Beyond any complicated strategy that the topic of Medical Tourism marketing relates to, the truth is rather simple. You need “good old” marketing tactics to be in front of your audience who searches for treatments abroad. Actually, “that is all”.
You need Medical Tourism Digital Marketing, whether you manage a Medical Tourism Cluster, Hospital, Medical Center, Cosmetic Surgery Center, In Vitro Fertilization Center, Dental Clinic or even being a Medical tourism facilitator.
The tricky part is to do the correct steps from the beginning all the way along. When it comes to applying Digital Marketing tactics on a Medical Tourism strategy, you need a proper plan in place.
- To create a proper plan you need data
- To get data you need to research
To do a research you need:
- To know what you are looking for
- The tools
- How to use them for research
To apply the research outcome:
- You need to be able to read the data
- To transform the data into actions
- To know how search engines work
- To know how to track results
Since Digital Marketing is involved, a lot of knowledge needs to be gathered prior any marketing plan or decision.
Keyword Research for Medical Tourism Data
This is the Alpha and the Omega of your digital marketing plan. Read why.
You need to know how people search for the treatments you want to offer. That entails a number of tools (real, complex, paid services and tools) and strategies to find that exact information along with the indicators that show the difficulty to be seen with these queries. So, you need both reliable data on volume of queries and how difficult or/and costly is to rank high when someone searches Google for i.e. “knee surgery abroad”.
Doing such research will end up with like a ton of data. One of the most important elements that will arise from these data is how people think when they search for treatments. People usually search with a different way (and phrases) than the actual name of their condition or the official name of the treatment needed.
Why you need to know all this info?
Because people search online not only for treatments but also for information around a topic. In that way they use 3, 4 or 5 words sentences to search. They search not with “textbook” terminology but with “the need”.
That is why there are big difference in queries volumes between “knee surgery abroad” and “knee surgery”. The first defines a research for the actual need, while the latter describes mostly the condition. The first one is targeted. But… you also need to know if any searches like that and not like, i.e. “knee surgery treatment abroad with hotel” (just an example).
When people search they will see results in their preferred search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, other) with which they (want to) identify and thus click to read more.
There -in the search engine results list- your url and short description that relates exactly to what they search must be presented.
If you don’t have a landing pages in your website that is optimized for a real-world query then Google wont correlate you with that query. Simple as that.
Result? Not shown in Search Results.
At this point, especially if you are a doctor, you will be puzzled reading this and you would be right. It is one thing to use the medical term(s) than matching the how-people-actually-search term(s). Yet, this is how it is.
But, what do you do with all these data gathered?
Moving to the first phase of Medical Tourism marketing planning
Having all these data (and their particulars) will show you:
- How to match Demand with Supply (means: query VS landing page)
- How to target different audiences
- How to set metrics and milestones
- How to assembly your online success tracking methods
One of the most important things you will additionally see is all the info on how to allocate your marketing budget and marketing efforts. Allow us to explain this a bit more.
Tough keywords VS “Easy Keywords”: From all the data gathered you will notice that an X query (lets say IV fertilization treatment abroad) has a high level of difficulty to rank in the first page of i.e. Google. This means that even if you made a correct landing page inside your website for that term (that practice is called OnPage Search Engine Optimization) it could be really difficult to rank in 1st page relatively soon. This information will then show, which queries to isolate for Content Marketing and which for Pay Per Click Marketing (you may know the latter as i.e. Adwords).
Why you need that information? To finalize/adjust your budget and marketing plan. To know for which phrases you have to build content in your website and move to rank it and which is better not to create content and go directly for Adwords because it is more cost-efficient.
This “marketing-mix” is something you need for a series of reasons and has different effects.
We are describing this not in an absolute manner since there are a few more factors that influence that decision, but you get the idea.
Yet, what happens when we know where to split our marketing efforts?
Content Marketing for Medical Tourism
Now we know how to conduct the necessary actions based on Data and Actual Costs of Actions.
One of the major tactics will be to implement a Content Marketing strategy. Logically you heard such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), OnPage/OffPage SEO, Search Marketing, Link Building and a few more. In a few words it relates to what kind of content to create, how to create it specifically for Search Engines and how to rank it, so you can get properly indexed.
