Remember all those well-thought-out medical marketing plans that we all had in the early days of 2020? All were upended by the coronavirus pandemic. It was a reminder that best-laid plans can sometimes be rendered meaningless by events. But as former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is essential.”
So with that in mind, we’ll say that 2021 healthcare marketing trends are going to continue being defined by what everyone went through in 2020.
The COVID-19 effect is not going away. The ripple effects of everything that went down, notably economic lockdowns, are impacting the healthcare arena. A recent study by Forbes showed that less than a quarter of U.S. adults trust that their employers put health and well-being first.
People are wary of entering into a medical facility despite the safety protocols. What is likely a response to economic pressures, people are less likely to make their health a defining factor in their next employment decision.
That means medical offices are going to continue making COVID-19 their top marketing priority. This starts on the website and in the online directories, where patients and prospects make first contact.
Provide helpful content
Make sure all of your COVID-related content is an easy-to-access place on the website. Where you place it will depend on how much there is. Basic safety protocols can go right on the home page. But if you’ve taken the next step and provided other content (blogs, podcasts, videos, links to good articles, etc.), then you might need to create a separate page for everything COVID-related.
If that’s the case, then the best way to proceed is to make sure users immediately see how to access that page. You can create a menu tab, prominently put a link on the home page or, best of all, do both.
Kick up communication
Most medical offices have already developed good systems of appointment reminders via phone or text. If your office is not doing this, we’re not sure what you’re waiting for! This is something people expect in this day and age regardless of anything connected to COVID.
With the pandemic pushing so much of medical practice to the online world, an office that can’t execute something as basic as a text reminder looks woefully out of date. It might not be fair, but it will make patients wonder what else in the new age of technology you’re out of touch on.
Deliver hard data
How to respond to the pandemic has become a bitterly divisive issue in the United States and around the world. Most people have friends who go to both extremes—some who have all but refused to leave their houses in the last year and other friends who go about their lives as though nothing has changed. Everyone has seen or heard anecdotes that allegedly prove either extreme.
Patients want more from their medical provider. They expect from you that you’ll know hard data on everything from the virus to the vaccine. They expect you to place that data in context. If they’re having an extreme response, they don’t need to be lectured or enabled. They simply need facts from a medical professional, the kind they aren’t getting from the media or on social platforms.
That’s where you come in. This unique opportunity to build real patient trust is perhaps the real “marketing trend” of 2021.