5 Mistakes That Healthcare Marketing Agencies Make

One of the most common mistakes that healthcare marketing agencies make is using too much jargon in posts, blogs, articles, ads, etc. It's important to sound intelligent and professional without confusing the viewers. Now, if you're marketing B2B and are aiming your content at other medical professionals then medical terms can be used. However, if you're a B2C healthcare client, including jargon can confuse your audience and dissuade them from wanting to know more about your business. It's crucial for digital agencies to use layman's terms in most cases to make your point clear to all viewers. Not everyone spends 10+ years in medical school, so much of the complex vocabulary a doctor or nurse would use will be lost on the audience. There are ways to sound knowledgeable and clinical without using jargon. For example, rather than saying "Our doctors can prescribe you with topical corticosteroids emulsions that will alleviate the symptoms including pruritus skin irritation, inflammatory dermal responses, and more" you could say "Our doctors can prescribe you topical ointments that will reduce itching and swelling caused by rashes or allergies." Which one made more sense to you? You can always sprinkle jargon here and there, but you want to avoid clouding your message with confusing terms that only medical professionals will understand. 

Incorrect Targeting For Ads

The next mistake we've heard about when marketing for healthcare clients is targeting digital ads incorrectly. Most social media platforms offer specific targeting options. If you target correctly, you'll spend money to show your ads only to the audience you're trying to attract. Before any healthcare marketing agency can create a successful advertising campaign, they need to understand your target audience. Which, in turn, means that you need to understand who your target audience is. Let's say you have a family physician practice. Your target audience could look something like this:

• Location: Your city +15 miles
• You want to target people who are close enough to your practice to drive there for appointments.
• Age: 18-50+
• You want to capture young adults, parents, and perhaps grandparents
• Gender: All Genders
• Moms and dads can both be looking for doctors for the family!
• Interests: Family Medicine Physician, Primary Care, Primary care physician, New Parents (0-12 months), Parents with toddlers (01-02 years), Parents with preschoolers (03-05 years), Parents with early school-age children (06-08 years), Parents with preteens (09-12 years), Parents with teenagers (13-17 years)

If your digital agency of choice uses this type of targeting, they will hit people near your business who are interested in services or products similar to your own. Now, if you were a physical therapist, your targeting would need to be different because the interests and demographics change. Targeting has to change even more if your company handles B2B rather than B2C. If you're trying to target other medical professionals, you can add job titles and medical journals to ensure you're targeting the people who could become your customers. Always identify your target audience prior to signing on with a healthcare marketing agency so that you can point them in the right direction when it's time to set up campaigns. 

There Isn't Enough Emphasis on Websites or Landing Pages

Marketing for healthcare clients often requires more professionalism and credibility. If you're hoping to generate leads for potential new customers, you'll need to build up quite a bit of trust before any prospects will divulge their contact information. Far too many healthcare marketing agencies will jump the gun to create ads without giving the URLs they direct them to a second thought. If you want to get viewers to fill out your form, the landing page needs to be neat, clean, inviting, professional, and informative. Health-related topics are usually more touchy for the large majority of Americans, and a page with nothing more than a contact form is definitely going to seem suspicious to potential leads. In our experience, many potential leads will look for a website prior to filling out any type of form. Health and Wellness websites must be modern and very professional. There should be a balanced use of text and images, and be sure to include some smiling faces! Many digital agencies will build out a website, but not all can build out an effective medical website. BusySeed noticed this throughout our journey of growth, and our web developers put in extra work to identify what elements of medical/health websites are essential for success. Here are a few of the highlights from our research and past statistics.



• Use blue and white if you can. These are traditionally medical colors that represent trust and cleanliness respectively. White also shows honesty and openness, both of which are important in marketing for healthcare!
• Avoid fear-mongering. Focus on the positives of what your product or business can do for patients/customers, not on the scary things you may help with. 
• Use inviting visuals. Find smiling patients and photos capturing positive interactions. Nature is always great to include, as are warm and bright colors.

Social Media is An Afterthought

This mistake really makes the BusySeed team sad. Social media can be extremely beneficial for health and wellness businesses! There is an ever-growing health trend all over the United States that makes social media a hub of potential new business! We've heard about a lot of digital agencies who downplayed the effectiveness of social media for healthcare marketing. You should regularly publish new posts with informational and engaging content to gain organic traction, and you should ask your healthcare marketing agency to run social media ads. Investing in managed social media services will greatly increase your chance of getting the results you want. It's important to find a healthcare marketing agency that offers and has a good track record with managed social media. Anyone can claim to know what they're doing, but you should ask for proof before you sign. Social media can really boost your brand awareness through both organic and sponsored posts. You can use Facebook advertising to direct people to your website or landing page. Unlike Google ads, you can include a single image or video, or make a carousel of visuals to capture attention! Facebook ads are some of the best social media advertising options because they're proven to be effective. To see the best possible outcomes from marketing on social platforms, we highly suggested outsourcing to managed social media rather than trying to do it yourself. We are experts in the marketing industry just as you are experts in the healthcare field. We've had years to perfect our craft, and we know the ins and outs of marketing for healthcare. 

Using The Wrong Budget

Lastly, many healthcare marketing agencies have failed because they used the wrong ads budget. No business really enjoys spending money on ads, but it's critical if you want to see any kind of result. Set the ads budget too low and you won't reach a large enough audience, spend excessively and you aren't helping anything. It's important to remember that the cost of each click on your ad can be from a few cents to over a dollar (Pro tip: it should always be as low as possible!). If you're selling a product, you'll probably earn far more than you spend for each conversion. If your digital agency is running ads for lead generation, think of how much money one successful conversion will earn you! Going back to our previous example, if you're a family physician, you could get multiple new patients from one ad! That's thousands of dollars for many years! Most healthcare marketing agencies will give you a recommended ads budget, but always have your own in mind. A general rule of thumb is to expect a 1.5% to 5% RoAS from your ads budget. BusySeed tends to see the best healthcare results with an ads budget of $1000 per month or more, but it depends on your goals. Other digital agencies may give you different numbers based on their experiences. Try to do some research before signing on to find the average budget for the industry. 

We hope you've learned something from these five mistakes we've seen from healthcare marketing agencies. As we said, we are very proud of the results we've been able to achieve for our health and wellness clients. We are Forbes accredited for marketing for healthcare and we are constantly learning about new tactics and platforms to better our results even further. Take a look at some of our success stories in our blog Marketing For Healthcare: How to get 100s of Leads and 1000s of Results. If you're looking for marketing services for a health and wellness business, give us a call at (888) 353-1484! We offer website development, digital ads on all the top platforms, managed social media, digital networking, and more! See what we can do for you at https://www.busyseed.com/healthcare.