- Correct indexing shows you in related queries
- Ranking 1st page for these queries, brings targeted traffic
Why content marketing is great for Medical Tourism marketing? You see, Adwords (and similar) have some weaknesses. These mainly are:
Weakness no 1: A large amount of people use Ad Blockers (over 40%): This means that when an ad is served through their devices or laptop, through Ad Servers, then 40% doesn’t even seen them. That stands for all kinds of Ad Server served ads (nice puzzle, right?). Instead any content served as Native, gets through.
Weakness no 2: Usually the Cost Per Click of such high profile Ads is… high.
Weakness no 3: If you stop the Ads you are left with… nothing. No value is passed to your website at all. You pay, you get seen; you stop paying Google, the end.
The solution is a data-based digital marketing mix.
You need (we do that) to separate the tough-to-rank keywords for use in Adwords. You need such to get some traction to your website urls.
At the same time we make the nice “grid” list of queries to use in the content marketing strategy. These will be the base for your mid to long term 1st page ranking actions. These actions are the ones that will create the increased Domain Authority you need and the lasting ranking you need.
When you get at first page of Google, targeted traffic will flow in. That is your real power.
That traffic will channel those who search for treatments in the appropriate landing pages of your website and get them into Action by inviting them into a Call For Action. That means they will be able to contact you for more info for their treatment abroad.
Which of course brings us to your website quality…
Fixing the website for Search Results
Using the research data from the 1st phase we move to make landing pages in your existing website that absolutely relate to the terms people search with.
Then, Google will (with our work) see these pages and index them in her database.
Those who search in Google will see “that matching page” in their results and click.
They will read the content of the page and contact you.
That is a big part of success.
Now, imagine not matching how people search with a landing page that relates to that search; a disaster, right?
Imagine “optimizing” a page for the wrong queries and you end up ranking high in Google results related to Academic papers and such. Is that your audience? No, when you try to sell services to patients who seek for treatments abroad.
Another series of technical factors is proper to be in place to increase your website quality against Google but we will not go deep into that rabbit hole for now.
Getting active with Content Marketing
Content marketing is not just publishing Press Releases and similar. That is far from truth. In fact content and search marketing needs deep and vast knowledge on how search engines work and how to work around them, plus how to form and apply a scalable and manageable content strategy.
Bottom line is to see week to week results in rankings and get targeted traffic in the website landing pages. That is doable and provable.
Sales will follow ranking.
Also see: Our Services for Medical Tourism.
Do you need Social Media in the mix?
The truth is that -these days- testing around Social Media channels like Facebook and Twitter is cheap. It really is if you know how to run it. On the other hand, we like to discuss strategies based on data and not on “opinions”. Social Media (each Social Media channel) is in fact a “close” Ecosystem. You can’t search in Facebook as you search in Google or any other search engine.
That is crucial.
Google, on the other hand, is an open system where people search when they need something or/and want to learn something. So, Google relates to a “tell me know” concept.
Google serves results by almost all other channels. That is a major difference and part of the wise move to be present (and rank) on the medium where people look to cover their need.
Social Media play a different supporting role for the Medical Tourism market and we can discuss this further. It can be a lead generation medium but with big costs.
Measuring all digital actions
Technology permits to track the results of any digital marketing action. Either from content and search marketing actions or paid search marketing actions, we can track and see their outcome. Even from Social Media and -if properly organized- even from offline campaigns too.
In that way your business can accelerate, pause or enhance their ranking strategy and their authority building actions at any point.
That is the great, right? To be able to control what is going on!
All results and KPI’s can be set and measured in an accountable and transparent way, so all stakeholders are happy and have peace of mind.
Conclusion on Medical Tourism digital marketing
This basic post provides a basic layer of knowledge on how Medical Tourism digital marketing can bring results. In fact the same logic applies to most websites that either need direct sales or leads to convert to sales. After all, if you think it for a while it is eCommerce.
You may be glad to know that we are considered among the top 30 WooCommerce Developers by Designrush.
Need to see how it is done? Ask us for more. No strings attached.
Also see: Our Services for Medical Tourism.
