Healthcare Success

Interviewing medical experts is a tried-and-true way to produce original website content. Without that first-hand, unique, and accurate medical knowledge, your content can unintentionally mislead consumers, damage your reputation, and lose search engine rankings. But what if the experts your organization needs are busy doctors? Or you need help building a content strategy? Add to […]

Whether you run a multilocation healthcare organization, hospital, or health system, understanding the distinction between search engine optimization (SEO) vs. search engine marketing (SEM)—and how each distinctly helps your business—is important for several reasons. This knowledge helps you: In this blog, we’ll cover the unique roles of SEO and SEM in healthcare marketing and how […]

Digital marketing strategies fail when they’re not aligned with your brand.  Picture this: a cardiac center that prioritizes personalized care and leading-edge technology. This brand champions expertise, compassion, and patient empowerment. What would happen if the marketing department of this brand launched a social media campaign featuring younger hospital staff doing a trendy dance? Imagine […]

Managing a PPC strategy for any sized business is complex and challenging. But organizations with dozens or hundreds of locations face even more hurdles: Multilocation providers must consider each location’s unique needs, competitive situation, and business objectives—compounding the complexity of managing an accurate and effective PPC (aka pay-per-click or paid search) strategy. The good news […]

We hope your holiday season was filled with good cheer and plenty of new business opportunities. Now that the holidays have drawn to a close, it’s time to return to your 2024 marketing plan and make adjustments that ensure your business is taking advantage of the latest trends in healthcare marketing to reach patients and […]

Doctors are central to the success of virtually every multi-location healthcare practice and health system we work with. Moreover, today’s doctor partners have strong opinions about marketing and growing their locations within the larger business. Some of the hospitals and multilocation practices that engage our agency have doctors, executives, investors, and other stakeholders aligned around […]

Have your products, services, or target audience evolved to the point where they no longer align with your brand? Has your health brand become lost in a sea of sameness? Do your marketing assets feel stale and out of touch with your audience? Did your business neglect to establish proper healthcare branding from the beginning? […]

Healthcare consumers demand better, more personalized experiences at every touchpoint. According to Google, approximately 77% of people use search engines to start their patient journey.  So, it makes sense for healthcare businesses to focus their attention on their websites, landing pages, and paid search campaigns. But what happens after your ads have captured their attention—especially […]

Today, the marketing spotlight often shines on Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X due to their vast numbers, combined influence, and economic power.  However, marketing to Baby Boomers remains vitally important. At approximately 68.6 million strong, Baby Boomers remain a formidable and highly-valuable consumer segment. Unfortunately, when building their marketing strategies, many marketers fail to […]

Today’s trusted healthcare sites feature up-to-date, accurate information.  They also boast SEO-optimized content.  To stay ahead of your competitors in organic search results and reach the right target audience, you must regularly update your content for SEO.  In this blog, I share how to do this in five steps.  First, let’s define content optimization.  What […]

As a hospital or health system, you know the value of patient engagement.  You understand that it’s crucial for improving the overall patient experience and health outcomes for people of all socio-economic classes.  But are you up-to-date with the latest patient engagement strategies? In this blog post, I’ll share ten targeted marketing campaigns to help […]

Organic Social Media  When social media exploded onto the scene nearly two decades ago, marketers and healthcare professionals were a little too excited about its potential for healthcare marketing.  Who could blame them? The fantasy was great. ‘All I have to do is figure out how to create a free Facebook business page, and then […]

Consumers across the globe have come to rely on search engines for reliable, trustworthy, accurate, and timely healthcare information. This has significantly increased competition among providers, making SEO—particularly local SEO—a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy. Local SEO is beneficial for any size business but critical for multilocation companies. By implementing local seo for […]

What do you consider the most important pages on your healthcare website? After the homepage, many might say it’s their products or services pages.  However, the About Us page is among the most important and highly trafficked web pages. In many cases, it's also a critical part of the consumer's buying journey. Fifty-two percent of […]

Online reviews play a significant role in the success of any healthcare organization. In fact, patient reviews of doctors come in third as the most influential driver in consumers’ decisions1 (after insurance acceptance and location). Today, virtually everyone should use reputation management software (RMS) to solicit, manage, and respond to reviews.  Hospitals and multilocation practices […]

Is your website easy to use? Is it intuitive?  Is it pleasant to interact with while also effectively delivering the information your consumers need? A successful website employs key UI/UX principles beyond beautiful pages.  UI/UX ensures your website is  In this post, I’ll cover 10 UI/UX design basics that can positively impact your healthcare business.  […]

