Ecommerce Marketing Tips for Online Healthcare & Medical Business

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The medical and health industry has been booming in recent years. The industry serves a wide range of audiences. Everyone needs good healthcare.
Disposable income has become more common, and online ecommerce has boomed. Healthcare brands have come up with innovative solutions to help individuals in need. The market is saturated with everything ranging between nutritional supplements and healthier foods.
Healthcare brands need to reach their customers faster. Only ecommerce and digital marketing can help with that.
Consumers depend on online purchases more than ever. According to a report, patients now rely on websites for health-related decisions. You need to have your marketing game strong to stay on top of all competitors.
Ecommerce is transforming the healthcare industry. So, here are some marketing tips for your business.

Article Summary

• Importance of Ecommerce Marketing
• Improves visibility for your brand
• It helps you target the relevant audience.
• Reduces cost of acquisition and helps improve your bottom line
• Helps manage brand reputation
• It is scalable according to your business size and growth.
• Ecommerce Marketing Tips for Online Healthcare & Medical Business
• Healthcare Ecommerce Marketing Tools You Must Know
• Healthcare Ecommerce Marketing FAQs

Importance of Ecommerce Marketing for Healthcare/Pharma Websites

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1. Improves Visibility

Most of the population today is on the internet. This includes your target audience. Ecommerce marketing for your healthcare products or services can help reach more people. 7% of total searches on Google are related to healthcare practices or products.
Users search for plenty of things on search engines. This includes healthcare recommendations and product reviews. There are also health and wellness tips, or even medical specialists and centers.
Given the wide range of this search, you can fit in your products and service. Couple the same with some valuable content, and you can reach your target audience.
Effective digital marketing, content marketing strategies, and SEO techniques can push you to the top search results. They also ensure good leads for your business.
Compared to local shops in a specific region, the internet offers incomparable reach. There's no reason to neglect to attract so many eyeballs.

2. Targets Specific Demographics

Demographic targeting makes it easier to reach the relevant audience. In digital ads, you can specify the age groups, location, gender, and other demographics. This allows you to market your product or service to a niche segment.
Compared to traditional marketing, it's not only cheaper but also more effective.
When you run targeted ads, you reach the relevant audience faster. Additionally, you can add a personalized experience to engage them. This makes a compelling offer. It would not only attract them to your brand but also turn them into potential customers.
Besides having a website, you can indulge in PPC advertising. This boosts leads/traffic generation. Use content marketing to engage potential patients or customers.
Further, display testimonials to convince them about your offerings. Businesses grow with sales. Ecommerce marketing is a significant step to move ahead faster.

3. Reduces Cost of Acquisition

As mentioned above, digital ads are much cheaper than traditional advertising. You reach a higher number of relevant people at a lower cost.
By targeting correctly and improvising your ads, you can improve your CTR and reduce CPC. More people reach your online store at lower costs, your acquisition costs decrease.
Cost per acquisition is the amount spent on average for acquiring one patient or making one sale. According to a survey conducted at US Vein Practices, TV (30%) and print (68%) are the most common advertising channels.
The average CPA for these channels is $348 and $314, respectively. You can slash the CPA by half when you use digital marketing to promote your healthcare business. As the CPA reduces, you might be able to reduce your prices, too, offering you a competitive advantage.
If you plan to keep your costs the same, you will see an improvement in profits. It is because your marketing or ad spend per customer/patient will reduce.

4. Helps With Reputation Management

Being online and visible is not where the whole thing stops. The internet also offers you a better way to manage your reputation.
Users often leave reviews or comments on medical forums. They may provide a testimonial. A potential customer may research your practice or products before purchasing. He/she will most likely read these reviews.
Positive reviews often encourage consumers to try healthcare products from a specific brand.
Online reputation management is essential these days. Especially when your business is dealing with other humans' health and well-being. After all, it is not a rug or pillow someone might buy without research.
If you have lots of positive reviews online, your business will boom automatically. These are recommendations from individuals who have used your service or product and are most likely reliable.

5. Easily Scalable

The best part about having an ecommerce marketing strategy is that you can grow it alongside your business. You do not need to invest a hefty amount for print ads or billboards on day one. You can set up a basic website and start with minimal ad spend.
As your business grows, you can invest more in marketing efforts. This allows you to keep your bottom line in check. If you do not want to begin with paid ads immediately, there are alternatives. You can use social media marketing and content marketing to grow your healthcare business's reach and online presence.
Even if you add new products or services to your business, you can incorporate them into your website, ads, and social media posts. This allows you to explore verticals as your brand name grows.

