6 Ways to Target Patients Using Social Media Marketing

Patients have become much more active on social media, using the different platforms to research care providers, ask questions and share their experiences. With patients taking to their smart phones to provide feedback and search for providers on the go it only makes sense for imaging centers, hospitals and doctor’s offices to have a social media marketing strategy in place.

We're excited to see more and more radiologists and other health care providers recognizing the value of social media in health care; because that has been a big hurdle to overcome. The International Society for Computed Tomography for instance, will be hosting a talk by Jenny K Hoang, MD about the importance of radiologists utilizing Twitter at their upcoming CT symposium in San Francisco.

Today we’ll explore the six ways healthcare marketers can use social media to target specific groups of patients, this way their content marketing and messaging will be built specifically for different kinds of patients.

6 Tips for Targeting Patients Using Social Media Advertising:

1.     Use Facebook advertising to share a recent blog post with a specific kind of audience. Ex: Boost your post about the difference between screening mammograms and diagnostic mammograms so it is shown to women, aged 55+ who are located within a 10-mile radius of your imaging center.

2.     If you have a list of your patients’ email addresses, you can create a look-alike list from those addresses and launch a Facebook ad campaign.

3.     New to Twitter and hoping to build your following and improve your brand recognition? Create a campaign for gaining followers. You can select your audience based on one or multiple locations, filtering by other accounts they follow, interests, behaviors event event targeting.

4.     You can also create an audience to target on Twitter based on only people who have visited your website. Just put a snippet of code on your website to collect the visitors’ info and the ad you create will show to only those users on Twitter.

5.     You can limit audiences on Twitter based on their regular behavior as well. For instance, you can limit your ad so it will OR won’t show to a group of users who are “likely to have health insurance from Aetna” which has a potential audience of up to 1.82M users.

6.     LinkedIn is the best social media platform for industry experts. This article is supposed to be about using social media to target patients, but as a provider it’s also important to provide content for others in your industry. (ex: Referring Physicians or Community Organizations) These kinds of targets are regularly being active on LinkedIn where you can pay to sponsor posts and make it so that only users with certain job titles or employees of certain businesses see the ads.

< Read More: 8 Healthcare Digital Marketing Tips >

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If you're interested in an evaluation of your organization's current social media practices, fill out the form below and we'd be glad to perform a free evaluation for you. 

Can You Guess Which of These ICD-10 Codes Are Actually Real?

With the impending implementation of ICD-10 codes on October 1st, people have started to take note of all the new codes and they have found that some of them are pretty ridiculous. Going from having 13,000 billing codes under ICD-9’s coding system, which has been around since 2002, to 68,000 codes with ICD-10 will be a huge adjustment for everyone in the healthcare industry.

The new codes range from a little unbelievable to absolutely absurd, begging people on social media in healthcare to wonder “what’s the point of this new diagnostic coding system?” ICD-10 matters though and here’s why:

1. It is vital to health care reform as it will help patients achieve better quality of care, improved care access and lower costs
2. It will improve quality reporting programs like PQRS
3. It will include new procedures and references to medical breakthroughs/innovations
4. It will help researchers to have a better, more focused understanding of public health
5. It will enable physicians to be more efficiently reimbursed for the care they are providing

(Read More: Check out or other articles on healthcare marketing)

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With all these new codes though, how is someone to tell which codes are for real? Take our quiz to see if you can guess which of these ICD-10 codes are real and which ones are fake.

Poll Maker

Mutual Marketing: Affordable, Quality Health Care

As professionals in health care marketing, we know that women are decidedly the healthcare shopping authority in their families. This was made clearly evident in the uproar surrounding the Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood debacle, which sparked a debate wildfire in the social media and blogging world. With drastic changes in health care and the way patients shop for it, marketing professionals are forced to consider health care as a consumerism-based industry, which changes the manner in which physicians and marketing departments operate in every way.  Providers are being forced to market their services in new ways, by targeting women specifically. By tapping into social media and e-commerce, healthcare marketing professionals are able to position procedures  , MRIs and Ultrasounds, which are the most commonly price-shopped services, to highlight varied qualities such as price, quality and convenience.

