As the healthcare industry makes strides in adapting to the digital age, the importance of healthcare marketing managers has vastly increased.
They are responsible for handling the online footprints of these healthcare organizations and making crucial decisions which can benefit or destroy said business.
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It can be difficult to know what to do in an ever-expanding industry, especially when the lack of technology was the biggest concern of healthcare marketers in 2018.
Despite this, there are ways that you can use current technology to skyrocket the success of the healthcare organization you’re marketing in 2019 with the technology that is currently out there.
In fact, it’s pretty easy to do.
All you need is a reliable analytics software that can break down the data you’re receiving from your users to work out what is and isn’t working.
This will allow you to implement the appropriate changes to grow the healthcare organization by scaling up strategies that do work, and forgetting those that don’t.
1] Your bounce rate
Your bounce rate is one of the most basic analytical pieces of data you can receive from your analytics software tracking, and it’s quite simple to understand.
All it does is show you how long visitors are staying on the same page of your website before clicking off.
You might not think this matters, but as a healthcare organization, you need people to pay attention to your website for quite some time to increase online conversions and engagement rates.
A recent study from Microsoft revealed that people generally lose concentration within a few seconds of visiting a website, so you really want to captivate audiences so that you can avoid this.
One of the best ways to reduce your bounce rate is to make sure that the content on your website is interesting enough to keep people looking around.
Your target audience might be looking to expand their knowledge by visiting several different pages of your website, or their curiosity may overcome them when they see what they have to offer.
The truth of the matter is that, if your bounce rate is too high, your content isn’t engaging people enough-and that includes your target audience!
2] The performance of your top landing pages
As a marketer in any industry, finding out the pages that your target audience are drawn towards is incredibly important.
In the healthcare industry, however, finding out what parts of your websites people are landing on when entering your site for the first time is an incredibly important metric.
It tells you what your target audience are seeking out, and what information from your website that they find useful.
It also provides you with a unique opportunity to market the healthcare organization through these popular landing pages.
You should optimize them as much as possible to continue growing them, by targeting relevant keywords.
You can also use these landing pages to funnel paid conversions by creating a sense of urgency on the pages, making individuals feel like they have to act to avoid missing out on anything important.
With that being said, it’s important not to make the landing page look crowded with complicated information once popularity has occurred, as this can turn people away and turn your once-thriving landing page into a deserted wasteland.
Not sure how to measure the performance of a landing page? There are many web analytics services out there who can help you out.
3] Your top exit pages
Just like landing pages are important to see what people are interested in, it’s also important to see what pages are making people leave your website.
You can find this information out by using Google Analytics or another enterprise analytics software platform of your choice, so you don’t necessarily need the latest technology to find this out.
Once you’ve found these exit pages, you should work to lower the amount of site visitors who are lost through them.
It’s important not to delete these posts, however, as that can have a negative impact on your search engine optimization capabilities.
The things you need to look at as a healthcare marketer aren’t that complicated, however.
Even looking at the smaller elements, like the language used, can reveal a lot about why your target audience aren’t connecting with the site.
Are you using medical jargon, which cannot be understand by those who aren’t doctors?
Are you making things overly complicated? When it comes to online marketing, scaremongering isn’t an effective health education tool.
You might also discover that these exit pages are sending your traffic to other websites that provide them with further information, giving them no reason to continue reading your own.
If this is the case, consider removing this outbound links. If you want to be extra cautious, try adding an additional inbound link in that space instead.
4] The amount of unique visitors your website receives
Unique visitors are split into two categories-those who are completely new to your website, and those who haven’t visited your website for a while.
These numbers are correlated by the amount of unique IP addresses that access your website, alongside stored cookies on your audience’s browsers.
You might think this isn’t necessarily important as a healthcare marketer, but you’d be wrong.
Knowing the amount of people who’re visiting your website for the first time, or the first time in a while, will enable you to understand what is causing spikes in your performance as time goes on.
Are you using content marketing as a way of spreading awareness about local healthcare trends in your community?
Perhaps you’re discussing something in the media which inaccurately represents a condition, and the reality you’re discussing resonates with lots of people?
Maybe it’s a marketing strategy, and the influencers you’ve used are bringing in these increased numbers of unique visitors?
Knowing what causes these unexpected spikes will also help you during quieter traffic times on the website, as it will enable you to figure out a strategy to boost traffic again.
5] The custom searches made on your website
If you don’t have a custom search engine tracker as part of your web analytics service, you need to add one.
This will enable you to see exactly what people are searching for.
It will also help you to identify where the website goes wrong, because if people cannot find something you think is important, they will go elsewhere for their information, increasing the website’s bounce rate.
These custom searches will also help to identify exactly what the target audience wants to see on this website.
Knowing this information will allow you to produce more of the same, growing the business by increasing conversions and engagements across the board.
