When establishing a positive reputation in the highly regulated, highly saturated healthcare market, your social media agency can transform your brand into a go-to source for information and wellness. Beyond traditional social media management, your agency can tap into digital education techniques — such as webinars and groundbreaking thought leadership through blogs and digital posts – that will break through the clutter in your market. Here are our top six favorite ways you can get started with a social media agency today.
1. Use market research and big data to understand your audience
Because your patients may not be the same people who are choosing your home health services, it’s important to understand how your audience is finding information about your services and what criteria they are using to make decisions. A good social media agency can offer a unique look into where people start their journey (perhaps via a magazine ad or radio campaign), and how they migrate across platforms from their mobile devices, map and GPS apps, and onto their desktops. By using proprietary data and mapping that against third-party information, these agencies can paint a clear picture of who your audience is, and what is most important to those individuals.
2. Give customers something they can’t find anywhere else
Online learning opportunities, guest speakers, and panel discussion can transform the home health education and shopping experience through highly shareable, personalized content. Host a webinar with the founder of your organization, a leading specialist in your health field, or customers willing to share their testimonials. In addition to the potential customers you touch during that event, online events generate a substantial amount of buzz with very little effort. The best part is that these events also serve as mini focus groups where you can learn about the issues your customers care about most, what information they aren’t getting in the broader marketplace, and reveal key areas where you can differentiate yourself as a provider. By listening to your attendees’ questions, evaluating the type of people who sign up, and following up with a post-session survey, you can take your market research to the next level.
3. Practice makes perfect
Once you think you’ve found a niche, begin testing content that appeals to your audience. You might not nail your social media, content, or marketing strategy the first time so we recommend testing everything. Use your social media agency to prioritize the big swings against small improvements to balance revolutionary ideas against critical, business updates. If you don’t get something right the first time, try it again. Web tests allow you to expose only a small part of your digital audience to certain content or ideas, giving you freedom to break outside the traditional healthcare box.
4. Grab their attention
The healthcare industry is not always known for its cutting edge social presence and interactivity. By keeping your content fresh and on the cutting edge, you can unlock new client potential. A good social media agency knows what trends are emerging and how to use them effectively, so you can find the right balance between staying ahead of the curve and veering too far away from your target audience. Your social media agency can look at where your customers are spending their time online, understand the devices they are using, and build custom-made marketing campaigns around these individualized behaviors.
5. Embrace the second screen
Understanding that most customers are searching for information across multiple devices at the same time can be a huge benefit to home health marketing professionals. Geo-based, local apps complement broader SEO initiatives, and mobile app development that create a seamless customer and prospect experience. The better your agency understands the organic migration across platform, the more easily you can be at the right place at the right time for your customers.
6. Use a social media agency to solicit feedback
Some customers may be reticent to provide feedback to their home health provider in fear that their service may falter or that they don’t have other options. If your organization is truly dedicated to improving, you can use your social media agency to solicit open, honest (or even anonymous) feedback about your marketing outreach, and service experiences. Social listening and customer management are critical mechanisms your agency can support to compile this feedback and turn it into actionable items.
Your social media agency can serve as an extra set of eyes and ears to get to know your clients better. Sure, they can support your Facebook and Twitter pages, but there is a lot more to social media management than meets the eye. Check out some of our work and see how we can help.
