How Does Influencer Marketing Work in Healthcare?

Posted by Canadian Health Care Personnel on November 22nd, 2019

If you were to ask 20 or so people to supply you with an opinion on where to go for a healthcare directory, you'd likely wind up with quite a few different responses. This happens because healthcare is different from other industries in that it covers a lot of different areas of expertise. Health means different things to different people, so when you ask for links to some good online healthcare databases, you'll get a lot of varied options depending on who you’re targeting.

Due to this, the world of health influencers creates a diverse type of marketing that branches out in many ways. For example, there are fitness influencers, healthy food advocates, and influential healthcare professionals. They all use different types of tactics to drive purchases for their facilities or sponsors.

How Are Influencers Different From a Standard Healthcare Directory?

Aside from being more diverse in subject matter then what you would find on your run of the mill online healthcare databases, health influencer marketing also has many different restrictions, and thus, different goals as well. Here are some of the nuances of healthcare influencer marketing.

It's More Engaging

At the end of the day, people respond better to influencers than your standard healthcare marketer. This is because they are engaged with the person themselves, their personality, and invested in their opinions.

Healthcare influencer marketing also tends to put a higher focus on education and then recommending products that would help people achieve the results they require for their medical facility.

It's Built on Trust

Trust is one of the most important aspects of the healthcare industry, and while doctors and other professionals tend to do this well, traditional marketing to a healthcare professionals list has nothing on what an influencer can do. This is again because people tend to form a stronger bond with influencers and see them as being more trustworthy and transparent.

It's More Regulated

As we are dealing with people's health, there have been some regulations put into place on influencer marketing within the health field. This also extends into the fitness and wellness industries. As a result, the whole industry is much more regulated, with tighter rules, than standard influencer marketing. This makes it feel a little safer than you would expect from such an open healthcare directory, which is much different than your average healthcare professionals list.

Targeting Key Decision Makers

While influencers are great in many ways to get your product out there, some products will not perform well here. Examples are tools that practitioners use, who won’t be looking to social media for information on them. For this reason, it is still key to form relationships at a smaller scale with your clients. Email is a great way to do this and is decidedly the best plays for reaching out to healthcare decision-makers within clinics reliably. For this reason, your messages should be targeted directly at them.

Overall the healthcare influencer scene shares similarities with both standard healthcare professionals and what you have come to expect from your standard influencer in any industry. This makes the market unique in its own way and must be tackled as such when forming your core sales strategy.