Five Reasons why Digital Marketing isn't making commercial sense in Healthcare
- Manas Tripathi
- Dec 6, 2022
- 2 min read
Are you running a business in Healthcare and compelled to increase the top line? I am sure the decision-makers are thrown with the idea of investing in a digital marketing campaign.
The reasons are apparent, we see all other sectors doing wonders on digital platforms, and it's a feeling of being "Left behind" which pulls us to invest in digital marketing. However, after
working with many healthcare entities, I can assure you that it will give you a different outcome than you might have anticipated.
The following are potential inhibitors.
1. Undefined Consumer Segment: Speciality outranks Hospital Brand.
The consumer in Healthcare predominantly ranks specific services before hospital brand. For example, people looking for birthing services will assess how well the birthing unit is managed within the hospital rather than the overall impression of the hospital name.
Not understanding the customer segment becomes the first bottleneck in planning for a digital marketing campaign to prioritise the element that needs to be marketed through digital marketing and balance it with the overall brand image.
2. Volume Vs Cost: Healthcare is not Soap and Chocolate.
Creating quality content is costly; it comes at a high price and needs to be constantly updated to be relevant in the market. The cost will remain the same if contents are devolped for a soap or for Healthcare, but the difference lies that soap is required by everyone every day, which is not the case with Healthcare. As the base is low, the cost of acquiring customers for Healthcare is way higher than in other sectors.
Our recent market assessment tells us that for an OPD patient, the cost of acquiring through digital marketing can be INR 300 – 800 per patient. For high-end IPD cases, this can be as high as 15,000 – 40,000.
3. Identifying the Correct Channel: No need no click
Consumption of healthcare services is need based on and has lower aspirational value. That means if I am not a heart patient, any content about cardiac services may be irrelevant to me.
Still, we do not have an established channel or commonplace consumption of healthcare information; hence all healthcare campaigns use a general medium to disburse information. This dilution results in higher spending on digital campaigns hence the significantly increased cost of acquisition of consumers
4. Lack of Optimisation: Low base of variations
The most significant benefit of digital advertising is the ability to optimise the campaigns based on their result. We have found that most digital healthcare campaigns need to evolve in their ability to optimise the contents, as most managers just set it and forgot to track it appropriately.
5. Low-Quality Content: The outcome is as good as the Input.
The digital marketing of healthcare is still nascent; the professionals and skills currently deployed are learned from other sectors and have yet to adapt to the needs of healthcare services specifically. The right messaging appropriately spread is key to success.
The lack of significant success in digital champaign does not give promoters enough confidence to adequately invest, leading to a downfall in the quality of digital content being passed.
For brainstorming sessions, please reach at manas@synapsehealthcare.net
www.synapsehealthcare.net
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