Health Tourism Marketing Trends for 2017: Refocusing the Lens

Where a hospital or spa or medical practitioner was once limited to advertising by word of mouth and paper, now content and advertising vehicles of the past have transitioned into global, digital formats. The content is now far more accessible. As a result, savvy health and wellness suppliers have responded to the on-demand world by update their marketing and branding strategies to remain or become relevant for today’s global marketplace environment.

A new challenge, that of the cross-screen phenomena has left its mark on media, marketing and content creation for healthcare and wellness tourism suppliers. Today, television is not viewed only on a television set, the radio is not listened to on a transistor radio alone and a newspaper is not read solely on the printed page.  The phenomena has potential patients shopping for services and medical tourism destinations jumping from screen to screen and platform to platform. For those charged with the responsibility to promote providers, suppliers and medical tourism destinations, learning how to be fluid in a fast-paced, ever-changing landscape has forced a new skill level that requires them to be adaptive or risk irrelevance by a sophisticated, increasingly mobile-first audience.

For providers who approach this new challenge with a D-I-Y, bootstrap mentality, the quality of the brand's representation, image, colors, graphics, layout, video quality, and use of typography that is hoisted onto these new platforms becomes the harsh proving ground where the consumer decides in 3 seconds or less if the provider is "of interest" or not relevant.  If the brand presentation captures the buyers' interest, they may be granted an additional 3 seconds to see if the brand is worthy of their "trust".  For example, providers in the CIS region hosting a website with royalty-free stock images that they bought for a dollar online that feature a Hispanic nurse will quickly lose out in the trust category.  A Korean health tourism supplier that claims to be a global brand but shows only Korean people in the website is not a global brand simply because it declares itself such; it is a Korean brand marketing globally.

Learn why they stay and why they go

If you don't believe me, check your website dropoff rates and add heat map technology to your medical tourism webpages to track where people go, click and what they do on your website and when they leave. Add this technology to your website with a WordPress plugin from hotjar.com. They offer a forever free trial that will enable you to monitor and measure website visits for a certain number of impressions. Larger packages with more data capture are available for a modest fee.

Collaborations between brands and media agencies and brands and medical tourism referral agents have emerged as solutions to meet these newfound challenges. The development of new technology platforms has also presented methods to speak to target audiences, although up-and-coming technologies have proved disruptive.  For small private clinics in Greece and other tough economies, for example, there's no way for them to afford to keep up. The money and staff to do it simply isn't available. They must rely on facilitators - many of whom find they can't sustain the business they entered - or that medical tourism is not as lucrative as they originally believed. We see a lot of facilitators give up before 36 months in business.  They don't announce it to their healthcare supplier network, they just simply "fade away".  Nobody hears from them again.

If the facilitator also does not have the money, skill and commitment to use these new technology platforms to create content on their own to ignite audience interest, trust and preference, the hospitals that engage with the facilitators see no results using the facilitator marketing strategy either. If they create content that does not accurately reflect the brand of the network suppliers, that is a risk to the supplier - who must now deliver on expectations set by the facilitator that may be unrealistic, untrue, or impossible to deliver. If the content created by the facilitator is subpar, the supplier suffers. If the supplier goes to the effort and expense of creating the collateral and supplying it to the facilitator to protect its brand, it often decides shortly thereafter that it can disintermediate from the facilitator and market its product without assistance. Right or wrong, that's what is happening in the marketplace.  The turn to platforms such as WhatClinic for a low cost DIY solution with inbound activity directed to an in-house staffer - and poof! Another international patient department is launched. Like magic. 

Either approach done well thrives. Either approach done poorly does not.  Either approach prepared well but implemented incorrectly or aimed at the wrong target audience still fails.

Accreditations and certifications don't generate revenues

Sellers of "international patient department" training, setup, certification have made valiant efforts to sell what they believed would be the way to market and influence prospect trust. The sellers of this training and certification believed that the medical tourism world would pay them USD $25,000 to do this training, setup and then bestow on the provider a piece of framed wallpaper in the form of a certificate. For them, the mystery is now solved as to why their product strategy hasn't taken off.  

Simply stated, the product they sell does not "produce" or "influence" buyers to buy. It doesn't put money in the bank for the facilitator or the hospital, clinic, doctor, dentist or health resort. It takes money out of the bank account and doesn't produce the intended results. Think of it like salt on food. Salt enhances flavor of a dish in many instances. Use the right amount of salt, it is wonderful.  Use too much, it becomes inedible. Put the salt on your hand and eat it alone with nothing else - that doesn't happen.  Having an international patient department - one that is trained and certified is like salt. It cannot stand alone and produce results. It must be used in tandem with these other cross platform approaches to marketing and branding and promotion that address the consumers' freedom to access content on every imaginable platform, served on all of types of devices, and able to be pulled down whatever they want, when they want it. Likewise, the technology is also like salt, it cannot function without an international department or facilitator to answer when someone requests more information or wants to make a booking.  In 2017 and beyond, health and wellness tourism marketers will need to adapt to the way in which the consumer watches advertising and absorbs branding messages, but also adapts to what they are watching and learn why they are watching. Otherwise they risk losing relevance.

Digital marketing requires more insight than the past advertising metrics that simply measured reach to the eyeball. Digital marketing goes beyond reaching eyeballs in order to be deemed successful. The content must resonate with the audience no matter how the audience decides to view it.  A defining difference between older millennials, Gen Xer and baby boomers is the way in which the groups consume content advertising and marketing. Younger viewers don't watch that much traditional television, so television advertising is wasted on them.  So spending on television advertising for an infertility clinic or a drug and alcohol rehab center is very likely a waste of ad spend.  Likewise, targeting a baby boomer crowd by advertising on television at the wrong time or the wrong shows is also wasteful.

With digital marketing, the results of failure are sharp and harsh. If you hope your target will be reached or worse yet, have no target and believe that your marketing will reach "someone" searching for what you sell, you will be disappointed.  On the other hand, digital marketing has not yet evolved to the point where we have standardized and viable metric systems for brand marketers to determine if they are creating the correct content, for the right market and at the ideal time.

This leaves marketers second-guessing themselves...and a second-guesser spends less on marketing and advertising. This is especially true in some risk-averse cultures where the penalty for professional failure brings shame and loss of face.