Looking at the healthcare industry, it’s often an industry that’s lagging behind in terms of embracing digital trends. 

While new technologies are invented every day and new treatment options are discovered to help treat patients, to make their lives better and improve outcomes, the industry itself doesn’t always embrace “digital”, let alone digital marketing. 

Pharmaceutical companies are willing to invest billions of dollars in new inventions but often still rely on face-to-face visits to the consultant’s office to reach their customers. If this sound like your organisation, keep reading for tips on getting started. 

Importance of marketing in the healthcare industry

Historically, hearing the words “marketing” and “physician” in the same phrase has been frowned upon by the public, thinking that a consultant should not be receiving any promotional materials.

But let’s look at it from a different angle; the consultant is in their clinic every day seeing and caring for their patients and making sure they get the best treatment. While pharma, biotech, and medical technologies companies are the ones conducting research, investing in academia to accelerate medical advancement, and spearheading the technological advancement of the industry.

So what will bring the new technologies and treatments to the consultant’s office? Marketing.

Challenges faced when marketing to healthcare professionals

Up until recently, sales and marketing in pharma companies consisted of a workforce of talented sales professionals who’d pay regular visits to the consultant’s office in order to promote their products and services.

But we live in the digital age now, hence why we’re exploring ways to incorporate digital marketing into the healthcare industry and the new digital trends when marketing to HCPs.

Understanding your audience – where do HCPs hang out online?

On an average working day, a physician is mostly offline, engaging face-to-face with patients and with their teams. 

Physicians consider peer-reviewed content and clinical data to be the most influential type of content when it comes to learning new treatment options, understanding patient outcomes and staying up to date in their field; they particularly value articles written by fellow healthcare professionals or thought leaders in their fields, and prioritise reading about the latest research findings, new treatments, new medical technologies, and outcomes of clinical trials, real-world case studies and practical insights. 

In terms of placement, we rarely see them spending time scrolling on mainstream social media channels, instead they engage in specialised forums and groups, such as Sermo, Doximity, Doctors.net.UK, and Asco Connection to discuss specific medical cases, share experiences, and seek advice, they also visit healthcare news websites, forums and online medical journals, such as, The British Medical Journal, JAMA, and The Lancet, for objective reporting on the latest advances in drugs and treatment options.

 

Leveraging digital technologies to reach HCPs

Content & SEO

High-quality, Expert Content is now the SEO golden standard for any industry and healthcare is no exception.

While creating your content strategy, focus on detailed, accurate, and high-value content that demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). This is even more crucial for medical professionals who rely on accurate information. Ask experts and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to contribute to your content to enhance credibility​.

When writing medical content, use specific scientific terms and keywords that physicians are likely to search for. 

The healthcare industry is a dynamic and fast moving industry, make sure your content is up to date with the latest medical research and guidelines. 

Paid media

Based on audience research and our experience at Hallam, we’ve identified two effective paid media channels that help you reach physicians.

At ‘awareness’ level, we have partnered with Doceree, a programmatic display advertising platform that uses cutting edge targeting technologies in order to identify and target physicians online. With Doceree, you can target almost any medical specialty you want (oncology, neurology, dentistry…) in most global markets (EU, US, and India). They offer placements on medical journals, HCP networking forums and online prescription hubs.

If programmatic display advertising is not for you, you can still benefit from the wide reach of display ads, through direct media buying deals with selected publishers. All you need to do is select a list of publishers, most likely medical journals in the case of HCPs such as the British Medical Journal and ask for their media buying package, you will be able to buy a set number of impressions at a predefined CPM.

At consideration and conversion level, we’ve seen good results with Linkedin thanks to its accurate targeting capabilities. With Linkedin Ads, you’ll be able to define the exact specialties you wish to target, include or exclude the public sector, and run different campaign types and formats such as image ads to drive traffic to a landing page, or lead generation document ads to leverage valuable whitepapers.

Traditional marketing in the healthcare industry

Despite the shift towards digital, traditional marketing strategies still play a key role when marketing in healthcare, specifically: 

  • Direct mailing, which is still widely used due to its ability to reach HCPs personally and directly. It’s mainly used for event invitations, product launches, product updates, and event follow-ups.
  • Networking at healthcare conferences and seminars: healthcare professionals actively participate in congresses, conferences and seminars for them to be up to date with the latest developments, it’s a great way for marketers to be present and to meet and network with physicians face-to-face allowing deeper connections and trust-building.
  • Educational workshops and speaking engagements, which will allow you to share in-depth knowledge and demonstrate your expertise, and will also allow you to answer the physician’s questions in real time which will establish you as a valuable resource. After a successful offline event, remember to streamline your offline and online marketing efforts by creating digital content off the back of your event, this can be social media content during the event, or blogs and whitepapers written and shared with your target audience after the event.

Digital marketing to healthcare professionals presents unique challenges but also offers tremendous opportunities. By focusing on high-quality, expert-driven content, employing SEO best practices, and identifying the correct media channels, healthcare marketers can effectively reach and engage with physicians.

Work with an award-winning paid media agency 

If you’re operating in the healthcare industry, reach out to Hallam to discuss your content, SEO and paid media strategies with a team of professionals with proven experience in healthcare marketing.