We call Inbound Marketing the set of techniques used to attract people and convert them into customers, thus ensuring an increase in the number of sales. Inbound Marketing has been used in several sectors, including the health sector.
Unlike traditional marketing, this technique consists of using content marketing through websites, in addition to the use of strategies in social networks. Inbound Marketing uses the practice of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a technique that aims to achieve a good positioning of your website pages on Google, thus allowing organic traffic to be generated for authority content.
Before we continue, we need to ask: Do you already know our system Ninsaúde Apolo for health clinics? The health software Ninsaúde Apolo has an agile and complete schedule, personalized electronic medical records for each specialty, and with legal validity, teleconsultation, financial control, and much more. Schedule a demo or try the Ninsaúde Apolo clinic's software right now!
Before we talk about the stages of Inbound Marketing, it is necessary to understand a little better what it is to have authority on the internet, after all, Inbound Marketing is based on the relationships of your online content. If you produce quality content, you automatically generate authority.
Here on the blog, we have already given some tips on how to attract patients through digital content, so if you haven't seen it yet, we recommend reading the article. In summary, attracting patients with digital content is, in addition to maintaining an active blog or website, producing content that can somehow help the patient. Therefore, this content must be of quality, and you must take into account within your specialty, which subjects are most sought after by lay people, with the aim of not only helping them but also that they will find out who you are or where your clinic is. In this way, it is possible to create a bond with that person even before he or she schedules an appointment, and when this is necessary, it is your clinic that she will turn to.
Regardless of whether you have a multi-professional clinic or a single specialty practice, being on the internet and showing who you are is extremely important. Here are some ways and places on the internet where you can bond with your audience:
- Facebook: Create a page to promote your business on this social network, it is possible to get followers and interact with them through creative posts that cover subjects in your area of expertise. In addition, through your Facebook page, you can include the opening hours of the clinic, phone number, and even insert a link to schedule online.
- Instagram: in this social network the focus is on images but after some updates made to the platform, Instagram content creators have also invested in videos, something very similar to TikTok, however here called Reels. Both images and videos can be used to give quick tips and better illustrate the results of certain treatments. In addition, just like on Facebook, on Instagram it is also possible to insert an online booking link, and phone number, among other information that will help the patient to find your clinic more easily.
- Youtube: Youtube has become a large video platform used for the dissemination of business content, and in the area of health it has not been different. As a successful case, we can highlight Dr. Dráuzio Varella, who started a YouTube channel in 2011 that today has almost 1.5 million subscribers. His channel is described as “the biggest health channel in Brazil” where he addresses subjects ranging from colds to social issues. To stay on top of some tips on the subject, check out our article "Youtube for health professionals: learn how to get started".
- TikTok: with the popularization of this application, many professionals from different areas have made use of it, whether to give tips on their area of expertise or even publicize their work. With TikTok, it is possible to record short videos (up to 3 minutes long), where the user can insert music, visual and audio effects, as well as different filters, among other features. But attention, it is necessary to pay attention to the details so that it does not harm your profession. To learn more, we recommend reading the article "Tiktok for doctors: know the restrictions".
- Website/Blog: By creating a website it is possible to better build the visual identity of your clinic and you can also add other information that on social networks will not always be quickly visible to the patient, such as the services offered, clinical staff, agreements, and partners, in addition to the online scheduling already mentioned above. The blog is also essential, as through it you can create more descriptive content that patients will certainly be looking for. It can be integrated into the clinic's website, and whenever you have a new post, you can share the link on your social networks to attract more readers.
It is always important to remember that when it comes to patient-oriented content, whether through a blog or social networks, such information cannot be used for any type of consultancy, being restricted to information only.
Many patients will be able to send you private messages on social networks or even through the comments field on your blog to resolve any questions that should be answered in the office. In these cases, it is important to be flexible, know how to deal with this type of contact, and emphasize that each case is different and that a consultation is necessary to better understand what is happening at that moment, in addition to making it clear that self-medication should also be avoided.
Steps of Inbound Marketing
The Inbound Marketing strategy is divided into 4 stages, and they form what we call a sales funnel. Also, within the system for Ninsaúde Apolo clinics, it is possible to organize the contacts of this funnel through the tool known as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which we call CRM Clinic Apolo here. The funnel consists of the relationship stages that are generated through your content marketing, and to better understand this process, let's analyze the stages.
Attraction
This step is the beginning of everything, here as the name suggests you will attract contacts. These contacts are your blog readers or social network followers. In general, if they are not already your customers, this type of person will come to you looking for information about symptoms, diseases, or procedures they wish to perform.
