It’s Almost a New Year. Do You Know Where Your Marketing Plan Is Headed?
Shopping centers have started playing Jingle Bells and their elves are appearing in the aisles. This can mean only one thing: it’s the end of October. It may be too early for mistletoe and reindeer, but it’s the perfect time to start thinking about your marketing plan for 2019. Technology is always moving forward, and it’s important to take advantage of new avenues for reaching patients and new tools that improve their experience. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon the tried and true methods completely. Here are three things to consider as you create your marketing plan for 2019.
Voice Search
Voice Search allows people to search for information on the internet by speaking instead of typing. In 2016, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stated that one in five searches on Google’s mobile app were voice searches, and that is expected to rise to 50% by 2020 according to ComScore. With voice search, people use natural language instead of keywords, so one way to increase your chances of being found is to create content that answers questions. Answer the Public can help you figure out what questions people are asking.
Accessibility
An accessible website works for everyone, including people with dyslexia and those with hearing, seeing, or mobility issues. Dyslexia Help reported that 5 – 10% of the population has some form of dyslexia, the National Federation of the Blind state that more than 2% of people have a visual disability, and the National Institutes of Health found that 15% of adults have some type of hearing loss. If your site isn’t accessible, you could be losing these populations and be at risk for a lawsuit. Some best practices for making your site accessible include adding alternative texts to images, using captions and transcriptions for video, and using a high contrast color scheme. You can also use WebAIM to evaluate the accessibility of your site.
Keep it Personal
Even with all the new technologies and trends in marketing, healthcare is still about people. It is about who you are as an organization, the valuable services you offer, and the patients you serve. Your marketing plan should help you create and build long lasting relationships with your community and patients. One of the best ways to do this is through referrals. Because this is such an essential part of marketing, we wrote an entire blog post you can reference for more detailed advice.
It is essential to understand the new technologies, but it also important to stay focused on what makes your organization and your patients unique. Be sure to create relationships within your community because no matter what year it is, personal connection will still have the biggest impact. So use the new tools, but don’t forget to build your referral network.