2022 Marketing Trends in Healthcare

• Who is your target audience/patient?
• What do they want from their healthcare provider?
• Where do you communicate with them?
• Why should they choose you?
• How do they communicate with you?

For those typically underserved communities where you are likely to find patients utilizing the services of Federally Qualified Health Centers, marketing tactics should be responsive to the audience. While various internet marketing initiatives allow for rapid updates, print collateral and other marketing strategies should be taken into consideration to bring your facility directly to your audience.

Diversify your Audience

In today’s multigenerational home, and across multicultural communities, the comprehensive services offered by FQHCs bring a wide array of medical treatments to patients looking for integrated healthcare systems. Working with patients of all ages, FQHCs bring affordable services to patients of all income and insurance levels.

Consumerization

Driven by high deductible health care plans and increasing medical costs, patients are empowering themselves to take control of their health like never before. Newer technologies have been born of necessity during the last two years, including electronic health records, patient portals, virtual healthcare and more. These diversified care plans and multifaceted healthcare centers have allowed providers to deliver patient care faster and more economically than in previous years.

Telehealth

Modernizing the healthcare experience, Telehealth became a widely requested service during the height of the pandemic. Increasing from 11 per 1000 patients to as high as 147 per 1000 patients, rural patients have benefited from the use of Telehealth services. As centers have reopened, more patients are requesting Telehealth appointments for routine visits and non-emergent consultations, a sign that virtual medicine is here to stay.

Personalized Marketing Techniques

Taking into consideration how FQHCs can communicate with their target patient population, a tiered marketing approach allows for providers to widen their outreach, whether through billboards, television and radio, print, or social media initiatives, rather than a purely digital strategy. These integrated marketing campaigns respond to a fragmented audience that receives information in a variety of ways. Social media marketing has essentially become a necessity to engage audiences, especially in those areas where younger generations are assisting their elders in multicultural communities where English may not be the primary language within the home. Responding to our ever-changing landscape, social media marketing has seen the most prolific growth during the last few years.

Being “discovered” has evolved from models being discovered in shopping malls and musicians rising to fame on YouTube to a saturated market where the everyday user and celebrities alike tout their lifestyle for the masses.

Now a billion-dollar plus industry, Social Media Marketing has taken advantage of a captive audience among a laundry list of social media apps and platforms for users to engage their audiences. From kids reviewing toys to makeup tutorials and comedic sketches, today’s social media platforms create diversified experiences that appeal to a range of audiences and should be included in every successful marketing strategy.

Influencers have been utilized by businesses to turn casual scrollers and browsers into engaged clients, consumers, and patients. Moving forward, we’ll see new influencer marketing trends emerging as companies create long-term relationships, transitioning to a new type of influencer, relying on brand ambassadors rather than one-time influencer engagements.

Influencer: a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.(Oxford Languages)

• Celebrity Influencer (known as Mega Influencers, command the most $ per post)
• Macro Influencer (followers between 100K and 1 million)
• Micro Influencer (followers between 3,000 and 100,000)

Brand Ambassador: a person, especially a celebrity, who is paid to endorse or promote a particular company’s products or services. (Oxford Languages) Brand Ambassadors are hired by a company to create buzz around a product or company in order to generate interest. This relationship is ongoing and becomes a part of the company’s brand through its consistency.

Tap into the Power of Social Media

Engaging your community with real time content, social media is one of the most responsive, rapidly changing avenues for companies to engage their target audience. With over 53% of the world’s population on social media and over 200M+ Business accounts visited every day on Instagram, an effective social media strategy brings your services to an already-engaged audience.

Monetizing influence

Once companies have realized the power of the “plug,” influencers have been able to monetize their reach through paid product placement, touting the latest and greatest to their diverse audience. Influencers have been able to successfully widen their audiences through mutually beneficial partnerships with a variety of brands. More prolific influencers have become celebrities in their own rights, expanding their reach to books, television shows, and more.

Brand Ambassadors over one-time deals

Implementing long-term relationships between brands and their influencers, companies are able to tell their story beyond a single post. By investing in an ambassador rather than an influencer monetizing their fame for a variety of brands, companies maintain an authentic approach to their audience. For Federally Qualified Health Centers, this may look like a partnership between your clinic and a local community leader that has a large network of followers.

Social Commerce and Live Shopping

A major outcome of the last two years, online stores and live shopping experiences have exploded into the marketplace. Think QVC on steroids. Creating content that drives the audience to an online storefront has reinvented the shopping experience, especially when paired with real-time commentary, tutorials, and veritable show-and-tell campaigns have resulted in social commerce becoming a $46 billion dollar enterprise. In the healthcare marketplace, this translates to the emergence of online scheduling and charting platforms as well as increased Telehealth practices.

Across the board, medical marketing trends in 2022 are directly responsive to the changes in our society. Adaptability is key while staying true to your “Who” and your “Why” when it comes to both attracting and treating patients.