While healthcare is already adapting to and benefiting from broader trends in the realm of digital marketing, advances within the healthcare industry itself will also contribute to a sector-specific brand of marketing.
Here are five of those internal trends, identified in Zenith's new Healthcare Advertising Expenditure Forecasts report.
1. Bringing prescription medicines to market will only increase in difficulty and cost, so healthcare organizations involved in the manufacturing and supply of drugs will need to expand into providing over-the-counter medicines and other, more holistic health services, rebranding themselves as "lifestyle brands," to foster growth.
2. With the advancement of telemedicine and artificial intelligence-enabled diagnosis and treatment, as well as greater interest in access to personal health data, patients are increasingly learning to manage every aspect of their own health; organizations, too, should therefore diversify their efforts to reach patients across the entire care journey.
3. Additionally, as patients use technology to track their health and activity data, they will be drawn to those healthcare organizations that use highly targeted, personalized marketing to appeal to their specific health concerns.
4. Global life expectancy is steadily rising. Healthcare organizations can take advantage of this longevity not only by reconfiguring to address the needs of an expanded aging population, but also by building brand familiarity among patients for decades to come.
5. Mobile devices have quickly become one of the most popular modes of managing health information and connecting with providers and other resources, meaning healthcare organizations will increasingly need to direct their attention to mobile efforts in order to reach vast swaths of the population.
More articles on digital marketing:
BayCare's marketing strategy centers on 'taking the friction out of the healthcare experience'
Healthcare marketing spend projected to reach $36B in 2019
Harvard Business Review: 8 measures of a marketing strategy's financial impact