Guide to Creating Healthcare Ads | Digitalis Medical

David Sanchez RN
6 min readAug 3, 2021

--

Experts in digital marketing estimate that Americans are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day. If they don’t interest them, they tend to be ignored.

Advertising campaigns that catch the eye of viewers are a labor of love for companies.

Healthcare marketing is all about trust building and personalizing patient experiences. Effective healthcare ads will help your practice compete with the biggest providers in the industry.

How do you create an effective healthcare advertising campaign that converts customers faster than your competitors?

These healthcare advertising tips can help you boost your marketing:

The Message

Communicating the right message is essential for any content creation task. This includes advertising.

Attention to detail is key. Be sure to have all information to link your campaigns.

This video advertisement by Vanquish Digital Headache delivers a clear and compelling message about digital headache in just a minute:

Source: Vanquish Digital Headache

Cigna’s TV Doctors of America advertisement featured Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H”) Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy”) Lisa Edelstein (“House”) Donald Faison (“Scrubs”) at fictional hospitals.

Source: Advertising Research Foundation

Alda, a physician, is featured in the ad. She giggles and admits she doesn’t know much about surgical procedures.

Quantitative testing revealed that 40% of viewers saw the ad and wanted to schedule an appointment with a doctor. Cigna was also considered a potential provider of health insurance.

Focal Point

The central point is an element that communicates the main message. You can use design principles like color, size, and direction to highlight your focal point.

This healthcare advertisement won AstraZeneca a prize for its Brilique brand. The advertisement uses a boxing glove-shaped heart image to symbolize the fight for life of those suffering from acute coronary syndrome.

Source: Ad for AstraZeneca’s Brilique brand by Sentrix Health Communications

Color Psychology

Colors can have a profound effect on emotions, perception, and mood.

For instance, blue is associated to professionalism, trust and credibility. It also represents calm, focus and reliability.

These are the characteristics expected of every healthcare organization. Blue is a popular choice for healthcare ads.

Source: John Hopkins Medicine
Source: Ad by Olivia Hospital & Clinic published at West Central Tribune

Typographic Composition

You can use Design text as an image. Numbers and text can communicate a message and improve visibility for your ad.

Typographic composition is the deliberate use of text to tell stories. Typographic composition can be used to describe a number of concepts, including direction, size and shape, as well as space.

Source: Oscar

Use a powerful quote

Use quotes in your ads to encourage people to share them via social media. Choose relevant quotes that you feel are worth sharing with your audience.

Source: Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center

Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center developed a campaign to increase awareness about cancer. It was centered around the powerful slogan “Right now you may have cancer.” Anyone with cancer will find the powerful tool “You Have Us” useful.

Get involved

Engaging with the right call-to-action can improve engagement. This will enable you to engage with your audience and encourage them to click your link.

You can use words like “discover”, “learn more,” or “apply” to make your point. It is also possible to be more direct with phrases such as “Set up an appointment” or “Book consultation”.

Source: Concord Hospital

Description of your offer

Using a simple description of your offer is a great way to increase conversions.

Source: Aspire MedSpa & Beauty Bar

Top Techniques in Creating Facebook Ads for Healthcare

If you’d like to improve your healthcare Facebook ads, here are a few tips:

Set your goals

After creating your ad account, the first step to making your Facebook campaign more effective is setting your digital marketing goals.

Healthcare providers have three options to choose from when defining their objectives:

  • Awareness: Your primary goal is to let potential patients know all about your practice or healthcare organization.
  • Consideration: Get more patients to look at your health systems.
  • Conversion: Inspire potential customers to act; for many healthcare professionals, this would be scheduling an appointment.

Select the Right Demographic

When creating their Facebook advertising strategy, one of the biggest mistakes healthcare professionals make is not matching their services to known demographics.

Facebook provides a variety of tools for digital marketers to help them pinpoint the demographics they are looking for. These demographics are:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Life Stage
  • Interests

You can also add exclusions that you feel will not work with your targeted Facebook ads.

HIPAA regulations prohibit healthcare advertising professionals from publishing information about patients to target and retarget ads via Facebook. However, you can use the “lookalike” feature to create audiences that are similar in size to your audience.

If you want to create awareness for your digital marketing campaign, lookalike audiences can be very helpful.

Ad Placements

In the “Placements” section, you can select where to place your ad for internet users to see. These are:

  • Facebook/Instagram feed
  • Marketplace
  • Video feeds
  • Explore page
  • Stories for Facebook/Instagram

Facebook gives you the option to choose from any one of several placement options. Remember that not all ads will look great on every platform. If you find that your target market is not being reached by one of these platforms, you can consider having it removed.

Consider Using Video Ads and GIFs

Videos are an excellent way to reach people and build custom audiences faster. HubSpot estimates that 86% of video marketers believe videos are the best way to generate leads . You can reach new audiences and deliver ads faster if you optimize your video for the right platforms.

You can use animated GIFs to make your posts more engaging if you aren’t convinced yet about video. Remember that Facebook users are more inclined to view animated or moving images than still images.

Healthcare marketing requires that you be as engaging as possible to attract new and existing customers to your products.

Include a Call to Action (CTA)

While it might not seem obvious, a CTA with direct links to your website will increase the likelihood of potential clients reaching out to you.

You can begin with messages like “Schedule a Appointment Today!” or similar messages in order to grab people’s attention and increase your conversion rate. These messages serve as signposts to tell users what they should be doing if they’re curious.

A Facebook ad without a CTA may confuse people and cause them to leave.

The right medical ads can get you the right customers

Advertisers and healthcare marketers need to design appealing designs that appeal to their target audience, while maintaining brand credibility. You can think outside the box to create something that will make your brand stand apart.

Advertising in the healthcare industry is tricky, which is why you need help from a healthcare marketing expert who knows how to capture your audience’s attention and emotions.

Originally published at https://digitalismedical.com on August 3, 2021.

--

--

No responses yet