5 Ways the Global Pandemic Changed Digital Marketing in Healthcare
The end of the global pandemic is in sight. As borders begin to reopen and people return to the office, we can wonder whether life will ever go back to how it once was. One area that has certainly changed and is likely to stay changed after the pandemic is digital marketing. With a drastic increase in digital interactions during the pandemic, many people have become accustomed to using digital and online platforms to perform daily tasks. This makes digital marketing even more valuable to your business than ever before. But how exactly has this changed and what can we expect the future of digital marketing to look like? In this blog post, we’ll highlight 5 ways the global pandemic changes digital marketing.
1. There’s been a shift in patient priorities
Healthcare practices needed to remain open during the pandemic but there were still changes that needed to be made to ensure current and future patients’ concerns were considered. Healthcare businesses needed to reassure guests using digital channels that they were offering socially distanced services while also recognizing all the mandated rules to ensure patient safety. Businesses that ignored this type of reassurance through their digital marketing channels saw a drop in customer confidence. This type of reassurance will continue and likely extend to future topics such as climate change and social awareness issues.
2. Digital marketing strategies need to be more agile than ever before
Agile marketing strategies enable businesses to react more readily to market changes. There’s never been a more dramatic change than the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s proven that even the most successful marketing strategies need to be adaptable to sudden, unexpected changes. Many companies found that their messaging was changing day by day as they tried to keep their heads above water during this time of uncertainty. This was no different for healthcare businesses. The most successful healthcare businesses managed to ride the changing wave of emotions that patients had, and this mentality will no doubt help those companies in the future.
3. Customers care about brand values
As social awareness increases, so too does the importance of brand values. The pandemic put many businesses between a rock and a hard place. They wanted to seem empathetic and caring by supporting government restrictions, but many of those restrictions also harmed their business. Healthcare businesses were uniquely positioned on this issue as they often had more insight into why certain restrictions needed to be put in place. The issue of brand values determining whether customers choose your brand or a competitor is likely to continue as social awareness becomes a more important consideration for modern customers.
4. Alternative forms of communication go a long way
The pandemic forced many people to be more creative with how they communicated. Doctors and nurses took to online video consultations, and click and collect prescriptions offered a more socially distanced service. Now that the pandemic is over, people will still want these convenient services they know to work well. Successful healthcare practices will listen to their patients and offer them this level of convenience even once the pandemic is over.
5. Competition in the digital space has increased
Many businesses did not operate digitally before the pandemic as many were forced to do so once the pandemic hit. This has increased the number of businesses operating digitally, leveling the playing field for many industries. This increase in competition will put pressure on healthcare businesses to find valuable differentiators that make their business the go-to in their field.
Digital marketing in the healthcare space is a rapidly growing business area that has been catalyzed by the global pandemic. In many ways, the pandemic has changed digital marketing forever and we expect to see all these trends last well after the pandemic is over. If you’d like to speak to experts in digital marketing for healthcare businesses, speak to us here at Curis Digital.
