Welcome to the 2023 edition of the Healthcare Marketing Trends report! Throughout the past year, we’ve been keeping our finger on the pulse of the healthcare marketing world and polling practices to see how they approach the strategies, business operations, and marketing that helps them grow. We’ve compiled the research collected the past year into this guide so you can see what’s new, what’s working, and what’s changed over the course of the year.

First, we’ll look at what’s on the horizon for 2023.

ONE

Which digital marketing strategies

are practices focusing on in 2023?

T W O

Which traditional marketing strategies

are practices focusing on in 2023?

THREE

Which digital marketing strategies provided

the most value to practices in 2022?

FOUR

Which traditional marketing strategies

were the most valuable in 2022?

FIVE

How did practices utilize

social media in 2022?

S I X

Where did practices allocate

their marketing budget in 2022?

SEVEN

Did staffing challenges stop practices

from meeting their marketing goals in 2022?

EIGHT

What do practices plan

to do in the event of a recession?

When asked which strategies they planned to add in the new year, local search, reviews, new or updated websites, and SEO were the top answers. Over half of our respondents said they were already utilizing social media, which was the most utilized strategy by far.

INSIGHT

The majority of our respondents seem to recognize the importance of an updated website, with 46% already working on theirs and 30% planning to start. With this base established, local search and reviews seem to be the next focus when it comes to strategies that practices are starting for the first time in 2023. After an updated website, these two strategies are a natural next step in a marketing plan. This data suggests that the adoption of digital marketing strategies we saw in last year’s report has grown and expanded as more practices are adopting new strategies for the first time in 2023.

When asked which traditional marketing strategies were on their 2023 road map, the responses were fairly lukewarm when it came to more traditional and historically expensive campaigns like billboards and print ads.

INSIGHT

Healthcare continues to move away from print and billboard marketing, a continuation of the trends we saw last year. Though 35% of our respondents indicated they weren’t adding text or email in 2023, 65% are either already using or planning to start one of these strategies in the coming year. Email and text haven’t diminished in popularity since last year’s report, indicating that these technologies are still useful for the practices we polled. Whether that’s because they’re being used for marketing or more transactional things like patient reminders or review requests, it’s clear this technology is likely sticking around.

INSIGHT

When it comes to the digital marketing strategies that offered the biggest returns on time and monetary investment in 2022 for the practices we polled, local search, social media, websites, and reviews were ranked as the top four, respectively. With the exception of social media (which 54% of our respondents indicated they were already using), these were also the top strategies most practices indicated they were implementing in 2023.

Local search and social media added the most value for our respondents in 2022. While local search can often be a time consuming strategy to implement, it’s clear the investment is paying off. And with 39% of our respondents planning to implement this strategy in 2023, it’s clear that this will continue to be an important strategy going forward. Social media’s low cost of entry makes it easy for practices to implement – and it’s clear they’re seeing payoff from utilizing this strategy to reach patients both new and returning.

When it came to more traditional marketing strategies, texting and email came out on top, while print and other strategies (this includes traditional strategies such as billboards) were on the bottom.

INSIGHT

More traditional strategies like print marketing and billboards didn’t add much value for practices in 2022, and this combined with the majority of our respondents indicating that they weren’t doing and weren’t planning to implement these strategies for 2023 shows a clear decline in the more traditional strategies. However, text and email marketing clearly still have a place in healthcare marketing. For example, these forms of communication are often utilized to remind patients of their appointments as well as request reviews and feedback after their appointments. With 65% of respondents indicating they were either already using or planning to implement text or email marketing in 2023, it’s worth paying attention to how these technologies evolve in the coming year.

Since this was the top strategy that our practices said they were already utilizing going into 2023 at 54%, we wanted to dive into social media usage among our practices a bit more. The top networks most healthcare practices utilize? Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. When asked if they feel social media is an effective tool, 57% answered yes.

INSIGHT

While more than half of our respondents feel confident in their use of social media, 25% feel that it isn’t effective, and 18% aren’t sure. This answer tells us that there’s still a lot of confusion around the best way to use social media when it comes to healthcare, whether that’s what to post, when to post, or how to get more business from social media audiences.

We asked our respondents to tell us where they spent their budget in 2022. Digital marketing was the top priority for the year, with new software and technology and new equipment following up, respectively. Traditional marketing was listed as the lowest budgetary priority for the practices we polled.

INSIGHT

While new technology and digital marketing were the top priorities for most practices in 2022, traditional marketing was at the other end of the list for most of our respondents. Last year’s data showed that healthcare marketing was on the cusp of a digital revolution: 61% of practices said they didn’t intend to utilize billboards, 51% said they weren’t investing in direct mail advertising and 47% said print mail advertising was off the table for 2022. With these reduced costs, respondents could likely invest in other areas of their practices and redirect that budgetary spend to digital strategies.

When asked how staffing impacts their practice and their ability to meet their goals, nearly three-fourths of our respondents said they were impacted by staffing issues. We asked practices to tell us who at their organization was responsible for managing their marketing activities, and over 30% of our respondents have an employee splitting their time between marketing and front office or administrative tasks.

INSIGHT

With most practices facing staffing issues, having their employees split their time between office admin tasks and marketing activities is a good compromise. Front office and admin employees are incredibly important to the success of any business, however, and asking them to do both tasks successfully means that there’s a real need for technology and tools that can help cut down on the amount of work and time spent on marketing.

The potential for a recession has been in the news and on the minds of many people. We wanted to know what healthcare practices would do in the event of a recession. How do practices feel a recession would impact their revenue goals – and how would they adjust their marketing spend as a result?

INSIGHT

With the majority of our respondents indicating they would reduce spend on marketing activities due to a potential recession, the 23% of practices who indicated that they were planning to increase their investment into marketing have the right idea. In the event of a recession, slower business is not what you need in an already-slow economy. And, when 3 out of 4 of our practices already indicate that they face staffing shortages and 43% indicate they would have to cut staff in the event of a recession, the question of who will manage marketing activities becomes an even bigger issue.

If 77% of practices are considering or planning to cut back on marketing spending, the cost required to succeed both in terms of time and budget is lower than ever in the event of a recession.

Research and Data provided my MyAdvice. Please visit their website to learn more www.myadvice.com