The Difference an Expert Healthcare Marketing Agency Can Make

Why Choose a Healthcare Marketing Agency

Healthcare brands compete just like businesses in every other industry. Today, that means they need to deploy tested, effective digital marketing strategies that bring new patients into the fold. 

In most cases, it’s best to partner with an agency for your digital strategy, and there are countless agencies to choose from. Generalist agencies will happily take on any client, and many of them have alluring pitches: great capabilities, impressive client lists, and effective sales tactics. But given the intricacy and stakes involved in healthcare marketing, it’s almost always wiser for brands in the industry to find a dedicated healthcare marketing agency.

We’ll lay out some of the challenges specific to healthcare marketing and explain the advantages of choosing a dedicated healthcare marketing agency rather than a generalist one.

The Many Challenges of Healthcare Marketing

Few industries present as much marketing complexity as healthcare. It’s difficult to navigate, highly-sensitive, highly-regulated, and involves countless stakeholders. 

Healthcare Privacy Laws 

Health brands are subject to strict privacy laws, most notably the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which governs the use and disclosure of personal health information (PHI).

HIPAA is a unique challenge for marketers because, when it was passed in 1996, the digital marketing tools we use today hadn’t even been invented. And those digital marketing tools—whether email, PPC, or social media advertising—can generate a lot of PHI if they aren’t used correctly. In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began to punish companies that unknowingly shared patient data to platforms like Google Ads and Meta.

Because digital marketing creates and relies on so much data, marketing in this field requires a nuanced understanding of what constitutes PHI, what data your website and ads are collecting and sending to marketing platforms, and how to avoid missteps while still taking advantage of effective digital marketing techniques. 

Platform-Level Healthcare Marketing Rules

In addition to federal privacy laws, healthcare marketers also need to be mindful of the patchwork of platform-level policies that dictate how they can use paid ads. Platform-specific policies dictate how they can go about promoting different products like medical devices, health insurance, or telehealth. Many require LegitScript certification for advertising pharmaceuticals, as well.

Each platform—from SEM platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads to social media services like Meta and TikTok—has its own distinct set of rules for health brands. These cover everything from the claims that healthcare brands can make to the subject matter they can display to the specific advertising tools they can use. Meta, for instance, recently introduced new policies preventing healthcare brands from optimizing campaigns around lower-funnel conversion actions out of fears they could generate PHI. 

Patient Journeys Don’t Work Like Typical Buying Cycles 

If you’re in healthcare, you know that a patient is not a traditional “customer.” The factors people must consider when choosing a health service run much deeper than those they consider when buying a hat. This impacts every aspect of marketing and creates an emphasis early in the “funnel” on educational content. Healthcare marketers understand how patients learn about conditions and treatments at different stages of the patient journey and can design user experiences that align with those evolving needs. 

The Advantages of a Healthcare Marketing Agency

An expert healthcare marketing agency will be equipped to address the challenges created by this tricky field. It will possess the knowledge and experience to not only set up your marketing strategies for success from the start, but also to tackle problems as they arise. 

They Keep Their Compliance Knowledge Up-to-Date

Healthcare marketing agencies will have intimate knowledge of the restrictions their clients need to navigate. They are also aware of any possible marketing tool or implementation that risks violating those rules. And because those restrictions are always evolving, a specialized agency will stay up-to-date on the latest changes that could have implications for healthcare marketing—even by unintended consequence. Seemingly unrelated updates can create problems for healthcare marketers if they change how or what data is collected and transmitted, meaning a good healthcare marketing agency should be examining every new feature and functionality through a PHI-specific lens.

Cultivated Partnerships for Better Healthcare Marketing

Specialized marketing agencies typically aren’t going it alone: They exist in an ecosystem of specialized firms and tools. Healthcare marketing agencies will likely partner with legal experts for HIPAA and other policy analysis. They’ll also forge partnerships with technology providers who help ensure PHI security. We work with companies like Freshpaint and Ours Privacy—two of the leading consumer data platforms (CDPs) that focus on securing patient data—so healthcare clients can conduct their digital marketing without sharing data that they shouldn’t.

Established Playbooks for Healthcare Marketing 

A thorough healthcare marketing program can’t be retrofitted into an existing eCommerce playbook. There are nuances in how patients make decisions (as opposed to “customers”) and limitations on how brands can use different marketing tools. As a result, health marketers deploy some channels differently than brands in other industries would. 

Take non-brand paid search campaigns, for example: In an eCommerce application, these might be lower-funnel campaigns that include a Shopping Ads element for quick purchases. But in healthcare marketing, these campaigns will need to be deployed at the top of the funnel to get educational pages in front of prospective patients. Generalist agencies may offer basic direction, but for effective healthcare marketing, specialized expertise is crucial.

Agencies in this space always need to be nimble, but those who have experience will already have a solid playbook in place in case they need to shift gears fast. So when marketing campaigns encounter turbulence or new rules change how their clients are allowed to optimize their ads and websites, their agency will know how to adjust and keep things running smoothly. 

It Isn’t Worth Being an Agency’s “Guinea Pig” Client

There’s nothing to say that a generalist agency couldn’t learn, over time, how to build effective and compliant healthcare marketing strategies. But that is a long, involved process that relies on meticulous research and even trial and error. If your health brand is looking to partner with a digital marketing agency, it’s wise to avoid being any firm’s first entry into the field—because you’re likely to encounter those errors. 

While occasional slowdowns in marketing performance are an unfortunate reality, breakdowns in compliance have serious consequences that savvy healthcare brands should try to avoid at all costs. There is no replacement for experience. If you’re looking for an established health marketing team with a history of supporting health brands of all types and sizes, reach out to OuterBox today.