Marketing for Federally Qualified Health Centers
Quality Healthcare Needs Quality Marketing
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are an integral part of the healthcare community, providing healthcare to 28 million Americans across over 11,000 rural communities.
Serving multigenerational and multicultural patients, these community health centers provide comprehensive primary and preventative healthcare services in areas where there may be limited access to affordable healthcare.
Effective strategies for FQHCs are essential to put your center in front of those patients that need your services the most.
Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are an integral part of the healthcare community, providing healthcare to 28 million Americans across over 11,000 rural communities.
Serving multigenerational and multicultural patients, these community health centers provide comprehensive primary and preventative healthcare services in areas where there may be limited access to affordable healthcare.
Effective strategies for FQHCs are essential to put your center in front of those patients that need your services the most.
Serving Local Communities
Federally Qualified Health Centers must provide, at minimum, services for maternity and prenatal care, preventive health and dental services, emergency care, and pharmaceutical services.
Providing such a wide variety of services, it is important that your FQHC marketing tactics should be responsive to your audience(s). Using a variety of approaches to widen outreach to potential patients, both traditional advertising and digital marketing should be utilized to reach a diverse audience that receives information in a variety of ways.
Channels for Community Health Center Marketing
Websites
Engage your audience and keep patients informed by using the power of the internet to share useful information about the health and medical services provided by your Federally Qualified Health Center.
Proper websites for Federally Qualified Health Centers and effective marketing can boost your exposure among the communities you serve and provide valuable information about your services. By utilizing a well-designed and optimized website as well as various social media platforms that drive patients back to your website, your FQHC can better serve patients in your communities.
Website Landing Page
Your landing page is a vital part of attracting patients to your facility. Highly engaging content and graphics coupled with readily-accessible information, special offers, and a call-to-action capture the attention of potential patients and encourage interaction within your site.
Services Page
Detailing the services offered by your Community Health Center increases exposure to patients who may not realize the full scope of treatment and services available. An internet search is often a person’s first move when they have a healthcare issue, and in rural or underserved communities, this is important for your FQHC to stand out, eliminating the need for patients to travel to larger markets for treatment.
Patient Portal
Adding a secure Patient Support Portal to websites for Community Health Centers increases the effectiveness of communication between your Center and your patients. Providing secure access to test results, medical charts, and other sensitive information, a Patient Portal allows you to continually provide access to exceptional medical care while complying with HIPAA privacy regulations.
Social Media
Engaging your community with real time content, social media for Federally Qualified Health Centers is one of the most responsive, rapidly changing avenues to engage your target audience. With over 53% of the world’s population on social media, an effective social media strategy brings your services to an already-engaged audience.
Posts that feature topics highlighting issues that people are talking about, preventative news and strategies, as well as local public health events, can establish your Center as a source for relevant information for both patients and the public.
Know your audience – Choose a platform that makes sense for your area. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter have among the highest user engagement statistics. Knowing who your audience is, what channels they are browsing, and what times they are active help to create a strategy that results in heightened engagement. We’ve talked about that in more detail here.
Why Use Social Media for Community Health Centers?
Effective Platforms for Federally Qualified Health Centers
Highly engaging, Facebook for Federally Qualified Health Centers provides marketing with a more conversational impact. Offering the ability for patients and stakeholders to post, like, and comment about your services, you can continually foster ongoing communication. Among the most widely used platforms, users span all demographics.
A highly visual platform for businesses, over 200M+ Business accounts visited every day on Instagram. Posts allow businesses to share their story through images while hashtags offer categorial searching that expands your reach. When utilizing Instagram for Federally Qualified Health Centers, you can cultivate a following through well-designed posts, turning casual scrollers and browsers into engaged patients and supporters.
YouTube
Increasing your exposure through video marketing, YouTube captures up to 81% exposure among adult users, a number that has seen significant growth since 2019. With that, comes an increase in Video Marketing as an effective tool to reach your community. YouTube for community health centers allows you to essentially create your own video network, posting How-To videos, facility tours, check in procedures and more. Video Marketing, aside from allowing people from all walks of life to advocate for available healthcare for rural and underserved communities, allows you to share important information and engage patients.
Using Twitter for community health center marketing provides rapid access in real-time to bring information to your audience. With a character limit defining the length of posts,Twitter serves as a gateway to more in-depth articles and information, and is heavily reliant on links and hashtags, whether linking to other social media posts or directly back to your website.
A business-oriented platform, creating a profile for your FQHC allows you to connect with more followers, turning employees, volunteers, and board members into Brand Ambassadors. Getting started with LinkedIn for community health centers is quick and easy, and with cross-platform posting, you can manage your social media presence from one dashboard.
More is NOT Always Better
It is not necessary for your FQHC to maintain a presence on every social media platform in existence. Rather, a curated group of accounts and effective messaging that reaches your patient and stakeholder base is more effective than an overabundance of generic accounts and posts. Focusing on quality over quantity, social media allows your Community Health Center to directly engage the community on a more personal, approachable level.
Advertising
A well-developed marketing strategy that includes diversified advertising for Federally Qualified Health Centers takes advantage of a combination of Digital and Traditional Advertising methods to make the most of your marketing budget.
