6 EHR Marketing Tips to Increase Your Market Share

Transparency Market Research claims the digital health and medical market generated $196.3 billion in 2017. Better yet, they estimate annual revenues to reach $536.6 billion in 2025. Obviously, providers of electronic health and medical records services can look at this from one of two perspectives: An overly-saturated market with diminishing market shares, or an opportunity for explosive growth. Some may think perspective #2 is wishful thinking, but that isn’t the case. Implementing the right strategies will help you get noticed by health and medical professionals and allow your message to be heard over the chatter of competitors.

Here are a few of the tactics your EHR marketing strategy must include:

1. Zero in on your ideal customer

As you know, marketing is nothing without a clearly-defined ideal customer. And customer avatars – or buyer personas – are great tools for optimizing your focus. To create an effective customer avatar, your company needs to understand a few things about your ideal customer:

• What are your ideal customers’ goals?
• Pain points? Obstacles? Challenges?
• What are their responsibilities?
• Their demographics?
• Motivations?
• Roles?
• Relevant behavioral patterns?

For example, your customer avatars might include Private Practitioner Peter, Hospital Administrator Adam, or Clinician Chris. The idea here is that the more fully you understand these ideal customers, the more effectively you can create the content they desire, engage with them, solve their problems, and, ultimately, increase your own market share.

2. Clearly define the stages of your sales funnel

While important, creating customer avatars is only the first step. You must know what your sales funnel looks like and where your ideal customers are in the buying process. Map the buying process your current customers traveled. Consider the following stages:

• Awareness – Here, your ideal customer became aware they had a problem with health and medical records that needed to be solved. At this stage, you need to deliver them the information they need to better understand their challenge and identify the problem they need to solve.
• Consideration – Now your ideal customer understands the problem and is searching for possible solutions. You should offer them a variety of EHR options for eliminating the problem.
• Decision – Finally, your ideal customer has decided on how they wish to solve the problem. They are looking for more details on the available solutions. And this is where you position your EHR service or product as superior to the competition.

Providing your ideal customers with the right content at the right stage in the funnel will lead to better engagement and better sales.

3. Create relevant blog posts and high-quality content

Use your blog intentionally. HubSpot found that B2B companies who frequently blog generate more leads than those who do not. To use your blog intentionally, create content that speaks to ideal customers at different stages of your customer’s journey. In other words, deliver them the information relevant to the problems of each stage. Not only does this build trust, but it gives the impression that your Electronic Health Record (EHR) software company is the right company at the right time. And that increases the odds of conversion. Here are a couple of points to remember:

• Consistently post new and relevant content, at least twice every week
• Include calls-to-action (CTAs) in your content – encourage them to opt-in to your email lists or download more content

4. Keep informed of industry developments

The only thing that stays the same in the health and medical industry is that it’s always changing! By staying up-to-date on the latest developments, you help to position yourself as an authority. Answer the following:

• What are the market share statistics for the EHR niche?
• What are successful companies doing that you can implement or even do better?
• Who are the newcomers to the EHR industry?
• What are the newest technologies?
• Where will the EHR industry be in 5 years?

Arming yourself with these answers will help you build a more effective Content and Inbound Marketing Plan.

5. Take advantage of proven SEO tactics

Over 60% of marketers, according to HubSpot, recognize that search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to organic website traffic. Effective SEO can be a lot of work, but it can it also be the difference between stagnation and growth. Keyword optimization is one of the surest improvements you can make to your website and content for boosting your rank in search engines. Research the keyword phrases for which you wish to rank, and include them in your:

• Headlines and content
• Image names and captions
• Alt-tags
• Meta descriptions
• Page URLs

An optimized website will attract more traffic, which could mean more leads and sales.

6. Nurture your leads

Lead nurturing is all about upgrading leads to qualified leads, and qualified leads to satisfied customers. A series of automated emails has become the most effective way of nurturing leads. But it’s important that you divide your email list into the stages of the Buyer’s Journey. This helps to ensure you are creating enough relevant content for leads at every stage. Finally, find the right balance. You don’t want to overwhelm your leads and risk having them unsubscribe. Keep it simple. Share your latest blog posts, bring them up to speed on the latest relevant developments in the health and medical industry, and offer them news on your offers or discounts.

Summary

Being a good parent leads to raising good children. That’s one way to think about the strategies we’ve discussed: good ehr marketing practices leads to capturing a good market share. When you’ve put these strategies to work, you’ll inevitably generate more quality leads, which means your sales force will be better equipped to close more sales and improve your company’s share of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) software market. These strategies are a part of the Inbound Marketing Methodology. And we at Responsify have helped many marketing professionals develop and implement this proven approach. We’d be happy to spend some 1-on-1 time helping your Electronic Health Record (EHR) software company evaluate its assets, offering insights and suggestions, and guiding you in the right direction. Request your free strategy session now.