Related : Local SEO Tips for Doctors & Healthcare Professionals

Ecommerce Marketing Tips for Online Healthcare & Medical Business

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1. Build Brand Awareness

Your website, ads, content, social media posts, or any online activity reflects your brand. To increase traffic and conversions, you must build your brand awareness. When people know about your brand, they research it.
Further, they convert into customers or patients. How can you build brand awareness for a fairly new business? Well, there are many ways.
Firstly, you need to get influencers or experts to talk about your product/service. It might be tricky in medical practice. Yet, you can distribute free samples and request a review if you have healthcare products.
The tactic may cost money sometimes. Most influencers charge for reviewing or promoting products on their channels. Yet, if you pass this small hurdle, you'll be the talk of the town.
As your brand awareness increases, so will the traffic on your website and sales. With more sales, you'll have more money to invest in your marketing efforts. Further, it leads to business growth.

2. Incorporate Holiday-Based Promotions and Emotion in Your Strategy

Emotion is an essential component of any marketing strategy. Humans are emotional beings.
If you trigger the right emotion in them, you'll most likely convert them into customers. While this goes unsaid, there are certain times when you can join your potential customers in their celebrations.
Yes, it's the holidays. Running promotional events through the holiday season might sound basic, but it shows that you care.
Make sure you have your calendar marked for the holidays all year round. Your online marketing strategy must take these days into account.
You can have special events and promotions revolving around the celebrations. Yet, you mustn't go overboard. You need to recognize the major holidays. Additionally, some national days may be relevant to the industry. There's International Health Day, for instance.

3. Tap Existing Needs and Reach Your Target Audience Effectively

Your product or service must identify a gap or fulfill an existing need of the target customers. Buying mass media is extremely expensive. Instead, you need to target a specific set of audiences. Thankfully, today we have so many tools and platforms at our disposal.
Let's take an example. What would work better for a non-fat, keto healthcare brand?
Marketing it to all people or simply promoting it in front of people who prefer a keto diet?
Obviously, the latter! While PPC ads allow you to select some criteria of demographics like the region, gender, age groups, etc., it's not always enough.
For niche products, you need to find a niche audience. You can easily find them on social media platforms where there are several groups. You can easily find people who are already interested in a keto diet.
Then why should you spend money on others who're not? When you start your entrepreneurial journey, money is simply an investment. You should use it wisely.

4. Authority and Thought Leadership are Essential

When you're deadline with human health, you must tread carefully. It is essential to have a voice of authority and years of experience behind you before identifying as an established professional in the industry.
Additionally, you can conduct clinical trials or research to back up your products or service. When you need to prove that your product is better than what others have to offer, you must have solid evidence. To gain your readers' and users' trust, you must be transparent. It includes your offering's effects and benefits.
At last, you must have your shopping experience completely clear. This includes refunds, returns, and shipping policies. You must show that the consumer can depend on you. So, every word you post must be accurate or verifiable. This is the only way to build a brand entirely based on trust.
You can always bring in new data and build a thought leadership brand for the owners. This makes the consumers believe that you always strive to learn and grow in the healthcare industry.

5. Use Social Media to Your Benefit

Social media is a vital tool these days. Especially for new and small businesses, it is a boon. As people are becoming more conscious of local brands, they need a welcome. Your social media pages must showcase your story and growth, in addition to your values.
You need to engage and connect with the visitors. If that's not enough to convince you,72% of internet users engage on social media platforms actively. Moreover, 75% of Americans use social media to research health symptoms.
To ensure that your social media presence grows beyond a dozen likes and shares, you need to have a social media marketing strategy in place. There are plenty of ways to engage your visitors now. You can provide valuable bits of content, conduct polls and contests.
Do live story sessions for Q&A or even involve some influencers to help promote your brand. As most active businesses might not have the time to pour into social media, it can help to have dedicated professionals.

6. Offer Useful Information to Improve User Experience

You need to leverage content marketing. Valuable content increases engagement and builds the consumer's trust in your brand. If your content is informational and unique, customers will be more likely to fall back on it for research.
Active engagement on blog and social media content ensures you grab more attention. It increases your brand's online authority. As that happens, traffic increases. An increase in traffic is eventually a booster for sales.
Additionally, you improve your site's user experience. It's good if visitors are engaging more or staying longer to read your content. Google algorithms consider it an essential metric for ranking websites. If you want to sell more, you need to rank higher than your competitors, right!?
A comprehensive FAQ section and detailed product descriptions answer all queries of customers. This makes them believe more in the product. High trust comes from transparency, which converts into better sales. So, you must have all the information displayed.

