5 key questions to drive more enquiries with your healthcare marketing strategy

Driven by long wait times and limited service access through the NHS – especially for elective and non-emergency care – patients are increasingly looking for viable alternatives.

People exploring their options beyond the NHS means there’s a growing cohort of potential patients for private clinics and hospitals to tap into. And with the NHS itself also consistently outsourcing treatment and procedures to private providers, the value of the UK’s private healthcare market hit an all-time high of £12.4 billion in 2023.

This all adds up to more competition between private healthcare providers.

The task of cutting through this increased competition to reach, educate, reassure, and acquire new patients falls to marketers. If you want to maintain a steady flow of new and returning patients as demographics, research habits, and channels change, now’s a good time to take a look at your healthcare marketing strategy and refresh your approach.

Here are five questions to ask to help you reassess:

Reaching the right audience

1. Do we use the right channel mix to reach the kind of patients we’re looking for?

There’s been a recent generational shift in the type of patients who choose to go private, with more people in the 18 – 34 age range using their own funds or insurance to access care. When your audience trends younger, the type of channels and research activities they prefer often differ from older groups, so you may find the shape of your marketing channel mix needs to change to accommodate.

“Marketing through a diverse range of channels is important to capture the attention of multiple audiences,” explains Faye Thomassen, Head of Marketing for Mediahawk. “But you don’t want to expend budget and effort on maintaining channels that aren’t delivering high-intent leads.”

With stronger tracking and attribution tools, you can identify which channels are delivering the most promising leads, and prioritise your spend accordingly.

Engaging your prospects

2. Are we consistently engaging with potential patients throughout their research journey?

Many patients will research their options extensively before making a decision, comparing your facilities, services, fees, reviews, and more against competitors.

Your strategy should account for multiple touchpoints and offer support for people at each stage of their journey. “Seeking healthcare can be a vulnerable time for people,” says Faye. “Add in the possible high costs of private care, and potential patients want to be completely sure they’re choosing the right provider. It’s quite common to see many repeated visits from one person.”

As we’ve discussed before, proper attribution for leads is vital for understanding the performance of your marketing strategy. But it’s also important for personalising each prospective patient’s experience. Call tracking, where each marketing activity or patient is assigned a unique phone number, can help you understand:

• How a lead arrived on your website
• What they’ve interacted with
• Where they are in their journey

With that information, you can serve them the right content or call to action to help them progress to the next stage, whether that’s further research or an enquiry. Integrating these tools with your customer relationship management (CRM) system also provides valuable extra context for your support team when they answer enquiries.

Establishing credibility

3. Are we building trust with the patients who engage with our marketing?

If you want to prove you’re the right provider and encourage more patients to book an appointment, all your content should be built around trust signals – from your ads to your web copy.

In this sector, trust is built through transparency. Many newcomers aren’t familiar with how private care works; according to research by the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, 42% say they don’t understand the range of services available, while 52% wouldn’t know where to find more information.

By providing reviews from previous patients, easy-to-understand documentation about procedures, and clear pricing structures, you demonstrate your commitment to that transparency, which helps you build trust and motivate potential patients to engage.

Generating high-intent leads

4. Do we reach high-intent patients who are ready to book – and how well do we handle those enquiries?

In healthcare, an online booking form can be useful to have, but a friendly, helpful, and personalised phone conversation remains the best way for prospective patients to enquire about a consultation.

It allows them to explain complex issues and ask questions in real time – and means they don’t have to put sensitive health information into a text box.

With conversation analytics, you can ensure these phone calls are effective, efficient, and personalised.

You can even get insight into your patient demographics with the right data protection rules in place.

A speech analysis tool uses artificial intelligence to understand the interaction, its outcome, and keywords that were used during the call.

This can help you understand:

• Whether the caller was ready to book an appointment
• The kinds of questions your callers need answers to before they’re ready to convert
• Whether your support team has the information and training they need to offer consistently high-quality responses to enquiries
• If your patient journey guides people to the right resources and department
• How you can adapt your marketing campaigns and patient journey to attract and retain more patients

Tracking ROI

5. Can we clearly and meaningfully demonstrate the impact of our marketing strategy on the volume of enquiries and booked appointments?

By tracking potential patients from the moment they engage to the moment they convert, you can draw clear lines between your efforts and the outcome. It’s one of the ultimate challenges of marketing attribution – but it’s within your grasp.

You can achieve this level of attribution by combining dynamic call tracking with a sales reporting tool that links every touchpoint to a booked appointment.

It gives you a clear, step-by-step view of the journey your patients took, starting from the marketing activity that caught their attention in the first place.

This is highly valuable for two key reasons:

1. You can do more of what works, and avoid using budget on activities that don’t deliver a good return on investment. When you know which channels to prioritise, the right keywords to use, and the most valuable resources to offer your prospective patients, you can drive more enquiries for your clinic.
2. You can show other stakeholders in the organisation how your strategy is performing, and directly connect marketing activities to revenue. This leads to better engagement and buy-in from your colleagues – and can assist with budget discussions, too.

Summary

According to analysis by healthcare marketers Medico Digital, the average cost-per-click for paid media is £1.23, while the cost-per-acquisition is £30.66, with costs creeping significantly higher for specialties that offer a lot of elective procedures.

Private healthcare is a highly competitive, complex industry to market in, so it’s wise to take every advantage that data, analysis, and marketing tools can offer to ensure you’re gaining real value from your investment. When you’ve built a deeper understanding of…

• The type of potential patients that interact with your marketing
• How successfully you engage with them
• When they’re ready to book an appointment

… you can create a dynamic strategy that will keep you ahead of other clinics while ensuring you’re connecting more patients to the care they need.