Digital marketers in the healthcare industry have that extra challenge of making sure they’re always in compliance with government regulations to ensure products and services are marketed in accordance to the law. With such stringent laws, it can be intimidating to bring the marketing of healthcare services to the 21st century.

But with today’s marketing environment, making that leap to digital marketing has become necessary to the healthcare industry as both patients and physicians have become more tech-savvy.

According to a study from Epocrates, as of 2013, 86% of clinicians use smartphones during their daily work activities. In addition, 80% of physicians utilize search engines such as Google and Yahoo to help with diagnosing their patients.

Patients themselves no longer just sit back and wait word from doctors and are more inclined to do their own research, with 84% of patients using online and offline resources for hospital research.

So if you’re a marketer in the healthcare industry, where can you start so you can ensure that you’re reaching highly tech-savvy audience? Here are three key pieces that should be part of your digital marketing strategy:

Here are three key pieces that should be part of your digital marketing strategy:

1.     Creating a Responsive Website
   

We’ve gone past the time of laptops and desktops being the only ways we can connect to the World Wide Web. The proliferation of smartphones, tablets and phablets has made it necessary for marketers in any industry to ensure that their website can be easily accessed through any of these channels. In the past, businesses would create different versions of their website for desktops and mobile, however, Responsive Web Design has taken over.

        Responsive Web Design is a smart design solution where websites adjust themselves through panning based on the user’s platform. This ensures that whether the user is on their tablet or laptop, they can view the website in an optimized format.

        A responsive website allows marketers to eliminate the need to maintain several versions of their website, and focus their web strategy on a single website to increase their reach and audience.

2.     SEO Strategy
   
   

 Patients and physicians alike are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to do their own research for medical and health concerns. Having an SEO strategy in place is what you need to ensure that when your target audience makes a search, they find you.

Find out what keywords are consistently used by your audience when searching for products or services similar to yours. Make sure that your web pages, from your home page to your blog posts, are optimized with the relevant keywords to your industry so your website appears high on the organic search rankings.

SEO is not a one-time strategy, especially with search engines like Google constantly updating their algorithms for page rankings. Keep up to date with new strategies to get higher page rankings. You never know when meta tagging might make a comeback.

3.     Content Marketing
   

 With information more freely available, consumers are looking for more than a garish ad to capture their attention. Healthcare companies need to provide useful, relevant and helpful information in order to capture leads and convert them to customers.

This is where content marketing comes in. Content can be in the form of blog posts, white papers, videos and webinars published online so your audience can learn not just about your brand, but your industry. Publishing helpful information that’s not solely dedicated to making a sale can help increase your brand reputation as a reliable source of information and a trustworthy business.

With the right strategy, content marketing can also help you increase your search engine rankings, and potentially widen your audience base and increase leads.