24 Sep
Marketing to doctors can be a challenging task due to the busy nature of doctors. The jam-packed schedule of doctors can take them from one patient to another from place to place. During a doctor’s downtime, that’s when they’re bombarded with sales pitches from medical representatives and other professionals. This makes it much harder for you to grab the attention of these medical professionals – because they’re likely overwhelmed already.
To stand out from the crowd and successfully market to doctors, you’ll need to create a foolproof strategy that will target their needs and show up at the most opportune times. You should also make it a point to provide high-value information concisely to make it worth their attention.
Creating a marketing strategy for doctors will require your message to be targeted, specific, and useful. Doctors are highly educated individuals who are discerning of the company they keep. They prefer working with individuals who understand the demands of their work, are empathetic to their plight, and have a genuine desire to help them grow their number of clients and reach their target market. But that may be difficult if you don’t know where and how to begin. In this guide, we’ll guide you on how to market to doctors’ offices to help you sign these medical professionals as clients. Keep reading to know more.
Getting to know doctors
Before you start marketing to doctors, you must know your basics first. You need to know who they are, who they work with, and the new developments in their industry.
In this section, we’ll answer these questions.
Doctors don’t have a lot of free time
The busy schedule of doctors makes it essential for your marketing strategy to be clear and concise. Providing information in this manner can help you keep their attention and make it more likely for them to work with your business.
Be respectful of their time and try to structure your messages in a way that is easily accessible on multiple devices.
Admin team
Doctors are extremely busy, and they rely on their administrative team to help them manage their time, patients, and payments.
For some doctors, they swear that their secretaries are the key to managing their operations. Secretaries not only manage operations, but also keep unwanted marketers at bay. It’s these individuals who you should also consider when creating collaterals for your target market.
Why? Simply because a doctors’ administrative team will usually help them find the items or teams, they need to accomplish tasks.
For example, let’s say that the doctor is looking for a marketing company to increase their practice’s reach, they’ll likely ask for recommendations from the people they trust first. Some may even delegate this task to their administrative team. This is why it’s critical for your marketing strategy to also consider a doctor’s administrative team.
Trends in the medical industry
Since the pandemic, medicine has evolved and even taken over new channels. Telemedicine is one of the biggest trends during the pandemic that has stayed.
Not only is telemedicine more accessible for patients but, it also reduces a doctor’s commute time. All they need to do is find a quiet space where they can diagnose the patient. It also limits face-to-face interactions to a strict need basis, thus reducing the risk of spreading diseases.
Knowing how to market to doctors
When you get the chance to market to doctors you don’t want to waste your chance.
You need to ensure that you’re talking to the right medical professionals and that you’re giving them the information they need to succeed. Here are some tips to help you make your marketing message more relevant for doctors:
Pain points
Every profession has its pain points. This is a critical part of your marketing strategy because it gives you an idea of how you can market your solutions.
If you don’t know what your target market needs then, you’ll have a terrible time advertising your services. What’s worse is you risk wasting the time of your potential client.
To help you figure out the pain points of doctors ask yourself the following questions:
- What solutions do you offer?
- What challenges do doctors face?
- How can your services help doctors with their problems?
- What kind of doctor are you trying to reach?
Once you’ve answered these, you can have a better idea of how you can market your services.
Reliable database
Once you have your pain points down, you should check to see if there’s a doctors’ email database available for you to use. If there isn’t, you’ll need to start creating your database from scratch, which can be much more time-consuming.
What type of marketing works best for doctors?
While the value of providing clear and concise content remains the same, it’s best if you streamline your marketing strategy even further by focusing on key marketing channels. This helps you focus your message to make it more effective and cost-efficient.
Here are the top ways to market to doctors’ offices:
Email Marketing
Using email marketing for your strategy can be an effective tactic because your message goes straight into the doctor’s inbox. Through email marketing, you can reach your target audience, promote services, and even attract new patients. A doctor email list allows you to target your marketing efforts towards a specific audience of healthcare professionals who are most likely to be interested in your products or services.
