Healthcare marketing can be tricky. Because it’s closely tied to the quality of life!

But we’ve simplified the entire process. In this article, you’ll discover 16 creative examples of healthcare digital marketing that will inspire your next campaign. 

If you’re a healthcare marketer or professional, there’s no limitation to what you can achieve or how many new patients you can attract. 

Do you want to create awareness and share helpful information about your organization’s healthcare initiatives? You’ll discover how to get started…

You have to be creative and relevant at the same time. Because the competition is getting stronger with the growing interest in healthcare solutions. 

According to the Deloitte study, “global health care expenditures are expected to 10.5% in 2020 and it’s projected to reach $10.059 trillion by the end of 2025.”

This is exciting if you know how to get a piece of this huge spending by both professionals, organizations, and of course, patients.

Sometimes, we see an unforgettable piece of content or online ad from a healthcare organization that sweeps the entire web — engaging millions of people and challenging the status quo.

Before we dive into the digital marketing campaigns from healthcare firms that will put springs in your steps, let’s get the basics out of the way.

What’s Healthcare Digital Marketing?

“It’s the practice of leveraging digital channels such as Facebook, Google, websites, and other web assets to create brand awareness, generate demand for a product/service, attract new patients, and make a lasting impact within and outside their city, state, or country” — Michael Chibuzor

When a hospital, for example, creates a website and starts creating helpful content to address a particular topic (such as Child mortality), then promoting the content on social media, that’s digital marketing. 

Digital marketing can either be free or paid. Free channels include blogging, social media posting, creating videos online, online discussion boards, etc.

Paid channels can be implemented on platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Instagram Ads, media sites (like Mashable and TheAtlantic), and so on. 

source

Irrespective of the digital marketing strategy employed, the goal is to reach more people, drive a cause, create brand awareness, or attract patients.

That being said, here are 10 healthcare digital marketing examples you can learn from:

1. New York Presbyterian Hospital (Patient Stories)

The New York Presbyterian Hospital leveraged storytelling to enhance its brand identity. People love to listen to the success stories of patients who benefited from the care of a medical center.

After developing a strategy on how to get the word out, video marketing stood out because people relate to visual content more than written text. 

So the New York Presbyterian Hospital created a series of videos to showcase patient stories remarkably. Follow this page to access all the videos.

There are so many stories to showcase, but the story of Patient Michael Kiernan was very touching — it helped the hospital to connect emotionally with its audience, presenting all the raw accounts and experiences of doctors and nurses who were present at the public’s service.

If you’re the sober type, then Kiernan’s story may get you rolling on the floor — watch it with caution.

2. Bayer Healthcare Animated Video Campaign 

It’s common to find tech and marketing companies creating video animation campaigns. But this might be the first time a healthcare organization is tapping into it.

Bayer Healthcare, a pharmaceutical global enterprise with a focus on Life Science fields of Healthcare and Agriculture took a phenomenal approach.

Rather than creating another boring article or healthcare report in text-form, the enterprise decided to entertain and woe the target audience with animated video campaigns. 54% of People want to see videos from a brand they support.

Given the complexity of molecules and how they are used in innovative products and solutions to improve humans, animals, and plants’ lives, animated videos can convey the message in a better way. And that’s what it did.

One of its animated videos shows in real-time how Pharmacovigilance works. It’s amazing how this all comes together to inspire the viewer to take action or learn more.

3. National Jewish Health: “WE NEVER SAY NEVER®”

Patient stories can be a powerful tool for building trust with potential patients who might be interested in your facility.

When patients are looking to make decisions online, almost 72% of patients will read or watch online reviews first before consulting with a new doctor, and 88% trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. 

We also know that the insurance network is a big deal when it comes to healthcare. Because it helps patients to pay less in consultation fees when they consult a doctor, physician, or healthcare facility outside of the network covered by their insurance company.

But some patients would rather pay higher fees to get the best service. Research shows that 48% of patients would go out of their insurance network for a doctor with great reviews.

source

Testimonial ads are becoming a new type of engagement tool for healthcare digital marketing. 

The National Jewish Health used their patient stories and testimonials to deliver an unforgettable storytelling experience. 

The “Never Say Never” campaign continues to create waves and attract the right audience to the organization. This campaign has attractive imagery, a captivating tagline, and informative flair, as well as an inspiration for those concerned.

You can model this digital marketing campaign by showcasing your patients’ or clients’ stories creatively. 

Use imagery and videos to show how you attended to them, and build a strong connection with people who’d want the same experience.

4. UnitedHealthcare: We Dare You

One of the best digital marketing campaigns we’ve ever seen came from UnitedHealthcare. 

The “We Dare You” campaign is a remarkable example as it shows what an organization, irrespective of the industry can achieve with a loyal fan base.

UnitedHealthcare simply encouraged its followers to participate in the monthly “dares” and “quizzes” which were made available on the website. It’s all about nudging people to take action that will improve their daily lives.

The organization did it in such a way as to create happiness while driving awareness for an important cause. 

The followers were encouraged to make one small healthy improvement in their lives per month and share it on social media for others to get inspired from. It was indeed phenomenal!

An interactive campaign like “We Dare You” is exactly what people want to see on social media — if that’s the channel you want to use for online marketing. 

Apart from supporting followers and helping them develop healthier habits, the campaign resulted in an interactive online community of brand advocates for United Healthcare.

5. Carilion Clinic Campaign: #YesMamm

Twitter is a fantastic microblogging social platform for driving a worthy cause. Carilion Clinic was fully aware of the ‘Twitter power’ and tapped into it to create the “Yes, Mamm” marketing campaign.

