With it being Cinco de Mayo, I know a lot of people will be drowning in Margaritas and salsa, but I still didn’t want to lose sight of empowering healthcare marketers to meet organizational goals through marketing. One very successful player in the healthcare marketing field is Mayo Clinic. They were a very early adopter of digital marketing and they have successfully rode the wave. Their current head of social media, Lee Aase, has overseen and guided the growth explosion in their social presence and has also played a larger role in educating other hospitals.
You’d be “loco” to not want to leverage some of their marketing strategies and tactics. Below you will find 5 ways they are currently succeeding in healthcare digital marketing.
1: Responsive Web Design
Today’s patients are continually consuming information. And they’re not always consuming information from a desktop computer. Mayo Clinic’s website is responsive so that their content is always optimized for easy reading and navigation, no matter what device. And that’s a good thing because, according to Econsualtnacy, 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
2: Robust Twitter Platform
That’s a powerful statement if you are the controller and creator of a lot of healthcare information. And that is exactly what Mayo Clinic is doing. They have multiple twitter handles; one of them has more than 600,000 followers. And their social media ambitions are so high that they’ve even created guidelines for employees who are on social media: http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/guidelines/for-mayo-clinic-employees/
3: Leveraging a patient app
WIth that statistic, why wouldn’t you want to give your target audience a tool with your branding and lead them back to your site? Right now Mayo Clinic built what can be characterized as a doctor in your pocket: health news, online appointments, navigating through Mayo Clinics buildings.
4: Youtube Channel
YouTube traffic to hospital sites has increased 119% year-over-year.(source: Google’s Think Insights)
There is not doubt about it: videos in the healthcare field are powerful and highly viewed. And according to Digital Sherpa, 80% of your online visitors will watch a video, while only 20 percent will actually read content in its entirety. Mayo Clinics videos run the gamut from surgical information, to lifestyle and healthy tips, to marketing messages. Right now, they have over 18,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel. To date, the Mayo Clinic touts the most popular medical provider channel on YouTube.
5: Blogging
This is a gold mine of SEO, user generated content, emotional connectivity and relevant patient information. According to HubSpot, blogging leads to 55% more website visitors. That’s the ultimate marketing goal isn’t it? Driving more visits to your digital domain, which in turn leads to trust in your brand, and trusting brands leads to action. Mayo has a News Blog, Podcast Blog and Sharing Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic regularly updates their blogs with patient stories and health content that users can easily digest and relate to. A lot of the time, we find that healthcare organizations have something to say, but fail to say it in way their target audience can understand. Don’t let your message fall on deaf ears.
So, what does this all mean for your healthcare organization? Well, you don’t need a PhD to figure out that there are marketing avenues and platforms that you can leverage right now at this very moment. It all starts with a clear and concise upfront strategy. At White Rhino we have experience in mapping outsuccessful digital plans for some of the countries leading healthcaera organizations such as Mass General Hospital and Tufts Medical Center.
So why wait? Start making waves online. Contact our healthcare digital strategist Shawn Gross for a free consultation. Email or phone: 781-270-4545 ext 130.
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