We’ve written about branding over the years, everything from strategy and concepts to tactics and execution.  This time I’d like to focus on what happens when your strategy is said and done. You can now create great content, right? Well, not exactly.  You need a brand style guide that communicates your strategy in a guidebook. […]

A successful health system, hospital, practice, or healthcare organization website facilitates patient communication and helps you win more patients you want.  But this doesn’t mean much if patients can’t find your website. To get on page #1 for an organic search, you need a strong healthcare marketing SEO company, a solid website, an even stronger […]

Building a multilocation healthcare business expands your reach, patient base, and profit margin.  But, these benefits come with several unique marketing challenges.  The good news? They also come with remarkable marketing opportunities.  In this article, I identify several common challenges and how to overcome them with effective marketing strategies.  12 Marketing Challenges Unique to Multilocation […]

Humans have an evolutionary instinct to be lazy. We will always choose the path of least resistance. Take the remote control, for example. Years ago, people had to get up from the sofa and walk to the TV to change the channel.  Thanks to the remote control, people can stay nestled comfortably in their favorite […]

Your paid search landing page is a stand-alone web page typically separate from your website.  It’s the first page visitors see after clicking your paid search ad, making it solely responsible for high-quality lead conversions and performance. Getting it right is essential. The effectiveness of its design, message, page load speed, lead capture form, and […]

The conversion is the ultimate goal for any website or landing page.  It’s when a user makes a purchase, calls your organization, or makes an appointment. And if you’re like most of our clients, you want to increase your conversion rates.  One of the niche marketing disciplines that helps you do just that is called […]

Paid search (aka pay-per-click or PPC) often yields the highest ROI of any digital advertising medium. Our agency, therefore, manages Google Ads for dozens of our clients.  Google Ads (and its much smaller competitor Microsoft) work so well because they target people actively searching for healthcare solutions. Moreover, paid search delivers tremendous advantages and provides […]

Your website is—more often than not—the first experience people have with your brand. So having a solid strategy is crucial. Creating an immersive, branded space for users to experience is vital for effective marketing. When you’re strategic, branding and messaging are clear and cohesive across multiple channels, and your website can better support your short- […]

SEO is a good thing.  It’s the original bridge between Google search crawlers and people; it is the only way search engines better understand and retrieve what consumers are organically searching for online.  But did you know that you can overdo SEO? It’s called over optimization, and it happens all the time.  A common example […]

It’s easy to find detailed guides on how to respond to reviews. However, most aren’t written specifically for healthcare, meaning they don’t consider HIPAA or other compliance issues.  Responding to patient reviews can be tricky.  According to HIPAA, hospitals and doctors aren't allowed to share any protected health information (PHI) about reviewers—including whether they're patients. […]

I’ve noticed that most people tend to focus on only one of four variables when optimizing their digital marketing results. That’s a shame because true optimization requires a more strategic approach that considers each of the following four factors: Let’s take, for example, paid search (e.g., search engine marketing, SEM, pay-per-click, or PPC). Because it […]

We recently received an inquiry from the Marketing Director for a 40-location, single-specialty medical practice in the Midwest. Even though it was after hours, I was available so I took the call. Michelle (not her real name) and I hit it off immediately. She told me about her demanding job and how she felt her […]

Before we launch into a new year filled with new goals, ambitions, and marketing trends, I’d like to pause and reflect on the most helpful expert advice of 2022. I’ve compiled some of our most significant posts here, so you can easily reference them as you move into 2023. All Consuming Consumerism: Major Shifts & […]

Healthcare consumers continue to move swiftly down the paths of least resistance toward quality care. This spells trouble for healthcare organizations that cannot change with the times. It’s time to pay attention to what competitors offer and find ways to remove unnecessary obstacles to care.  In this blog, I share nine healthcare marketing trends you […]

Just like your brick-and-mortar business has to be ADA compliant, your healthcare website must also be accessible to people with disabilities.  The problem? The ADA doesn’t offer clear regulations for a compliant website.  The bigger problem? ADA accessibility lawsuits are on the rise. If your website isn’t accessible to people with disabilities, you could risk […]

Best-in-class healthcare marketers are already planning for next year. They’re researching key trends that will attract new high-intent audiences, increase engagement, drive revenue, and reinforce patient loyalty in 2023.  If you’ve been revamping the same marketing plan for a few years, now is the perfect time to reevaluate everything through the lens of market innovations […]

Google Trends is a powerful but underutilized tool that helps healthcare marketers It also allows marketers to analyze search term popularity over time, explore related keywords, and compare how search terms vary across different geographical areas. In this article, you’ll learn: What is Google Trends? Google Trends is an online search tool that analyzes the […]

