The Number-One Takeaway from the Latest Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey: Digital Strategy Is the Path Forward

// By Ben Dillon //

As we put the finishing touches on our annual Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey, I always look for themes that will define the industry in the coming year. This year, one theme is surfacing again and again: digital strategy and the level of investment and focus placed on it by digital leaders.

The top areas where digital leaders outperform everyone else? Digital strategy. Hot jobs in healthcare digital marketing this year? Digital strategy. Where do the agencies and consultants working with healthcare organizations feel healthcare is furthest behind? You guessed it — digital strategy.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that digital strategy is so high on the list. Consider:

• Consumer expectations for digital engagement have changed radically over the past 18 months, and healthcare as an industry has been particularly slow to adapt.
• Patient loyalty to individual healthcare brands is at an all-time low as consumers have been forced through appointment cancellations, delays, and inability to access services to experiment with other care options.
• On the other hand, changes that providers were forced to make due to the pandemic, particularly in the area of telehealth, showed us that the industry is capable of being innovative and executing quickly when it needs to, and it does need to.
• New competition is growing, from startups to retail giants to tech firms. Much of it is focused on making the experience of healthcare easier and more convenient. As a founder of startup insurance firm Oscar put it, they’re “making insurance suck less.”

Here, we’ll share takeaways from the latest survey, and some ideas to help you help your organization break the logjam.

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