Mobile Helps Health Marketers Engage With Patients

Nowadays, mobile devices play a huge part in our everyday lives, especially when it comes to our health. They are our companions, and our advisers, and its pure human communication that suffers the most from our shift to the digital space. But, according to results from a recent study, smart devices actually help us to become better patients.

Health care marketing and advertising agency Digitas Health has found that patients equipped with smartphones in the doctor’s office are 80% more likely to switch medications, and twice as likely to ask for medications produced by a particular brand. The study also reveals that websites are not the sole source of health-related information for patients, as 90% of people say they would be happy to use an app recommended by a doctor.

For healthcare marketers, these insights should mean only one thing: going mobile as soon as possible, marketer Rebecca Kirkham says in an article for Business2Community.

In today’s digital world, developing a responsive website and building a strong social media presence is essential, since the Internet allows marketers to reach patients where they are now becoming increasingly active.

Led by their hunger for information, patients are using their gadgets to get access to some. Marketers could facilitate their efforts by offering helpful content on websites, blogs, and social media, ensuring before that that it will be easy to find by mobile-equipped patients through SEO techniques.

Creating or buying apps that can help patients to research symptoms or find the nearest hospitals could be also of use, the writer adds. It’s also a good idea to join patient communities that let patients communicate with each other by creating service-line-specific groups to promote a specialist, spread the word about a particular service, and build loyalty among members.