Kennesaw State held a Healthcare and Wellness Practice Marketing Conference, developed by the University of Georgia’s Small Business Development Center, for students and business professionals on March 14.
The conference focused on utilizing the latest trends in digital marketing and marketing research to increase practice profitability, bring in more patients and increase brand awareness.
Expert speakers included Tracey Christensen and Russell Wagner from WSB-TV, Whitney Stuart from Cox Health Marketing, Luisa Bank from Emory Healthcare and Lisa Tilt from Full Tilt Consulting. Several others also spoke at the conference about different marketing strategies.
One of the topics covered included Stuart’s presentation about growing a practice with data-driven strategies. Stuart talked about neuro health practices, which received challenges such as low brand recognition and a referral-based patient load. Some of the solutions mentioned were to increase brand awareness, new patient appointments and the percentage of ideal patients.
Bank spoke next about identifying and targeting the ideal patient.
“Successful practices prioritize the ideal patient,” Bank said. “Some action steps for 2019 include outsource and rely on research experts, appoint an internal champion and gather data now, analyze later.”
Tilt said healthcare and wellness email marketing can grow by increasing social reviews, increasing recommendations and enhancing engagement among other things.
“The best practices with emailing a patient include clean design, content length, tone of voice and frequency,” Tilt said. “You must know how to engage with your patients and provide them with valuable content.”
Wagner talked about data and advertising and how that can be used to attract more patients.
Wagner said that, on an average day, senior health service seekers spend two-thirds of their media time watching TV and going online. He added that people should help patients take an active role in managing their health. Wagner said that television and social media advertisements are effective methods of doing so.
According to the Small Business Development Center website, the organization strives to be the most trusted resource for transforming Georgia businesses. The SBDC provides training, tools and resources to help local companies succeed.
