It’s no secret digital marketing is center-stage right now with the amount of time Americans spend on their devices on a steady climb. Digital video marketing in particular is growing in popularity as many social media platforms tend to prefer and promote video content over still images. 

If your healthcare practice does not have an existing digital presence, it’s incredibly important to understand and leverage digital marketing strategies to reach more potential patients and increase conversions.

YouTube is a go-to video search engine for those looking for entertainment as well as educational content. Promoting your healthcare practice over Google and YouTube ads is an effective way to reach potential patients. However, doubling down your efforts by creating a YouTube channel can expand your marketing efforts for your healthcare services and reach greater audiences. Leveraging both YouTube ads as well as organic video content can kill two birds with one stone, and ensure your marketing is capturing your entire target audience. 

Here are five reasons why you should make use of both paid and organic YouTube marketing to expand your healthcare business.

People Look to the Internet for Health Information

Since the internet’s invention, people have searched their symptoms, read home-healthcare information, or used the internet to search for doctors or specialists. 

• 72% of adults in the U.S. say they have used the internet to search for healthcare information in the last year.
• 77% of patients used a search engine to begin their online health research.
• 43% of visits to hospital websites originate from a search engine. (Source: Pyxl)

With over 3 billion monthly searches taking place on YouTube, medical practices can leverage the large search volume for medical and health information to create content to meet these search needs and encourage those web-surfers to make appointments. There are tools such as Google Trends that can help advertisers see what people are searching. When placing Google and Youtube PPC ads, you can also filter the reach down by location to grasp users who actually live near your practice or hospital location. This increases the potential for new prospects to find and make appointments for the medical facility nearest to them. 

YouTube Reaches a Huge Audience

Video content is king these days, and YouTube remains the industry leader for long-form and professional video content. 4 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day, and YouTube reaches a huge audience across a large age demographic. YouTube reaches more 18-49 year-olds than cable. This allows healthcare marketers to reach a greater subsection of prospective patients than other forms of media. 

Your YouTube Channel Can Serve as an Introduction

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 10,000. Your organic YouTube channel can be leveraged to introduce your hospital or medical practice, tour the facilities, discuss the services your practice offers, and introduce your doctors. 

Those with medical-related anxiety may be more interested in searching up potential doctors and their facilities to help them feel more comfortable making an appointment. Testimonials and reviews also play a huge part in alleviating concerns a prospect might have about becoming a new patient.

YouTube Ads Are Incredibly Effective

Consumers are already expecting ads on YouTube, and even skippable ads can be important marketing tools. You can still get a message across within the first :05 seconds, and if your ad captures the attention of your audience quickly enough, you may even convince them to stay a while. 

According to Strike Social, when creating an effective skippable ad, it is important to set the tone immediately and make your point right away. Make sure there is brand placement at the very beginning of your ad, so even quick-skippers get a glimpse of who is talking to them. It’s also important to utilize the targeting features available to you to make sure your ad is getting in front of the right audience, therefore decreasing the likelihood of skipping and increasing the potential for clicks and conversions.

It’s paramount that you remember that YouTube ads and cable TV ads have very different audiences and have different goals. TV ads play in the background, whereas YouTube ads are watched more actively as the audience waits a few seconds for their content to come back on. YouTube viewers are watching on their mobile devices and have the ability to click, like, comment, or share your content right away, and those engagements are immediately measurable. Capturing those spur of the moment engagements will increase your success on YouTube.

Your YouTube Can Serve as an Educational Tool

Sometimes medical anxiety can keep patients from asking their doctors for more information about their diagnosis, procedure, or medication. This means many adults then turn to the internet to educate themselves if they want to hear more about a procedure or have a diagnosis explained. Users are searching for informational videos about your specific practice, the treatments available for certain conditions, educational explanations about surgeries and information about how medications can alleviate symptoms. Creating and uploading your own organic YouTube videos addressing these concerns will not only address the stress and anxiety your patient may be experiencing, but also afford credibility to your organization. These videos could also win you new patients who stumble upon your channel. 

If you regularly upload informational videos to your YouTube channel, it can also become a convenient place to steer patients when they have questions.

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for your YouTube content, check out these video ideas:

• Tour of the hospital or medical facilities
• Introduction the doctors and staff
• Discussing your practice, your specialty
• Explaining a medical procedure, diagnosis, or medication
• Announcing new medical technology or systems you are implementing

YouTube is a powerful marketing tool, with its native video as well as its advertising capabilities. Using both pre-roll, mid-roll and banner ads on top of your organic video content you can reach millions of impressions on your healthcare marketing materials. Establishing a robust internet presence also affords your practice more credibility and position your healthcare institution as friendly, compassionate and knowledgeable.