the inbound lead generation guide for healthcare marketers

Inbound lead conversion drives better quality leads as you build trust between your healthcare organization and prospective patients. Driving this type of engagement takes dedication and will establish a strong stream of loyal patients for your healthcare organization. Creating opportunities to discover your brand, writing strong calls-to-action (CTAs), and establishing effective channels to nurture the patient journey, allow you to create an inbound lead-generation machine that grows your patient base. 

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1. Getting Discovered

To begin the inbound journey, you must ensure your healthcare organization is top of mind when care is needed. Position your organization as the expert on the topic your audience needs with compelling content that drives engagement. 

Audience Segmentation

The inbound journey starts with knowing your patient audience. Divide your patient base into segments by defining personalized healthcare needs and journeys. Research what differentiates each segment regarding their pain points, their typical healthcare interactions, and how they make buying decisions. This step is critical to resonate with your patients and drive conversion and engagement. Primarily because if you don’t have specific segments for your consumers with different interests, you are likely to mistakenly send them content that doesn’t relate to their needs. For example, the healthcare needs and pain points of a 25-year-old female patient will look entirely disparate from that of a 60-year-old male patient.

Content that Resonates

Once you’ve broken down your patient base into segments, it’s time to create content for each target audience. The key to crafting impactful content is personalization. Ensuring each segment gets educational information and care reminders relevant to their specific needs is vital. For example, create campaigns for maternity patients on navigating the next nine months, including information on appointments they should schedule and where to receive care when needed. Research the demographics most likely to skip their annual wellness exam and send targeted campaigns with educational copy that persuades them to come in this year.

The most impactful way to reach individuals with personalized content is through the channels they engage with most often, specifically email and SMS. Cured’s platform includes 80+ pre-built curations, including content unique to every patient persona.

Of course, even the most personalized content becomes meaningless if it’s not inspiring action. All content on your website and email campaigns must include a persuasive CTA to drive the patient journey.‍

Inspire Action

Think of CTA’s as a mini billboard to drive patients to your healthcare organization. Include CTA’s in your email campaigns that point patients to landing pages with more educational information and opportunities to take action. As with your email campaigns, build landing pages with tailored copy specific to the patient segment you will be driving to it. Your patients must trust your organization as a resource for their care. Build trust by ensuring your patients feel seen and understood. Include examples of successful patient experiences, educational content for various personas, and more detailed information on your healthcare services. Use these landing pages to assure your patients that whatever their care needs may be, you have a tailored solution.

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2. Driving Conversion

The more tailored the content and straightforward the CTA, the more engagement you will drive. But how do you continue the journey once a patient is ready to take action?

Collecting Data

Once you have built effective content and landing pages that inspire action amongst your current and potential patients, the next step is gathering their contact information. The best way to achieve this goal is to utilize web forms. Forms can be included on landing pages, throughout your website, or directly linked to CTA’s within an email campaign. Forms are a simple way to gather contact information to schedule a care appointment or request more information. They simplify conversion by allowing patients to actively share their data and pursue next steps.

Building multiple forms that correlate to various interest levels is also essential. Some patients may want to schedule a visit or enroll as a new member. Others may only be open to joining a mailing list, requesting more information, or downloading resources.

Triggered Follow-ups

Once a form is submitted, triggering email or SMS follow-ups is vital to assure your new or returning patient that you have received their information and request. Depending on the type of form completed, this may look like a confirmation email, a reminder for an appointment or next step, or simply more information on your services. Another triggered follow-up option is to send a contact into a nurture campaign. The nurture campaign allows for continued relationship building with interested contacts who have yet to convert to active patients fully.

Of course, these steps are easier said than done. It often requires significant resources from other teams in your organization who are already shorthanded to build landing pages and forms. Cured’s digital marketing platform includes an easy-to-use landing page and form builder explicitly designed to simplify this process. This landing page builder empowers healthcare marketers to take matters into their own hands and quickly create pages and forms that drive revenue. 

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3. Nurture the Journey

Once your inbound lead is qualified, it’s vital to encourage next steps with continued personalized interactions. These interactions will be most effective on the digital channels your patient base finds most familiar, specifically email and SMS.

Inbound to Outbound

The inbound leads you generate should fuel your outbound motion. Including these contacts in your outbound marketing is crucial to encourage them to act and solidify your organization as their healthcare provider of choice. If they signed up as a member or expressed interest but haven’t yet scheduled an appointment, remind them of their interest and give them more opportunities to take action. Create downloadable content with quick blurbs on your services and your organization's impact on patient lives. Send a brief text wishing them a happy summer with tips to stay healthy.

Integrating your outbound call center into your lead generation efforts accelerates the conversion of new leads. Equip them with a script that drives the same CTAs you include in outbound email and SMS campaigns. Joining the inbound and outbound motions will drive mutual success for the call center and marketing team while educating and engaging your prospective patients.

Engagement Best Practices

Follow established best practices for all your campaigns to drive better conversion and engagement. Be sure to write email subject lines encouraging more opens, follow all HIPAA requirements in your content, and have clear options to opt out. Include educational material in your outbound campaigns to drive more engagement and build trust for your organization. Need help figuring out where to start? Check out our resource page for more details on healthcare digital marketing best practices.

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4. Create Loyalty

As you build a queue of qualified inbound leads, the goal shifts to building loyalty that keeps patients returning to your healthcare organization for all future care.

Tailored Journeys

The best way to develop a loyal patient base is to tailor each patient's journey according to their needs. Send a personalized email on patient birthdays or for annual wellness reminders. Make sure to send additional educational content that is specific to each segment. Track what content performs the best with different segments and share repurposed or updated versions often. Ensure that your segments are targeted precisely - if left too broad, it is hard to generate a personalized experience. Check out our extensive library of pre-built Curations within the Cured platform, built specifically to drive patient retention and loyalty. Experiment with different messaging and highlights to see what resonates with your different segments and keeps them coming back.

Loyalty Campaigns

Monthly newsletter campaigns, updates on your healthcare services, or reminders for health screening appointments are all great ways to generate loyalty. If you’re having trouble creating engaging outbound content for your patient base, check out Cured’s healthcare digital marketing calendar. It includes relevant dates and themes that align with the patient journey to create an unforgettable digital marketing experience.

Mastering inbound lead generation allows you discover, convert, nurture and retain your patient population, continuously. Connecting audience segments to the right content and strategy will rapidly grow your patient base and keep them coming back to your organization whenever care is needed. Incorporate these tools into your inbound strategy to see patient loyalty and return on marketing investment takeoff. 🚀

Flexible web forms and landing pages with pre-built campaigns simplify inbound lead generation for healthcare.

‍Looking for your inbound lead generation to take off? 

‍Schedule a personalized demo of the Cured platform today.

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