Carilion Clinic, a healthcare facility based in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley had a goal of answering questions related to breast cancer. The Clinic wanted to spread their wings 

and truly help people within their city and throughout the country.

Using the #YesMamm hashtag, the twitter campaign generated a lot of traction. It’s interactive and as a result, more twitter followers engaged with it. This created a global breast cancer awareness and helped a lot of people to keep their hope alive.

source

The campaign drives thousands of traffic to the Carilion Clinic website, and several women booked an appointment at the local labs. 

The success of the #YesMamm campaign can be attributed to using the right social media channel. 

Although Facebook and Instagram may have more audience than Twitter, the nature of tweets is what makes the difference — because people can tweet, retweet, comment, and easily follow the trending tweets in their feeds.

6. Sapphire Healthcare: Animated Video Campaign  

Sapphire Healthcare understands that people want to hear, read, and watch videos before making decisions online.

That being the case, Sapphire created easy-to-watch videos in animated form to show how their intuitive tools work, how hospitals and clinics can get started in real-time, and lots more.

Sapphire provides a complete solution for hospitals and healthcare organizations. As a services company, it’s important to illustrate the transition that’s possible when hospitals use its solutions.

7. The Mayo Clinic Campaign: High-Quality Blog

Blogging alone can grow a hospital, clinic, or help a specialist doctor attract new patients. Hospitals that blog generate 10X more traffic and potential patients to their blog than those that don’t.

When you’re levering digital channels to grow your healthcare center, you need to diversify your traffic sources. 

Although organic traffic is good but direct and referral traffic that comes through blogging can be better — especially when you don’t have much website authority.

To take advantage of blogging, Mayo Clinic kept an updated blog. They created useful content to answer common questions and created a global online community for people all around the world.

A visit to the blog shows stories from patients, family members, and Mayo Clinic staff. These stories are created to give hope to patients who are suffering or going through hard times — and the possible ways to get treated.

Today, Mayo Clinic is a trusted healthcare center in the United States because of the rich resources it features on the blog. According to SimilarWeb, Mayo Clinic website receives roughly 300,000 visitors per month. 

No matter your industry or the products you offer, starting a blog and being consistent at publishing helpful and resourceful posts can help you to establish credibility even in a crowded space.

8. Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center Campaign: You Have Us

Patients want to know you’re with them. If you’re a doctor or a healthcare professional, giving and restoring hope to the hopeless are your ultimate pursuit. 

For those suffering from cancer, they may not be excited but that’s why you’re there.

With this in mind, Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center coined the slogan, “Right now you may have cancer. But what your cancer doesn’t know is — You Have Us.” 

This quote instantly took over social media and hit a chord in the target audience. It became an empowering tool; energizing, and inspiring those dealing with cancer.

A support system was created and the audience benefited a lot from the campaign. 

The healthcare organization took it upon itself to answer cancer-related questions, be the shoulder for people to lean on, put smiles on people’s faces.

But there’s more. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute also created informative and inspiring online videos that showcased what the institute is doing to combat cancer, the new treatments available, and state-of-the-art facilities. 

These relatable videos and memorable slogan caught fire on social media. This enabled Dana-Farber Brigham & the Women’s Cancer Center to establish trust and build strong relationships that patients can depend on for a very long time. 

9. Banner Health Campaign: Infographics

Hospitals and healthcare centers are taking some unconventional steps to get the word out about their centers and products.

Visual content is pretty common on the internet. We’ve talked about the standard and animated videos are captivating tools for engaging with patients.

But what you may not realize is that infographics: a visual design that informs and shows facts about a given topic.

For example, if the hospital or clinic you work in just conducted research on Pregnancy, there’s a chance you’ve collected a lot of insightful data. That’s exactly what Banner Health did. Here’s an excerpt from their infographic titled “Myths & Facts About Flu.”

Rather than creating another article or video to show these data, you can get a lot of traction from infographics. 

That’s exactly what Banner Health did. The organization created several infographics on parenting, nutrition, wellness, and mental health for their users. The goal was to educate and help their audience stay alert about their health.

Infographics are useful online because they simplify a complex topic into an easy-to-digest resource. Even a beginner can benefit from infographics.

Use infographics to summarize the main points of your survey, new products data, and visually guide your audience. Infographics are also shareable on social media platforms — so it’s easy to drive traffic and leads to your healthcare center if you do it right.

10. WHO – ‘Global Public Health Days Campaign’

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a phenomenal health organization like no other. 

In recent years, WHO has pioneered a number of global public health days, including the viral World TB Day on March 24, World No Tobacco Day on May 31, World Health Day on April 7, World AIDS Day on December 1, and a host of other events to create awareness for the masses about their health.

There are specific health issues that are a lot of people aren’t well informed about. That’s why WHO is taking the initiative to raise awareness and encourage maximum support so people can take the required action to improve their health and wellbeing.

All of these public health days events were promoted online using a series of informational videos, petitions, fact sheets, and action steps that will spur people to take the cause seriously.

Your healthcare organization may not have as much marketing budget as WHO does, but you can make do with what you have by leveraging social media, blogging, and answering questions on discussion boards.

All in all, YouTube is free and has millions of engaged users and these people are desperate to watch your videos. So start creating YouTube videos so you can reach more people with your stories and causes.

Conclusion

Marketing a healthcare center using digital marketing isn’t as difficult as you might think. 

Although you shouldn’t expect to reach millions of people overnight, staying consistent and creating informative content on blogs and social is a great way to get ahead quickly.

There are many effective channels and strategies to connect and build relationships with patients and prospective patients online, you just have to be creative and make a decision to consistently help people improve their lives. 

That’s the key to winning with your healthcare digital marketing strategy.