What if you could advertise to patients while they are sitting in your competitor’s waiting room? What if you could promote your OBGYN practice to those Bridal Expo attendees down the street? How about offering Indy 500 ticket holders a free consultation at your Low T clinic? Or, providing your specialty services directly to those […]

While many affluent consumers don’t think twice about paying cash (or credit) for luxury retail goods, there is a built-in bias that healthcare products and services should be covered by insurance. Of course, that’s often not the case.  Despite this bias, patients are more than willing to pay out of pocket for the pricey healthcare […]

Help Providers Win New Patients from Large Local Businesses with These Tactics Large or dominant employers in your local communities are excellent targets of opportunity for new patients and cases. Most healthcare providers have local businesses that are (or could be) a source of new business. Whether it’s a company that's conveniently located across the […]

Welcome to step four of our “Marketing to Doctors” blog series. This comprehensive playbook is designed to help people in virtually every sector (e.g., healthcare businesses, device and supply companies, SaaS, etc.) market their products and services directly to doctors, physicians, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals. If you haven’t read steps 1-3, I highly recommend […]

More consumers care about wellness than ever before—but it encompasses more than just fitness and nutrition. Today's wellness consumers actively engage with brands offering holistic products and services that promise to improve their physical and mental health and overall appearance. As consumer interest grows, health and wellness brands have ample opportunity to attract a larger […]

Learn our best practices for healthcare marketing to seniors, including how to create on-target messaging and choose the right distribution channels

Women make over 85 percent of consumer purchases in the U.S. When it comes to the household, they make up to 90 percent of the healthcare decisions.  Ninety four percent of women make their own healthcare decisions, and 59 percent of women make healthcare decisions for others. And yet women’s health marketing isn’t doing a […]

Welcome to part three of our “Marketing to Doctors” blog series. This series is a comprehensive playbook for healthcare businesses, device and supply companies, SaaS, or anyone who wants to market their products and services directly to doctors (physicians, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals). As mentioned, marketing to doctors can be extremely challenging, complicated, and […]

I have been fascinated with vanity phone numbers for a long time. Early in my career, I came up with 1-800-WORKOUT and 1-800-FITNESS at J. Walter Thompson for our client Health & Tennis Corporation (later Bally Total Fitness). At that time, they owned multiple brands in dozens of markets and required $500,000 a year to […]

The COVID pandemic accelerated a longstanding issue within the healthcare industry: balancing labor shortages with increasing patient volume.  While market disruptors such as Telehealth and other retail clinics provide communities with more care options, they also drive higher staffing demands on an already small pool of candidates. Not only that, but many doctors and nurses […]

While we are very excited to announce our agency just launched our new website featuring a brand-new design, functionality, backend tech, and fresh content, we expect you’ll be more interested in the following three takeaways:  Why we decided to rebuild our site completely, Why you may need to similarly “start anew” with your website, and […]

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool for healthcare businesses.  According to BuiltWith, more than 28 million websites use Google Analytics to better understand how users engage with their web properties—including more than 66% of the top 100,000 websites worldwide. The development and subsequent launch of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in October 2020 was spurred […]

Marketing to doctors, physicians, surgeons, and other health care professionals can be extremely challenging, complicated, and expensive. What’s more, most doctors work in a hospital or multilocation medical practice, making it even more challenging to identify key decision-makers. Not only are doctors and decision-makers difficult to reach—and even more difficult to persuade—you have to contend […]

By Stewart Gandolf, MBA (Editor’s Note: I wrote the first version of this blog post back in 2006 when we launched Healthcare Success. While I intentionally wrote it with a quick, playful tone, more than sixteen years later, it remains one of our most popular posts. I recently updated it here for your reading pleasure!) Every time I run […]

Today, healthcare brands have more photography and videography options than ever. For many situations, hiring professionals, such as a professional photographer, a production company, or a videographer, will be best.  In other instances, you and your team can utilize a high-quality smartphone camera, affordable software programs, and inexpensive starter equipment to quickly, cheaply, and easily […]

More companies are making high-quality healthcare easier to access and more affordable by embracing data and technology. While healthcare has historically been among the slowest to accept new technologies, the pandemic has sped adoption. Healthcare businesses must offer leading-edge services and build patient-centric marketing strategies to differentiate themselves from competitors, boost retention and recruitment, and […]

If you’re in business, you have competitors.  Whether you represent a hospital, health system, or multilocation practice, competing healthcare businesses are developing innovative business models—right now—and they’re targeting your market. What’s more, your highest revenue service lines are likely already facing stiff competition from all angles.  Even worse, the marketplace for virtually every type of […]