Seasonal Healthcare Marketing: Everything Your Practice Needs to Know

Seasonal healthcare marketing is extremely important for practice growth, yet most healthcare practices tend to keep their strategies consistent and often experience a decline in scheduled consultations, website leads and social media engagement online.

As the seasons change, so will the needs of your patients. Healthcare practices need to adapt their marketing strategies based on the ever-changing needs of their patients throughout the year.

Strategic, time-sensitive, seasonal campaigns will give you the opportunity to create content that is guaranteed to keep your practice relevant and keep your brand front-of-mind during dry and festive seasons.

Your patients are always looking for something new and exciting to solve their problems – whether it’s for New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Their needs will always change and so must your healthcare marketing strategies.

In order to be successful with healthcare seasonal marketing, you need to think like the patient and provide the solutions that they’re looking for.

Here are 5 simple and strategic seasonal healthcare marketing ideas that your practice can start to get ready for the upcoming holidays.

1. Create Captivating Videos

Did you know that 85% of patients prefer to make appointments with healthcare practices that share videos displaying their services? And 94% of healthcare patients use online reviews to evaluate providers.

According to Hubspot, marketers feel more positive about the return on investment offered by video than any other form of content because it continues to strongly increase growth in website traffic, social media leads and influences audience understanding.

So when it comes down to audience captivation, video content is king. But, if you’re running low on ideas for video content, here are our top 4 video marketing ideas for Doctors.

If you really want to make an impact online then definitely include video content into your seasonal healthcare marketing strategy this year and beyond. Video content is proven to attract more patients, increase brand awareness of your healthcare practice and drastically improve patient loyalty.

2. Get Seasonal on Social Media

Did you know that the months of September to December are one of the biggest selling seasons for most industries?

I would hate it if you missed out on sharing seasonal offers, content and campaigns on social media that could help your healthcare practice thrive this year.

With 3 billion social media users online every single day, you have no excuse but to get on social media and start sharing some seasonal content with your audience.

It’s time to get noticed online with captivating and engaging visual content on your social media platforms.

Just a friendly reminder: Your patients are using social media to research your healthcare practice before booking an appointment because they want to see what’s new, and determine whether or not they trust you enough to commit to your services.

Here are a few seasonal healthcare social media ideas that will help your practice stand out online and separate you from the competition:

Start a Photo Contest

Encourage your audience to share themed photos on their profiles, tag your healthcare practice and use a custom seasonal hashtag. Include a call to action (like follow our page or tag us), add an incentive (tag us to WIN a free facial), and of course clearly state the competition’s ending time, its rules and regulations.

Host a Poll

Create seasonal themed polls and instantly post them to your stories. You have SO MUCH room to get creative here with exciting questions that would want people to participate and engage with your content.

Go Live with a Q&A

Live Q&A’s work well for sharing product and procedure knowledge, all you have to do is simply answer any pressing questions that your audience might have about something unfamiliar but related to your area of expertise. This is a more informative and engaging seasonal healthcare marketing tactic that is bound to build credibility and increase their understanding of what you do.

Parade your Seasonal Spirit

Connect with your Patients by showing them that your Practice is active online and up to date with the latest seasonal trends. Take a fun team selfie with Santa hats, or flaunt your halloween costumes — whatever the season, get out there and share your seasonal spirit. Your audience will feel more connected to you and in some cases even feel like apart of your community.

Promote Seasonal Products or Procedures

Some products and procedures are more popular during specific seasons. As the seasons change, you have an opportunity to push the promotion of higher selling products. You can also promote the sale of gift cards for those products or procedures during the off-season as well.

3. Offer Seasonal Discounts & Giveaways

Since we’re on the topic of seasonal giveaways. Let’s dig a little deeper into my favorite D word… Discounts.

You know the saying ‘give a little, get a lot’. If you GIVE your customer the opportunity to GET something they will return for more.

This usually works well as a patient retention tactic. I’d highly recommend working with a marketing specialist or a medical marketing agency with this one — so that you don’t end up losing out. However, when done effectively the results will make you want to keep on giving.

You can also create referral marketing campaigns, where you offer family or friend discounts, for example; “Bring your friend and get 25% off.”

Works like a charm!

4. Create Seasonal Lead Magnets

Create a Seasonal Themed Quiz

Create a fun and relevant quiz to collect more leads and share it throughout your website and social media platforms.

Make sure that you collect email addresses and track the traffic source with every participant.

Seasonal Lists & ‘How to’s’

Create a downloadable “How to cheatsheet” with helpful information related to your specialty with healthcare tips that are relevant to the season. You can also share a few fun content ideas, like a “New Year’s – Wish List” or a “Christmas Week – To-do List” or even a “Thanksgiving Checklist”.

Seasonal Email Campaigns

Holiday email marketing is a big driver of the seasonal sales boom. Stay connected to your patients through seasonal email marketing. Every country’s got its major holidays, which often coincide with peak sales times. If you’re in the United States, the most important holiday season runs from early November to early January, a two-month promotional window that fuels profits for the whole year.

We recommend that you start your holiday email marketing campaigns between November 1st and 15th. That’s when most people open your holiday marketing emails; after that, open rates drop. If you have a long internal approval process, that means you need to create any holiday email marketing campaigns at least a couple of months before, so everything’s ready to go by the target date.

5. Show the Generous Side of your Practice

Cultivate and nurture your patients by giving back to the community. Reach out to a non-profit organization you feel passionate about and sponsor a holiday giving campaign. Share this campaign with your patients through all of your communication channels and let them know how they can contribute if they’d like.

If you implement these 5 seasonal healthcare marketing ideas, we assure you, that you will stand out among other practices and will experience a more profitable season. You are now ready to take on your seasonal healthcare marketing with confidence and cheer!

At Visual Vybz Studios, we’re all about using captivating content to drive quality results. We help medical practices like yours stand out from the competition with a strategy-centered, creative medical marketing solution that is designed to help you get the results that you’re looking for.

We understand how challenging it is to create and share content consistently online.

But, that’s where we come in.

We create, publish and promote all of your visually engaging content so that you don’t have to.

We are here to help your practice thrive. So, if you’re ready to attract more patients online and increase patient loyalty at your practice, Book your Free Consultation Today.