Over the years, the distribution of effective advertising has transitioned to favor digital marketing, however that does not justify abandoning traditional advertising as part of your marketing strategy. Utilizing a combined effort and cross-posting content across your relevant digital platforms, as well as adding your social media handles to publications, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that reaches your patients across multiple information streams.
Digital Advertising
Boosting search result visibility, display ads and PPC (pay-per-click) marketing are a fast-acting digital tactic to generate new patient leads. Display Ads are advertising campaigns most commonly seen as banner ads that increase brand awareness and recollection. An ad running on an affiliated webpage can direct patients to your website and social media platforms. Using demographic or interest targeting, you can place ads within a group of sites that fit within your chosen topic. With PPC Marketing, your advertisement will appear alongside search engine results and you are only charged per click that directs patients to your ad site. Diversifying your ad spend among various digital advertising increases your reach, with 75% of people saying that paid search engine ads make it easier to find the information that they seek, an effective strategy considering many people will not look past the first page of search results.
Traditional Advertising
Who would have ever thought that Business Cards, Brochures, Radio, Television, and Print Ads would be categorized as “traditional” methods of reaching out to the public, but alas, here we are. Traditional marketing is not obsolete, though. From program information and community health events to treatment options and preventative strategies, utilizing tangible items such as brochures and flyers literally puts your information in the hands of your patients.
Customized Strategies
When developing advertising for community health centers, it is important to know your audience. Ads should not only target current and prospective patients, but should also engage members of the public that support and advocate for your FQHC, including staff, lawmakers, the press and other members of the local community.
Reputation Management
For healthcare providers, reviews and testimonials are an integral part of growing a practice. As many as 51% of patients consult doctor reviews when choosing a new provider, making reputation management for Federally Qualified Health Centers an important aspect of patient interaction and follow ups. Just as important as requesting reviews is responding, thanking your patient for choosing your Center, and responding to any concerns.
Find your place
Today’s society moves at a breakneck speed, making marketing a fluid enterprise that is constantly responding to the changing time. At Firefly Marketing, we are your partner through it all. Handling all of the things, we develop your marketing strategy for your Community Health Centers that allows you to bring a greater quality of care to your patients.
Get a Free Quote Today
I can’t say enough about what Firefly has done for our online presence. They gave us a flawless start-up plan and through the years have continued to meet all of our needs. I am not a website/online expert by any means, but they have given us a product which has allowed us to rate among the top online entities in our industry. They are easy to work with and extremely capable when it comes to understanding and exceeding our goals.
The folks at Firefly were able to not only create a website that functions in the ways that my brand needs, but they were able to make a site that actually celebrates my body of work. They created something that really made my work sing in a whole new way. I really can’t praise them enough.
I’m so grateful for my fabulous website & even more so for the care and attention it gets for critical updates to keep looking so good! Y’all are the best!
Phew!!! You guys got a lot done in a short amount of time. Thanks so much for helping us meet this deadline.
Laura & the Firefly Group have been great to work with! Professional and responsive, they’ve always helped with great suggestions in raising the bar with our SEO Profile.
The decision to go with Firefly to manage our social media and our webpage has not been regretted for one second! They do an outstanding job!
Firefly came on board pre COVID-19 shutdown in March, right as our biggest fundraiser of the year started. As a non-profit we rely on fundraisers to sustain our association. The event quickly had to convert to virtual for the public to access it, Firefly did an amazing job during the transition. We are thrilled with their dedication to their clients, the great teamwork they demonstrate and the willingness to work with us on our needs. Firefly is very positive note for our association during this uncertain 2020.
I can’t say enough about what Firefly has done for our online presence. They gave us a flawless start-up plan and through the years have continued to meet all of our needs. They have given us a product which allows us to rate among the top online entities in our industry. They are easy to work with and extremely capable when it comes to understanding and exceeding our goals.
The folks at Firefly were able to not only create a website that functions in the ways that my brand needs, but they were able to make a site that actually celebrates my body of work. They created something that really made my work sing in a whole new way. I really can’t praise them enough.
I’m so grateful for my fabulous website & even more so for the care and attention it gets for critical updates to keep looking so good! Y’all are the best!
Phew!!! You guys got a lot done in a short amount of time. Thanks so much for helping us meet this deadline.
Laura & the Firefly Group have been great to work with! Professional and responsive, they’ve always helped with great suggestions in raising the bar with our SEO Profile.
The decision to go with Firefly to manage our social media and our webpage has not been regretted for one second! They do an outstanding job!
Firefly came on board pre COVID-19 shutdown in March, right as our biggest fundraiser of the year started. As a non-profit we rely on fundraisers to sustain our association. The event quickly had to convert to virtual for the public to access it, Firefly did an amazing job during the transition. We are thrilled with their dedication to their clients, the great teamwork they demonstrate and the willingness to work with us on our needs. Firefly is very positive note for our association during this uncertain 2020.
Who We Are
About Firefly
Firefly Marketing, pioneers of the digital marketing era, has provided brilliant marketing, advertising, creative and digital services to clients since 1998. We have gained an unprecedented level of experience and expertise in everything from website development to traditional advertising and marketing, PR, mobile marketing, social media – virtually any and every type of marketing imaginable.
Get Social