You may have heard about marketing automation or that it is a solution to all of your marketing problems.
But do you know what automation is and how can it help your healthcare practice? Let me give you a review of some of the basics on this emerging topic…
Put simply, Marketing Automation is that category of technology that allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, so that they can increase efficiency and grow revenue faster.
You can apply marketing automation to different industries and domains, including your practice. While large companies have long found value in this technology, marketing automation isn’t just for big companies. In fact, Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs) are the largest-growing segment in this space right now. And thousands of companies even smaller than SMBs are using marketing automation as well!
Also, as mentioned, companies across all industries are using marketing automation. The early adopters of marketing automation were mainly business-to-business (B2B) industries, such as hi-tech, software, manufacturing, and business services. Increasingly, however, companies across all categories in business-to-consumer industries, such as healthcare, financial services, media and entertainment, and retail are using marketing automation.
On an average, about 49 percent of companies are using marketing automation, with more than 55 percent of B2B companies adopting this technology. All of these companies are adopting marketing automation software for its real-time, engagement-oriented approach that maintains and extends customer relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. In this article, we’ll also talk about some of the benefits of marketing automation.
- You can save time: Multiple marketing campaigns can be scheduled in advance, using marketing automation tools, thereby streamlining your work hours for other activities.
- You can work with greater efficiency: Marketing automation provides an automatic alternative to traditionally manual processes. With time and labor being reduced, costs can be reduced too.
- You can integrate all patient contact software: With integration of your marketing tools with your scheduling software, SMS reminders and other email databases, you can ensure that your leads don’t disappear off the radar after a couple of unsuccessful contacts.
- You can collect the right kind of data: Marketing automation offers a touch-point to patients that is not necessarily sales-driven. It can also help provide better insights to collect specific data in order to improve future communication.
- You can practice multi-channel management: Marketing automation can help you manage multiple email and social media channels. This is an imperative considering the different channels that consumers can be found on today. Without marketing automation, managing these multiple channels is not only time-consuming and tedious, it can be extremely disorganized.
- You can practice consistency: By incorporating all your marketing efforts in one process, you can help keep a unified tone-of-voice for your brand.
- You can take advantage of personalization: Marketing automation helps tailor the entire experience of your existing and potential patients and their unique personality. This creates a more inviting experience that drives them to contact you.
The majority of companies that have used marketing automation think it is worth the price. The common features and functions of marketing automation are: email marketing, landing pages, campaign management, predictions/scoring, lead management, social marketing, and marketing analytics. If this sounds a bit too complex for you then contact me to discuss this more. At IntellaHealth, we only work in the healthcare field so can craft a marketing automation strategy that will be uniquely tailored to your practice.
Marketing automation brings value and Return-on-Investment (ROI) to your various marketing efforts. The right marketing automation platform combined with the right organizational and process alignment, makes it possible to streamline several functions. The latter could include that promotional email you sent last month, or that webinar you hosted last year.
So, now you know a bit more about marketing automation and its benefits. You can use marketing automation for your healthcare practice and be assured that you are building your brand the right way.
For more information on how you can hire a digital marketing agency to help grow your healthcare practice using marketing automation, contact Kristine Grace DDS, MS, MBA at KristineG@IntellaHealth.net.
by Kristine Grace, Jun-12-2017