Every channel needs a job: search, social, connected TV, streaming video, email, radio, outdoor, display. Maybe all of them belong in your media plan. Maybe only a few do.
When you set out to create a healthcare media strategy that can stand on its own, that starts by deciding what you need the media to accomplish. Once you’ve nailed that down, then you move on to choosing the channels best suited to do that work.
Different channels play different roles. Certain channels are better at capturing existing demand while another channel may introduce an organization or service before someone is actively looking. Some keep you visible during a longer decision while others are built to generate a response now.
The goal is a paid media mix where every channel earns its place.
Your healthcare media strategy must start with defining your growth objective
Before debating Google versus Meta or connected TV versus traditional television, define the outcome the campaign needs to support.
As an example, consider the differences between:
- A hospital entering a new market that needs to build brand awareness and familiarity before patient acquisition starts speeding up.
- An established organization that already has strong recognition but needs to find a way to grow patient volume in a specific geography within the community.
- An altogether different hospital that is laser-focused on generating qualified leads that can enter a nurture program for their new service line.
These types of differences, some big and others small, shape media planning from the get-go.
Unlock Health’s Paid Media & Lead Gen capability is built around that connection between enterprise goals, brand growth, patient acquisition, and measurable performance.
Give each marketing channel a job to do
Let’s take a closer look at the types of channels and how they can function within your defined campaign.
Search
Search is especially valuable when someone is already looking for an answer, service, physician, or location. A well-built paid search campaign can capture that active demand and help move someone toward a meaningful next step.
Social media
Social media operates differently. Paid social can introduce an organization, service, event, health risk assessment, or other offering before someone has expressed a certain level of intent. It can also reinforce a message with people who may already be familiar with the brand.
Video
Video gives creative more room to work. YouTube, streaming video, and connected TV can tell a richer story, introduce physicians or services, and help establish familiarity across a broader audience. Display and programmatic can extend reach and maintain visibility across the consideration period.
Traditional channels
Traditional channels can play a part, too. Television, radio, out-of-home, print, and direct mail can deliver significant reach in markets where awareness and community presence are of critical importance. Which channel is best in isolation isn’t the question we’re asking when we’re talking about the right healthcare advertising strategy for you. It’s asking, “How does each channel contribute to the larger goal?”
Balance demand capture with demand creation
Balancing demand capture with demand creation is one of the principal decisions in a paid media mix.
Search tends to perform well when demand already exists. Someone types a query, sees an ad, and potentially moves toward care. But a media strategy built almost entirely around existing search volume can only capture people who are already looking.
Other healthcare marketing channels can create familiarity and interest earlier.
A person may see a campaign on streaming television, encounter another message on social media, and later search the organization by name. If the reporting gives all the credit to the final paid search click, the earlier channels can look less valuable than they actually were.
That is why the mix needs both patience and measurement.
Nielsen’s Annual Marketing Report found that North American marketers were almost evenly divided between prioritizing brand awareness and revenue growth. The same report found that only 32% of marketers globally said they measured traditional and digital media spending holistically. Those findings reinforce how difficult, and important, it is to balance short-term performance with the channels that help create future demand.
Match the media mix to the market
A channel mix that performs well in one market may behave very differently in another. Change, as they say, is inevitable and it applies to healthcare marketing as anywhere:
- Competition
- Search demand
- Media costs
- Consumer habits
These factors may all change, even within the duration of your campaign’s runtime.
Even locations within the same health system can produce very different results, which is why geography is more than a targeting setting.
This same principle applies beyond search. Media planning should account for where growth is needed, where opportunity exists, and how audiences in those markets consume media.
Unlock saw this in a localized SEM campaign where adjusting bidding strategies and budget allocation around individual markets helped reduce cost per acquisition and increase visibility in targeted growth locations. See how location-based SEM improved performance.
Let your media channels work together
Patients may encounter a campaign more than once and in more than one place before they move forward in their care.
As mentioned earlier in our article, a good media plan rarely asks one channel to carry the entire patient acquisition strategy.
Paid search may capture the person who is ready to act. Paid social may help introduce the message earlier. Display may reinforce it. Video may build familiarity and trust. Email or another nurture channel may continue the relationship after someone completes a form or assessment.
When your strategy gives them a reason to work together, the channels you select can and often do play complementary roles.
Proof of concept
In one Unlock engagement, a multi-specialty medical group used SEM as a foundation and added social and display where appropriate. The combined approach helped increase patient volume sixfold while reducing cost per acquisition by 70%. Read the multi-specialty medical group case study.
A separate healthcare campaign used search and social together to drive health risk assessment participation, generating 5,581 completed assessments at an average acquisition cost of $23.12. See how the campaign combined search and social.
Measure the mix, then adjust accordingly
Media plans aren’t static, at least they shouldn’t be.
A channel that made sense at campaign launch may become less efficient over time. Another, which started off slowly, is now beginning to produce stronger-quality leads. A new geographical area, not quite captured in your original targeting, now shows more opportunity. Your awareness campaign did exactly what you hoped: generate awareness. As a result, search volume is now increasing.
These are signals telling you what to tweak, what to consider that maybe you didn’t consider at the start, as well as what to reconsider, and what to turn up the volume on. These signals should influence the next allocation decision.
But, and this is key, a useful healthcare media strategy looks beyond channel-specific metrics and asks broader questions:
- Which channels are generating patient activity?
- Which are introducing demand?
- Which are assisting conversion?
- Where could additional investment produce more growth?
- Where is cost rising without a corresponding increase in value?
There can be nuance that should be taken into account, too, like the fact that video may be contributing more assisted value than last-click reporting suggests. So, it’s important to understand where your patients are trickling down from and how it’s all connected via the channels you run with.
Our recent article on healthcare PPC and search intent looks more closely at how one of those channels can turn active search behavior into patient growth.
A strong media mix works towards one goal
There is no universal media mix that works for everyone, everywhere, all the time. If only marketing were that easy. The truth is that a plethora of factors contribute and when you sit down to build a media mix, the right combination depends on your growth objective, the market, the audience, where your intended audience is in their healthcare journey, and the outcomes you need to showcase so those patients walk through your front door.
That starts with giving each channel a hat to wear and a job to do. Know which are creating demand, which are capturing it, and which channels are keeping you visible all along the way. Then measure and measure again. See how they perform together and move the budget around when the evidence tells you.
That is how a collection of media buys becomes a healthcare media strategy.
Looking for a healthcare agency that can support your media strategy? Learn more about our full suite of healthcare marketing services.
