Whether you’re in the medical manufacturing sector or want to kickstart your practice, it’s essential to generate healthcare leads. By definition, a sales lead is a potential customer interested in your product or service.
To generate healthcare sales leads, you’ll need to put yourself out there and create a solid online presence. You can do this by ensuring that your website is optimized for search engine ranking. Moreover, using social media to connect with potential customers and leveraging targeted content marketing strategies can help generate healthcare leads.
You can also attend trade shows and industry events or work with a lead generation agency. Below, the guide contains tips on how to generate healthcare leads.
6 Ways to Generate Healthcare Leads
Both B2B and B2C lead generation strategies require you to get in front of the right audience at the right time with the right message. Here are some tips on how to generate healthcare leads:
Optimize Your Website
Research shows that 80% of patients use the Internet to search for health-related concerns. More importantly, three out of four people search online to find a doctor or medical care.
Therefore, it’s integral for businesses in the health and medical industries to create a website that’s user-friendly and optimized for the web. Here are a few things to consider when gauging the usefulness of your website for generating healthcare leads:
- Search Engine Visibility: It’s imperative that your website can be easily found by patients searching for providers or services online. Make sure to do your keyword research and utilize SEO best practices.
- Navigation: How easy is your website to navigate? Patients should be able to find what they’re looking for without any trouble.
- Content: The content on your website should be well-written, accurate, and up-to-date. For instance, your contact details should be available on every page. Plus, these details should be up-to-date.
- Responsiveness: In today’s mobile world, your website must be responsive on mobile phones. It must load quickly and have a mobile-friendly layout.
Create Customer Profiles
Once your website is ready for lead generation, start creating Ideal Customer Profiles. An ICP is a semi-fictional representation of your perfect customer based on market research and accurate data.
With a clear picture of your ICP, you’ll be able to target your marketing efforts better and generate healthcare leads that are more likely to convert into customers.
More importantly, it will help you segment your TAM (total addressable market) in the medical industry. For example, suppose you’re a medical company that manufactures artificial hips.
In that case, you know that your ICP would be hospitals and other healthcare facilities that perform hip replacement surgery.
Below are some factors to consider when creating an Ideal Customer Profile in the health industry:
- Location: Are there any geographic restrictions? For instance, if you’re a hospital in the United States, you’re not going to generate healthcare leads in Canada. Complying with healthcare guidelines from regulatory authorities is vital in the medical industry.
- Type of Facility: What type of facility is your ICP? Is it a hospital, nursing home, rehabilitation center, or home health agency?
- Annual Revenue: What’s the facility’s annual revenue? Will they be able to afford your solution?
- Decision-Makers: Who are the decision-makers at the facility? For example, is it the administrator, director of nursing, or chief financial officer?
By making a customer profile, you can also better understand the journey your prospects take to become paying customers.
You may also be interested in reading our recent article on SaaS Lead Generation techniques.
Use Social Media
In this day and age, social media should be a key component of any healthcare lead generation strategy. Social media platforms present an excellent opportunity to connect with potential customers and create relationships that can lead to sales.
A study showed that 57% of consumers reported a hospital’s social media presence influencing their choice. Meanwhile, 81% of patients took social media presence as an indication that the hospital offers state-of-the-art technology. Likewise, the same study showed that 12.5% of healthcare organizations attract new patients through social media.
Social media also allows you to share valuable content that can educate your audience and position you as a thought leader in the healthcare industry. Furthermore, using social media for lead generation in healthcare can help you target a specific audience.
For example, LinkedIn is an excellent platform for connecting with decision-makers in the healthcare industry. You can also use Facebook and Twitter to engage with potential customers and build relationships.
Generate Healthcare Leads Through Referrals
A Heinz report showed that organizations that have referral programs have 71% higher conversion rates. Referrals are one of the best ways to generate healthcare leads since they come from a trusted source.
You can ask your current customers to refer you to their colleagues, business partners, or other contacts in the healthcare industry. You can also offer incentives for referrals, such as discounts or freebies. Moreover, you can partner with other companies in the healthcare industry that complement your products or services.
For example, if you’re a hospital that provides diagnostic services, you can partner with a laboratory that offers blood tests. In this way, you can generate leads by referrals while providing added value to your customers.
You may also be interested in reading our recent article on lead generation for hotels and hospitality industry.
Cold Calling
Cold calling is one of those traditional lead generation strategies still effective today. When done correctly, cold calling can help you connect with potential customers, establish rapport, and eventually close a sale.
However, you need to be careful when cold calling since you might irritate your prospects if you’re not prepared. To prevent this, you must research your list of contacts thoroughly. You need to know who you’re going to contact, their needs, and how your products or services can help them.
Secondly, prepare your script. Having a script will help you stay on track and prevent rambling. However, keep in mind that you want to sound natural and conversational.
Last but not least, be prepared for objections. Objections are a normal part of the sales process, so don’t take them personally. Instead, have answers ready for them.
If this sounds like too much of a hassle, cold calling services can be an ideal alternative.
For instance, Leads At Scale is a remarkable lead generation service that generates leads for a wide range of industries and schedules appointments to assist in a company’s growth process.
Use Paid Advertising
The global advertising expenditure of the healthcare industry has increased significantly since 2018, with a 4.3% rise in 2021. On average, it costs around $286 to generate a single healthcare lead, with the minimum expenditure being $36.
One of the significant lead generation challenges is that it can be difficult to track the results of your campaigns. Fortunately, with paid advertising, you can track how many people have seen or clicked on your ad and calculate your return on investment (ROI).
Paid advertising is also a great way to generate leads quickly. You can use platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads to target potential customers in the healthcare industry.
Another benefit of paid advertising is that you can target a specific audience. For example, if you offer at-home healthcare services, you can target people who live in a certain area or have searched for related keywords on Google.
Conclusion
The healthcare and medical industries are complex, so it’s important to use the right lead generation strategies to target your ideal clients. When choosing the right strategy for medium for generating healthcare leads, you should consider your budget, target audience, and goals.
The lead generation methods mentioned above — referrals, cold calling, paid advertising, and others — are all effective ways to generate healthcare leads. But again, what’s ideal for you will depend on your target customers and the product or service you offer.
