3 Tips for Your Healthcare Marketing Strategy during a Recession

Knowing your audience—their pain points, priorities, and likely behaviors—is crucial in executing an effective healthcare marketing strategy. Now more than ever, given the economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers want communications they receive from healthcare brands to be empathetic and addressing real-life problems.

Today’s headlines are continuously filled with news of unemployment and unrest, so expect your customer base will behave differently. Though the current recession is genuinely unique in its challenges, you can learn and infer about your audience from past recessions.

Based on surveys done during the Great Recession of 2008, healthcare consumers are more likely to:

• Have higher stress levels
• Have anxiety about paying for healthcare-related expenses
• Cancel appointments
• Skip preventative care and develop new health issues as a result
• Lose access to employer-sponsored or private healthcare insurance

This consumer behavior impacts the healthcare industry as a whole, from direct-to-patient products to hospitals and B2B medical companies. Adjusting your marketing strategy with the pandemic and current recession in mind will help you build more trust and loyalty with your audience.

1. Empathy First Marketing Strategy

Healthcare consumers will feel more confident in converting when your content is relatable, accessible, helpful, and speaks to their concerns. Remember, especially during times of economic hardship crisis; it’s not about your organization. It’s about the individual.

Be Client Focused

Before you release your next marketing campaign or write that next email, think about the questions the personas in your consumer base will have.

What are they doing to protect me/my patients?

How much will this cost me or my organization?

Why should this be a priority for me right now?

Doing keyword research will also help you know what questions your audience has and how they’re asking them.

Meet Them Where They Are

A sure way to send a potential customer in the other direction is to speak in a way they don’t understand. Make your content accessible, using plain language in an engaging, user-focused way.

If your target audience has a high health literacy (medical professionals), still try to be as concise and straightforward as possible. Balance your use of industry terms to establish a credible tone with easy-to-understand structure so your readers will grasp your message quickly and easily.

2. Promote Services Strategically

There will be certain services that are more in demand as people react to the pandemic and the following recession. Strategize the timing of which services or products you push according to the needs of your target audience.

Telemedicine

It’s no secret that telemedicine channels and services are skyrocketing. When consumers choose between healthcare providers and one of them prominently offers easy telehealth options, patients will probably pick that one. Until a vaccine is widely distributed and available, consumers will have to be coaxed into feeling comfortable during in-person visits.

Whatever services you offer digitally, market those options more heavily.

Mental Health Services

As levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and desperation are higher, be sure to emphasize what your organization is doing to help. You may already have a program or resource in place that usually stays on the back burner, and now would be a great time to promote it.

Communicate Health Risks

Many will be tempted to opt-out of preventative measures that could lead to more problems and costs down the road. Communicating the risks of not using your services is an effective way to keep people safe and continue driving business.

3. Address the Financial Questions

As mentioned previously, many in your target audience may have recently become unemployed, not only losing their income but, most likely, their health insurance, too. Healthcare costs will be a significant pain point and one of the first questions on their minds.

Information regarding insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, and financial aid qualifications should be easy to find on your website. If one of your organization’s competitive edges is affordability, your content marketing strategy should highlight that often.

Learn more about how Connect Healthcare Consulting can assist you with healthcare marketing services or book a meeting to claim your free consultation.