Google says that by focusing on searches and understanding users’ intent behind them, you can better target your ideal audience online. According to Google, videos can achieve greater lift and brand recall during search. In fact, it can give up to a 53% lift in: landing page visits, expressions of interests (EOIs), and key performance indicators (KPIs) – generally leading to conversions.

With 77% of healthcare inquiries beginning on search engines and patients referencing at least 12 different sources of information before deciding where to get care, it’s crucial for you to be present among those 12 sources, and to provide content that is highly engaging and influential for those prospective patients to choose you as their provider.

Because videos are projected to become the primary source (70-80% of all forms of content online) of information online by the end of this year, healthcare businesses must leverage its power for improved chances of success. In fact, most of them have already started giving importance to videos in their marketing strategies.

Leveraging Videos for Brand Building and Patient Acquisition

Patients love to watch videos that comprehensively details their health condition. As videos affect both their listening and visual senses, it helps them in grasping information fully and more deeply, and in an entertaining way.

Short explainer videos attempt to explain everything related to the topic with a precise consumption time. They can include every form of content; graphics, text, images, animation, etc. which allows providers to explain even the most difficult topics to their patients in a simpler and lucid manner.

Apart from short animated explainer videos, other forms of popular healthcare video content are Facebook live videos, patient testimonial videos, website welcome videos, physician profile videos, and procedure and condition information videos. Because patients can directly see their providers and other patients and listen to what they have to say, they feel more enabled, empowered, and connected. That’s why they love watching videos.

So how can healthcare organizations take advantage of videos to connect with their patients and acquire new ones? That’s only possible with a dedicated video marketing strategy in place. Let’s start there.

1. Be present in patients’ decisive moments. Focus on patients’ search behaviors and patterns to understand their intent, and what decisions they are making about their healthcare. Talk to your patients in the office, on call, or through mails, and listen to the patients’ chatter on social media to understand the most frequently appearing questions or doubts and queries about your category and brand. Address all these queries by making separate videos for each. Try to erase patients’ doubts by providing relevant information in the videos. While making the videos, include the right keywords in the description and transcript to make them search engine optimized. This is important as it will make your videos accessible to your patients in their time of need.
2. Build awareness and understanding of your brand through videos. Work on building brand awareness and understanding through videos. Build content that educates and informs your patients about symptoms and conditions they are researching. As they’ll start interacting with your content every time they search for these symptoms, they’ll start noticing your brand. Slowly, you’ll start building thought leadership by instilling trust factors in your patients through your videos. For improving the reach of your brand awareness, you can scale through YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine after Google. Find health personalities on YouTube who have built a community of subscribers and partner with them (if they are willing for a partnership with brands they align with) for leveraging their existing reputation.
3. Think mobile first. Mobile devices are now the top devices for healthcare related searches. That’s why a mobile-friendly website is no longer an option, but a necessity. Optimize your website accordingly to fit on smaller screens. It should provide an easy-to-navigate user experience, so leave the heavy reading for desktop sites. As more and more patients will access your content through their smartphones, you should also develop creative video assets specifically for mobile that can also drive higher performance and return on ad spend. Also, use location and device clues to provide users with relevant and timely messages that drive them to convert.
4. Spread your reach through social media. Go social to spread your reach among your niche audience online. Create accounts with your name and pages with your practice’s name on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Share your videos’ YouTube links there, each time you upload. You can directly upload your videos on these social platforms as well, and don’t miss on reaching out to the healthcare influencers for your service category. Follow their activities on social media, connect with them, like, share and comment on their posts. Once they notice, they’ll start reciprocating by liking and/or sharing your posts and commenting on them. An influencer’s response on your posts will boost its reach to a wider audience from your industry niche. Also, posting great videos/posts that are useful and problem-solving for the influencers’ audiences too will open further avenues for partnering to mutually achieve a wider reach socially.

All these will help you improve your search rankings as well, which is very crucial as we already know that more than three-fourths of healthcare inquiries begin on search engines.

Establishing Trust with Patient Testimonials

Consumer trust is the most valued commodity in any business. Videos are best equipped today to play the role of a trust factor if it can reach out to your consumers in their time of need, offer valuable and problem-solving solutions, and help them in clearing their doubts.

One great example of videos playing the trust factor is patient testimonial videos, where a patient talks about his/her fantastic experience with you. 1 in 2 patients like to hear another patient’s story when they feel that no one else truly understands what they are going through. By watching a real person telling his story, they can connect with your brand more easily. Another great example could be videos that show off the cutting-edge technology that you use at your facility for treatment purposes or other communication or service-related purposes. All of these help to improve your credibility and ultimately benefit you by letting your new patients relate easily.

Just make sure to get written permission from your patients to show off their testimonial videos to others. This way, you’ll not be violating HIPAA guidelines.

Conclusion

As a healthcare practitioner, you need to tap into the opportunities that video marketing has to offer. With online videos becoming the fastest growing gateways for healthcare information, it’s bound to leave the usual text content (blog posts, articles, etc.) further from the focus of your marketing strategy. So include videos in your marketing strategy today to get the best result for your healthcare practice.