At this stage, it is also essential to use the SEO that we mentioned at the beginning of this article. Therefore, it is important to insert keywords with a certain frequency in your texts, which will be the terms that will serve as "bait" and at the same time will bring authority to your content. It is also important to create very complete posts that capture the reader's attention, because the more relevant your content is, the more Google will recommend it.
Conversion
After attracting your visitors, it's time to convert them into leads. In the field of marketing, every business opportunity that shows interest in a product or service is called a lead. The lead is your contact, and through this contact, you aim to make a sale. To gain access to the contact, he must take one more "bait", the bait of digital triggers. Through these triggers, the visitor will be informing you how to find him, either through a phone number or email address.
For example, you can offer an e-book on your website, and to have access to it, it will be necessary for the interested person to fill out a form with his data. This data may be used for further contact. You can also create a booking interest form, and by filling it out, the future patient will already be allowing you to get in touch to make an appointment. In addition, you will still be able to use banners, and Google Ads ads, among other triggers.
Relationship
After getting some contacts, the time has come when you will work on your relationship with them. The relationship stage will be essential to gain the trust of these future customers, therefore it is necessary to use your contact wisely in order not to lose them. Therefore, avoid spamming and sending messages with a high frequency, as this may cause discomfort on the part of the recipient. It is also important that the content you submit is of as high a quality as the ones that caught your site visitor's attention.
One of the tools that you will be able to use in this step, is the email marketing tool. If you are a user of the system for Ninsaúde Apolo clinics, you can use the e-mail marketing that is part of the system. With this tool, it is possible to create different email templates and these can be sent on specific dates, according to what the user chooses. For this, it is enough that the contacts are registered in the base of the system.
TIP: Within the medical software Ninsaúde Apolo there is the possibility of creating groups of patients. You can register your external contacts as if they were patients and insert them into a group called "Contacts that have not yet been scheduled". When scheduling the sending of an email marketing, it is possible to insert filters by group, which allows you to send certain emails only to people from that group you created, that is, patients who have never been treated at your clinic.
Results analysis
The last stage of Inbound Marketing concerns the monitoring of data and indicators. Monitoring metrics is essential in any marketing campaign, so it is possible to evaluate its effectiveness and analyze whether the strategy being followed is the best option.
If you use a CRM tool like the one mentioned above, present in the system for Ninsaúde Apolo clinics, you can follow these metrics through tags, graphs, and reports. For this, you need to create sales funnels and establish steps to enter deals. Another way to analyze the data is using the help of Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Google tools help you find out a lot of important information, such as time spent by users on your site and the number of times they returned; the number of visits to the site in a given period; the number of impressions and clicks; search traffic, i.e. what people were looking for when they found your site; among others.
How to use CRM Clinic Apolo in your clinic's Inbound Marketing?
In general, the CRM tool is used for direct sales, that is: there is interest in a product or service, the interested party is contacted, there is a negotiation and finally the closing or decline of the deal. On the other hand, as we are talking about a marketing campaign, you can use the CRM to organize the contacts of people who were reached by your campaign, which does not mean that they are interested in a purchase (at least at first). Therefore, you will have to work very well on the relationship with this type of contact until you awaken their real interest.
How does CRM Clinic Apolo work?
When using this tool, to organize your contacts, you must create a funnel for each type of sale or campaign, and inside the funnel, you should add steps. The steps in question are not necessarily like the ones mentioned in this article (attraction, conversion, relationship, and analysis), but steps that correspond to the marketing campaign you are creating at that moment.
Within each step, deals will be added, that is, the people who were attracted by the content of your blog, website, or social network, and you will work on the relationship with them so that there is an attempt at a sale in the future. Therefore, in each deal created, there must be a contact (name, phone, and e-mail). These deals will be grouped in columns, thus obeying a standard also present in other CRM systems on the market, as progress is made in the relationship phase, you can drag this deal into the column for the next step.
In the example above we have a funnel called Botox Instagram Campaign, where several steps were created: Interested, Proposal sent, Declined and Appointment scheduled. The contact cards that appear in the columns of each step are the deals. Deals are created based on the interest of a contact, and if this contact is a patient already registered in the Apolo system, you will be able to select it directly from your software database.
Remembering that this is just an example of how you can use the CRM tool in Inbound Marketing because the steps and the funnel itself are created according to the interests of the clinic, fully customizable. To learn more about the tool, check out our article CRM Clinic: Apolo Funnel for Clinics and Offices.
So, did you like the tips? Keep following the blog for more content like this. Are you a healthcare professional but still don't use management software? Get to know the system for Ninsaude Apolo clinics.