Skeptical patients now hold the reins of the healthcare marketplace. As they shop for doctors, medical practices, and hospitals, their distrust of the healthcare system and all of its players is sky-high.
Yet, trust is critical in engaging patients and converting them into your patients.
The solution is simple: use empathy in your marketing.
Why Empathy Engages Skeptical Patients
Showing that you understand how patients feel helps build trust.
That’s because what we feel accounts for up to 70% of the decisions we make, according to Gallup.
Facts and data are much less important when our decisions are emotional, not rational.
Empathy isn’t common in healthcare marketing. So using it can help you stand out from the competition.
Here’s how to use empathy in your healthcare marketing.
1. Focus on patient needs.
Find out what patients need to get great healthcare and live healthy. Then focus on these needs to make your content relevant and relatable. Focusing on patient needs also relieves information overload and helps patients see your doctors and organization as more approachable.
And it makes it easier for patients to take the actions you want them to take.
2. Treat patients as heroes.
Empathetic marketing means treating patients as the heroes in your story. By doing this, you show patients how they can get what they need—and how your people and services help them do this.
Using more patient stories, testimonials, and images are all easy ways to treat patients as heroes.
3. Use storytelling.
Stories create an emotional connection between patients and the storyteller. Our brains are wired to love stories. Brain scans show that stories stimulate the brain and engage people.
Ways to use stories include:
- Blog posts
- E-newsletter, newsletter and magazine stories
- Web pages for hospital or medical practice service lines
- Annual reports
- Videos.
Excerpts from stories often work well as testimonials on websites, in social media, and in print publications.
4. Create videos.
Videos are a terrific way to tell stories—and to show empathy. When done right, videos can show empathy in a way that other content can’t.
Patient testimonials make great videos. Other patients can relate to the patient’s story.
Videos are also great for explaining treatments, including procedures. When a doctor breaks the treatment down into simple steps, patients understand the treatment and know what to expect. And they see the doctor as a person.
Get More Patients with Empathy
Using empathy in marketing build trusts and persuades skeptical patients to choose your doctors and your medical practice or hospital/health system.
These tips focus on writing with empathy. For information on identifying patient needs through empathy mapping and other techniques, see Learn More.
Learn More
John Keehler, The Power Of Empathy In Medical Marketing
Serenity Gibbons, How To Implement Empathy In Your Marketing Strategy