7. Have a Mobile Responsive Website

Most consumers use their mobile devices to navigate and research on the web in today's time and age. This means higher chances of your website traffic coming from mobile devices. Additionally, since 2018, mobile-first indexing was introduced in Google algorithms. Google's results were biased towards mobile versions of the websites. So, if your healthcare business website is not mobile responsive, it's high time you make it so.
Besides SEO, this also has relevance in user experience. If most traffic on your website comes from mobile devices, you must offer a good user experience to your visitors. As a business, it is your responsibility to put the customer first.
You can easily check your mobile scores using Google Page Insights. It also offers recommendations to improve your website score. By implementing the given advice, you can quickly boost your Google Ranking.

8. Use Videos

Videos are engaging, build better connections, and are more authoritative. If you're not making videos as part of your content marketing strategy in 2021, it's a huge mistake.
As a healthcare business, you need to increase awareness. It can be about your product, its benefits, and its uses. Additionally, you also have to build authority. It encourages potential consumers to have higher trust in your brand.
Television advertisements have always been popular. Do you know the reason? It's because they are a combination of audio and visuals. Audio-visual is more entertaining, engaging and has higher retention for humans.
At last, when you create videos for your brand with experts speaking about the product or brand itself, it increases authority and trust.
Why do you think most toothpaste ads have always had actors wearing white coats?
People will perceive them as doctors. They are more likely to trust a doctor for their teeth than regular actors.

9. Target Multiple Channels

Your customers are present on numerous channels, so should you. Leverage every platform possible. Tap the potential of social media for your healthcare business.
Engage in medical and healthcare forums. As you reach the same people through different channels, they start recognizing you. If you reach new people, that's also good for your brand awareness. You cannot stay stuck to one platform or channel simply because it does good for now.
For instance, Facebook has recently started moderating Facebook and Instagram ads very strictly. This meant that Facebook suspended many ad accounts.
So many small businesses largely depended on these ads for generating business. Now, they're sinking. If you have a multi-channel strategy, you slowly build your presence on all of them.
If something changes in the future, you need not depend on one platform to promote your healthcare brand. Display your phone number so that people can call you for inquiries.
Share lead forms and collect data, engage on social media or forums. You'll never regret it.

10. What Sounds Good, Seems Good - Online Reputation Is Important

Professional recommendations and customer testimonials or reviews go a long way. As far as health and wellness are concerned, consumers often depend on two things.
There's the recommendation from other people who have used the product or experts. While you can build a brand, you need to have positive reviews to grow it substantially.
Whenever someone makes a purchase, request them to leave a review on your website or Google My Business Page. You can also invite them to share a post or story on social media platforms and tag you.
Additionally, you can reach out to experts to review your products or services. Give away free samples and sessions. You may connect with them on live videos/stories to discuss your product's potential benefits.
As your reviews and testimonials increase, so will the trust of people. If potential consumers trust your brand, they'll make a purchase. This is, by far, one of the best modes to improve the authority of your brand as well.

11. Use Location-Based SEO for Local Businesses

If you have a healthcare service with a local branch, you can use location-based SEO to reach more people.
Geotagging on social media or using location-based SEO strategies is the best way to promote healthcare businesses with a physical location. You can receive more traffic on your website by using location-specific keywords.
If an individual searches for healthcare practice in a region, google maps is the top result. This data is collected from Google My Business. Hence, it's essential to list your healthcare business with specific keywords. You must have the correct address and contact info on Google My Business. The platform can also help you generate more traffic and click. This directs relevant traffic to your business. Hence, it enables you to generate more sales.
Even when using PPC or Facebook ads, you can set specific geographical locations in the demographics. Additionally, you may use location-specific keywords.

Related : What is Google My Business?

