. They want to know that your hospital is the best place to get treated for a specific condition or undergo a certain procedure. Your goal should be to build as much trust as possible before they even reach out to your team.

How do you achieve this? A steady flow of high-quality content. Examples include blogs, videos, emails, white papers, social media posts, and other pieces that establish your hospital as an expert in your field. Moreover, a highly accessible and informative website is key to making a lasting — and revenue-generating — impression. Picture new parents trying to decide where to deliver their baby: will they choose the hospital with a minimal online presence, or the hospital with page after page of web content detailing what to expect in their labor and delivery unit — along with dozens of other content pieces on multiple channels relaying their long-standing expertise and trustworthiness?

For many patients, choosing a hospital or provider boils down to familiarity and trust. Even if your team has world-renowned experts in every specialty, patients searching online will inevitably choose the hospital with more visible marketing and content strategies. It’s up to you to give your hospital a leg up against the competition with content that continually builds trust and clearly showcases how you deliver a superior patient experience.

Gain Unmatched Visibility Into Your Campaigns

Once you’ve set up your campaigns to optimize content delivery, make sure you have a way to track engagement. In the hospital marketing context, this means following which content pieces on which channels are driving the most patients to take the next step: filling out a form, scheduling an appointment, or calling your team. Watching campaigns in real-time empowers informed decision-making and helps your team divert more resources to the tactics that maximize impact.

Over time, the needs and behaviors of your prospective patient population will change. While this requires a pivot in your strategy, it can be a new opportunity to get ahead by acting more quickly than your competitors. Conduct audience research on a regular basis to gain new insights into what patients are looking for in their ideal hospital, and redirect that information in your favor by showing how your hospital does it best.

To make the most of your content strategy, partner with a hospital advertising agency that knows the ins and outs of what drives patient conversions. Jairus specializes in content marketing for hospitals striving to boost their online brand awareness and foster engagement with prospective patients. Our team can refine your marketing strategy to broadcast the most effective content on the right digital channels, leveraging advanced analytics to pinpoint where your campaigns are gaining the most traction.

Looking for a hospital marketing agency to strengthen your content strategy? Learn more about how Jairus helps hospitals drive unprecedented revenue growth.

3 Methods to Navigate Challenges of Access to Healthcare Decision-Makers

3 Methods to Navigate Challenges of Access to Healthcare Decision-Makers

by | Apr 28, 2023 | HCP/B2B

For many medtech companies, sending reps into the hospital for sales calls feels like a distant memory. Now, leaders must go back to the drawing board to devise new marketing and sales strategies to drive growth despite unprecedented industry challenges.

Challenge: Limited Face-to-Face Opportunity

Perhaps one of the most disruptive medtech shifts brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was the immediate elimination of access to physicians and other healthcare decision-makers. However, concerns about face-to-face interaction overshadowed industry-wide challenges even prior to COVID. Hospitals have long been trying to keep medical device marketing and sales reps out of the operating room. Administrators block access to physicians to funnel reps into conversations with gatekeepers who can slow the growth of technology costs — a tactical decision to minimize rep influence among physicians.

The pandemic didn’t create the opposition to in-person rep conversations, it only strengthened it. One survey reported that among the 75% of physicians who preferred face-to-face interactions with medtech reps before COVID, 47% now prefer virtual meetings — or fewer interactions overall.1 Considering the traditional medtech sales model hinges on getting a foot in the door with key physicians and decision-makers, administrators determined to keep these doors shut force reps to find alternative ways to make connections.

Solution

Jairus Marketing excels in reopening doors to healthcare decision-makers through its digital marketing strategies. The Jairus model circumvents traditional sales avenues by reaching decision-makers outside of the clinical setting, powering convenient and impactful engagements proven to build the pipeline. Just like the rest of us, clinicians and administrators are highly active online — the Jairus team knows where to find them and how to effectively capture their interest and generate demand.

Challenge: Time Scarcity

A shift towards RVU-based compensation for physicians means less time for “non-productive” activities, like meeting with sales professionals. Even with that drive for greater and greater productivity, doctors and administrators continue their interest in learning about new technologies that can provide better outcomes or improve the profitability of the organization.

Solution

Instead of carving out time in their tightly-packed schedules, physicians would much rather engage with follow-up efforts on their own time. Fortunately, there are more effective ways to pursue sales efforts without going back into the office. By automating the marketing and follow-up process, Jairus enables massive growth within existing sales infrastructure. This empowers full engagement with your brand and undivided attention to your message. Additionally, by providing valuable content to prospects outside of the context of a salesperson to prospect conversation, doctors and administrators can build their interest in your offering on their own time, when they are more engaged and willing to dive deeper into your value proposition. With Jairus, decision-makers are immersed in a convenient, accessible, and stress-free marketing experience that makes it easier than ever to say “yes”.

Challenge: Decrease in Physician Decision-Makers

From 2019 to 2021, hospitals and other corporate entities increased their physician employee population by 19%.3 Likewise, the percentage of corporate-owned practices grew by 39% in just two years.3 This trend spans all practice sizes and specialties. While the employment shift to larger healthcare entities, especially integrated delivery networks (IDNs), may strengthen job security and financial stability for previously independent physicians, the impact on medtech companies may prove to be detrimental.

When physicians are no longer the primary (or sole) decision-makers, innovation may take a backseat to financial constraints. This transfer of power may stifle growth and makes it exceedingly difficult for medtech companies to pique the interest of those with purchasing power if not approached correctly. This new world of medtech marketing requires companies to sell to administrators, whose agendas extend beyond clinical matters, as well as physicians. Further complicating matters, many of those administrators don’t meet with sales professionals regularly.

Solution

Medtech innovation benefits more than just patients and providers. The full picture also includes financial, practical, and administrative gains — value propositions sure to catch the eye of IDN and hospital leaders. By customizing content and messaging to hone in on what appeals the most to each audience, Jairus grants full market access to medtech companies of all sizes. By deploying marketing campaigns for all audiences, it is possible to build a coalition of support in an account. The approach we utilize leverages comprehensive audience research to inform hyper-personalized outreach efforts, broadcasting that content on the right platforms to maximize engagement and drive conversions.

Looking to future-proof your medtech marketing strategy? Learn more about how Jairus can help you effectively reach decision-makers for high-impact sales conversations.