B2B digital advertising spending in the U.S. will reach $18.3 billion in 2024 — a 14.9% increase from 2023 and will hit $23 billion by 2026.
Healthcare advertising is essential for gaining exposure to a B2B audience because most prospects research online before contacting sales. Online ads help you reach these people early in the buyer journey, giving you more time to build trust.
However, healthcare advertising involves various components, and many SaaS companies struggle to maximize the impact of their healthcare advertising campaigns. This article shows how to create, distribute, and track your online ad campaigns to support your healthcare digital marketing strategy.
Healthcare software purchases are often approved at the system level and by multiple decision-makers. The process’s regimented nature is unique to the healthcare software field, and a healthcare digital marketing strategy must address its complexity.
Healthcare B2B marketers often must navigate buying committees of eight or more members. Meanwhile, HubSpot found that it takes eight touches per prospect to close a deal, and each touch must address a contact’s specific concerns and priorities.
As such, you must develop an in-depth understanding of each buying team member before launching your healthcare advertising initiatives. What are the roles of the specific contacts in the buying committees? What pain points does your solution solve, and how can you address the audience’s concerns?
First, define distinct targets for your healthcare advertising campaigns — whether you’re trying to reach a physician who owns a practice, an executive at a hospital system, or a medical office manager. Then, create one or more buyer personas, craft messaging to address their needs, and tailor your campaign strategy to reach them.
While software demonstration is an essential tool for converting leads in healthcare digital marketing, you should not push a demo as soon as prospects click on an ad or sign up for your email list.
Most B2B technology buyers need time to research and learn about a solution before contacting sales. Additionally, those in the healthcare industry must consider various compliance and regulatory requirements while balancing demands from multiple internal stakeholders within a complex organization.
Your healthcare advertising strategy should accommodate the lengthy sales cycle and deliver value throughout the buyer’s journey to keep prospects engaged before offering a demo. Also, consider the non-linear nature of the purchasing journey and how different contacts may be at various stages of the customer lifecycle at any moment.
Healthcare advertising is just one piece of the larger digital healthcare marketing puzzle. What happens after a prospect clicks on an ad? If you give a healthcare tech buyer ample time to move through the purchasing journey, you must keep them engaged so they’ll think of you when they make purchase decisions.
Nurture funnels help you stay relevant and top of mind throughout the long sales cycle. Lead nurturing is vital to building trust with people who see your ad, learn about your brand, and start to discover how your solution may help them.
The process begins right after prospects click on your ad and reach a landing page tailored to the audience segment, with content relating to the ad’s messaging. You may use a content offer to capture their information and send an email sequence over the next few weeks to tell them about your brand and solution.
The landing page is critical. The customer journey might hit a dead end if your ad targets the right people with effective messaging but sends prospects to a landing page that lacks focus or doesn’t ask them to take the next step (e.g., sign up for a content offer.
Digital advertising generates a lot of data. Social media platforms, search engines, and other applications offer a wealth of insights into how your ads perform, who saw them, and when they are viewed and clicked. However, it isn’t enough to track any number — some metrics aren’t relevant, while others may lead you down the wrong path.
For example, some advertisers assume their campaigns perform well because they get a lot of landing page traffic. However, they could be wasting their advertising budget if the ads aren’t attracting the right people who would engage with the brand and become customers!
You can’t determine a campaign's success if you don't know how much traffic converts to high-quality leads. Your messaging could have attracted an audience that isn’t interested in your solution or able to influence the decision-making process.
Track the right metrics (e.g., campaign conversion rate) to gauge the success of your healthcare advertising campaigns. Besides validating that you’re driving high-quality traffic, you must understand what subsequent actions these visitors take, whether they become customers, and how profitable those relationships are.
Successful healthcare advertising campaigns have many nuances. They must appeal to the right audience and attract them to your website. Healthcare software buyers are discerning, well-educated, and pressed for time, so your messaging must address their priorities to earn the clicks.
However, an effective ad campaign is just the beginning. Your healthcare digital marketing strategy must address the entire customer journey to capture leads, nurture high-quality prospects, and convert them into customers.
An experienced healthcare advertising agency can help you implement an effective healthcare advertising strategy and complement it with a holistic marketing plan. It can also support your healthcare content marketing effort to build trust and nurture relationships with the leads you attract through your ad campaigns.
At Spot On, we help healthcare SaaS companies manage all the elements of their digital advertising strategy to drive traffic and convert leads. Schedule a time to talk with an expert team member and see how we can help you maximize your advertising dollars.