12. Use AI and Analytics

Whenever you use online marketing for your business, it is essential to have analytical tools. These monitor activity and recommend improvements wherever possible. Google Analytics is among the best tools to monitor your website traffic.
You can also analyze other useful data like the bounce rate or other consumer behavior. You can make changes only when you understand your visitors better.
Analytics is also essential for optimizing your website and marketing campaigns periodically. This allows you to gain more out of your ad spend.
AI and bots can help answer basic questions and redirect visitors to common FAQs. Hence, if you are a small business or starting, you don't need an extensive customer care team.
The bot can collect data and create tickets to be resolved by human intervention. These are great for interacting with visitors on your website.
Additionally, they often resolve the most basic queries. Of course, you must have specific content about your product/services already published.

Best Healthcare Ecommerce Marketing Tools

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1. Ahrefs

You may not be an SEO or tech wizard, and your website can still rank high on Google search. You can use tools like Ahrefs to identify keywords. It helps in the competitor analysis and finding content trends.
The tool is perfect for analyzing digital marketing strategies. It helps in understanding your target audience better. Insights from the tool are not only helpful for SEO purposes but also for brand positioning.
You can get tons of market data on Ahrefs, which you can use to improve your marketing and promotions. The tool helps audit your website. You can check its ranking against competitors.

2. Improvely

Improvely is a conversion tracking tool available online. You can use it to improve your online marketing strategy. It easily detects click fraud. It helps in analyzing, tracking, testing, and optimizing your online marketing campaigns.
Imrpovely also helps you check the multiple traffic sources. These include paid search, organic, or social media. As you watch your marketing campaigns, you can avoid unnecessary spending. This allows better utilization of your marketing budget.

3. Google Ads

Google Ads is among the most popular tools. Digital marketers use it for PPC advertising. If you run a healthcare business, you need to run paid ads.
Google Ads helps you with the same. You can log in with a Gmail account.
Further, the tool allows you to create campaigns and ads. These may be for specific target audiences using specific keywords and ad content.
You can check the ad and campaign performance and optimize ads to have reduced CPC and CPA. Different types of Google ads are available. You can pick the ones most suitable for your business.

Related : Google Ads Certifications

4. ActiveCampaign Workflow

ActiveCampaign allows you to automate your email marketing. This means you do not need to manually send email sales letters and promotional emails to your list. You can simply schedule all emails, and ActiveCampaign will do the rest for you.
Additionally, the tool offers workflow management solutions. It helps you plan upselling options and retarget abandoned carts. The software automates business processes.
These are otherwise manual, so it saves both time as well as effort. It personalizes the marketing efforts according to customers. This increases the chance that they hop back in to complete transactions.

5. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the social media partner for your business. It helps in building brand awareness using different social media platforms.
Sprout Social drives traffic to your online healthcare store. It also generates leads for the business. You can monitor your social media handles using social media management tools.
Additionally, measure campaign success and even engage with the audience using Sprout Social. In short, it's a one-stop destination for all your social media needs.
Using the management tool, you can also plan and schedule your social media content. You can hence, streamline content and engagement across social platforms.

Healthcare Ecommerce Marketing FAQs

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1. Where Can I Promote My Online Healthcare Business and Website Apart from Ads?

You can use social media to promote your online healthcare business. Additionally, there are medical forums and discussion forums. Here, community engagement can help in building brand awareness.
Another way of promotion is getting sponsored posts on popular healthcare blogs.

2. What Are Some Social Media Tips for Healthcare Business Marketing?

Social media is a helpful tool to promote your healthcare business. You can create business profiles on major social media platforms.
Some of the best ways to post on social media include -

• General health and wellness tips
• Benefits of your product (make sure you do not step on false medical claims)
• Instagram reels and stories offer high engagement and views.
• Videos about your brand, product, and its benefits
• Regular engagement with followers in the comments section
• Polls and contests

3. How Big Is the Healthcare Ecommerce Industry?

With increasing online retail, the healthcare ecommerce industry has seen a significant boom in the past few years. Due to an increase in disposable income and improved lifestyle, the demand for healthcare products is increasing.
At 17% CAGR, by 2025, the healthcare ecommerce industry will probably reach $643.07 billion.

4. Which Ecommerce Platforms Can I Use for Marketing Healthcare Products Besides My Website?

Health and beauty are popular sections on most ecommerce platforms. You can sell your products using ecommerce partners. Pick from Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Instagram Store, or Facebook.
Depending on your location and target geographical location, you may choose popular platforms. This will depend on what's most suitable for your business.
If you wish to heave a successful healthcare ecommerce business, you need to implement these tips at the earliest.
Your brand might not become popular overnight. Your social posts may not go viral every day. Yet, with each step, you inch forward towards success.