A verified email database also reduces the risk of sending emails to invalid or inactive addresses. For example, if you’re targeting ENT specialists, an ENT specialist email list ensures that your messages reach the intended recipients. This leads to better open rates. Combined with an eye-catching title and a concise body that provides a ton of value, you’re guaranteed to maximize this channel.
Social media
With most people already on social media, you shouldn’t wonder why this channel is on the list.
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter can be effective for connecting with doctors and healthcare professionals. Using targeted ads on these platforms can also reach specific medical professionals based on their specialties, such as epidemiologists and family medicine specialists. However, the effectiveness of social media marketing often complements email campaigns, as social media can drive traffic to your email sign-up forms, expanding your email database.
Often, when doctors log on to social media, they’re not preoccupied with anything urgent like patients or paperwork. They’re just blowing off steam. The headspace where doctors are when using social media makes it an excellent marketing channel for your business.
Website
Your website is your home on the internet. A well-optimized website is an essential approach to marketing to doctors’ offices. This is where search engine optimization comes in. By utilizing key SEO techniques to improve its performance, you can improve your site’s ranking on Google, which can help you show up faster on your target market’s radar.
Your website should provide valuable resources, such as articles, FAQs, and service descriptions tailored to healthcare professionals. Incorporating a blog can also drive organic traffic and establish your authority in the field.
To capture leads, ensure your website has clear calls to action for signing up for newsletters or downloading resources in exchange for email addresses. This helps grow your email database, which is vital for ongoing communication with doctors.
Google Ads
Google Ads can be customized to target doctors searching for specific services or products. Combining Google Ads with an email list allows businesses to redirect their marketing efforts to specific doctors after they’ve interacted with your website or emails. For instance, keywords like “epidemiologist email list” or “family medicine specialist email list” can be incorporated into ad campaigns to attract businesses looking for access to doctors with specializations.
Reviews
Businesses marketing to doctors can harness the power of social proof. Doctors, like most professionals, value peer recommendations and credible testimonials. You can showcase testimonials from satisfied clients who have benefited from your products or services.
But how do you send these testimonials to your intended audience? Companies that have successfully marketed through an email list can use the same strategy to target other doctors. When businesses target doctors, the reassurance of seeing that other colleagues in the industry have had positive experiences can be a game-changer.
Self-Appointment Capabilities
Doctors are busy professionals, and the key to marketing to them is convenience. Providing doctors and their staff to easily book appointments 24/7 can help your business stand out and appeal to medical practices looking to streamline their scheduling processes. Offering self-scheduling can enhance your company’s reputation and visibility in the healthcare market. Doctors will appreciate the convenience you provide and may be more likely to choose your services over competitors.
Self-scheduling systems also automate many time-consuming administrative tasks. By freeing up staff time, you show how your solution can help doctors’ offices operate more efficiently. More importantly, self-appointment capabilities enhance the patient experience by giving them more control and flexibility over their appointments.
Physician Liaison Marketing
Physician liaisons establish and nurture connections with referring doctors. They serve as a link between referring physicians and specialists, addressing any concerns or requests. Their role is similar to customer service. While their primary focus is to build professional relationships, physician liaisons can also be part of your marketing. A physician liaison program can significantly boost referrals by improving communication and collaboration between healthcare providers.
Effectively advertising to doctors
Now that you know how to market to doctors’ offices, it’s time for you to practice what you’ve learned. Using a combination of any of the marketing strategies outlined above, you can increase your visibility and reach a wider audience of doctors and medical practices. Different people prefer to consume content through different mediums, so utilizing various strategies allows you to connect with more potential clients.
Marketing to doctors can take a lot of patience and effort but, with consistently good efforts, you’ll land the client you desire.
If you want to take your marketing practice up a notch, make sure to visit our blog for more articles just like these!