Each year, our team at Innovate assesses trending strategies for Healthcare marketing and advertising trends. An apparent constant is that Healthcare marketing is becoming more digitally integrated, but what trends have the staying power we need to pay attention to?

Understanding what is most effective and compliant with healthcare digital marketing trends is challenging, so we've narrowed them down in our series "2023 Healthcare Marketing & Advertising Trends."

Reputation management has been a force for healthcare marketing, and nowhere is this more apparent than how it relates to Google Business Profile (GBP) growth.

Google is focusing more on local search experiences and has emphasized user-generated content (UGC) to provide relevancy and accuracy to GBPs. The quick definition? Google wants patients to give feedback on how the care from your practice is and weigh this heavily in local search queries.

More than ever, healthcare marketing is consumer-driven, as patients are more in control of their healthcare journey. With rising costs, patients focus on the quality of care and convenience over "in-network." Online sources that provide reviews allow them to research and examine the overall reputation of the practice and its providers.

Innovate’s reputation management program has been highly effective with local medical practices. One of our greatest success stories was taking a prominent practice from a 2.2 Google rating to a 4.9. We find that in most instances, particularly with healthcare, lower reviews are often from patients in pain or limited capacity. This factor tilts the scale of more negative feedback in online reviews despite an otherwise reputable practice with a higher satisfaction rate. Our efficient process integrates with the practice to encourage satisfied patients to give feedback while addressing negative experiences head-on, pursuing resolution in the early stages of patient interaction.

Reviews are a traffic driver and lead generator. Google's algorithm can read the keyword content of your reviews and pull related keywords (such as "shoulder surgery") out of the reviews to aid in searches you rank for. It also gives users reading your reviews the option of organizing reviews to look at by your most mentioned keywords (ideally procedures, such as "knee replacement," "hip surgery," etc.)

With a dedicated program to gather new reviews, your practice will get a significant boost when prospective patients are looking for relevant procedures that are mentioned in your reviews. With the emphasis on local search experiences, you can stand out in searches for those procedures in your geographical area.