A Kaiser Family Health Report sated that 80% of mothers say they are responsible for all healthcare decisions in their family and 21% of all women shop around for their best options. Women account for 57% of Internet users, and are traditionally seen as the stronger users of social media outlets.  Marketers are aware where their target market is spending its time, and they have gone directly to them. It makes sense that sites like Save On Medical would be targeting price-sensitive female patients through social media promotions like the one they are currently running where if you engage on one of their social media sites, you are entered to win full reimbursement for your procedure.

 

Save On Medical has reported drastically increased website traffic and considerable growth in users since it implemented their Female-Focused Social Media efforts.  With 75% of their users being women, they have been able to point their success to a combination of geo-targeted and demographic-specific Facebook Advertisements and tailored Pay-Per-Click Campaigns through Google AdWords.  Facebook has quickly become one of the top referring sources for traffic to their website, followed closely by Twitter.

Successful marketing professionals know that in order to find the tipping point towards their company’s success lies in truly discovering what it is that your consumer wants and needs.  Save On Medical has recognized the need for a resource where patients in need can search for and compare affordable, quality care options, due to industry trends; which point to the fact over 50 Million Americans are uninsured and 25% of Americans are in high deductible health plans, looking for ways to cut out-of-pocket costs.  Through these efforts they are able to capture an audience already in need of the value Save On Medical brings to the table and focus on the individual in the family who will ultimately make the decision on which provider they select.

Since women and mothers account for the majority of Internet, couponing and shopping population, it is important that they be well-informed shoppers and take advantage of the power they hold in the market.  As we said, the key to a successful campaign is to provide your consumer with what they need, by providing them with true value.  With genuine intent, you gain consumer trust and build a dedicated mutual relationship.  Save On Medical was built by Chris Christenberry and Matt Schneider, who have a combined 40 years of experience working in the health care industry.  As professionals in the field they have a unique opportunity of seeing things from the perspective of health care providers but are also sympathetic and understanding of the need for positive patient experiences.  They built Save On Medical to benefit the patient. It was designed to clear up the confusion that is associated with health care cost and creates a seamless user experience for anyone from the college-student user to the 70-year-old grandma user.

The genius behind what Christenberry and Schneider have done, is that while the site serves as life-saver for patients, its even almost more beneficial for the providers listed on the website.  On the backend, Save On Medical’s social media and SEO professionals have implemented methods to build the reputation of each Save On Medical provider. In addition to significant Return on Investment, useful Management Tools and limitless Cost-Saving Value-Added Services, Save On Medical abides by the teach a man to fish mantra, by providing physician users with their secret recipe, the marketing component.  By teaching the subscribed users how to market themselves on Save On Medical to their own community and referring physicians, they kill two birds with one stone, building the credibility of their own product while helping the health care provider to build patient volume.

While the goal of successful marketing campaigns is to build customer volume and brand awareness, it is important to remember what products like Save On Medical focus on; mutual needs and shared success of the consumer and the company.

Social Media in Health Care

In light of our recent focus on social media in health care, we thought we might share this hilarious, yet oddly succinct, breakdown of social media into terms we all know and understand. DONUTS.

Now we will break it down into other terms, not quite as yummy, but still understandable. MRI.

Twitter: Check out our discounted #MRI services, today only! http:linktoyourwebsiteaboutMRIs

Faceebook: We love MRIs and our patient feedback! Like Us and Our MRIs!

Foursquare: This is where we go for cheap MRIs and great patient care!

Instagram: Here’s a vintage photo of our staff at our MRI facility!

YouTube: Check out this video about our **NEW** MRI technology and the story of a woman whose life was saved because of it.

LinkedIn:All of our MRI technicians are a part of this indsutry group MRI Techs and their skills include the following…

Pinterest:Here are unique ways to decorate your MRI facility!

Last FM: Currently listening to songs about… MRIs… wait. This one doesn’t really apply.

Google+: Here is a circle of our Radiologists, here’s a circle of our referring physicians, here’s a circle of our top patients, here’s a circle of our techs, here’s a circle of our competitors… now I’m dizzy.

SaveOnMedical: Here is where you can shop for your MRI!