Multiple issues, including consumer distrust, are relevant to the topic of healthcare marketing. As per Mehta’s (2017) discussion, the average consumer might regard healthcare services as a waste of time and interventions with unknown effectiveness. This distorted understanding of the healthcare system stems from specific sensational cases of medical malpractice or fraud (Mehta, 2017). For a healthcare organization, establishing and maintaining its brand’s positive reputation might be challenging under these circumstances.
Quality assurance measures pertaining to marketing and content creation improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts that healthcare organizations undertake. Common QA measures include making all social media content aligned with the organization’s large-scale strategic goals and establishing clear brand standards to be followed in any message on behalf of the healthcare company. Such strategies promote effective marketing efforts by ensuring the consistency of different representations of one company and providing all content creators with clear guidelines. Other QA efforts may include working on published materials’ correctness with the help of proofreading, editing, and medical review efforts. These strategies help maintain the company’s reputation as a source of recent and credible information.
Finally, social media may be used to overcome the specified issue in two ways. To start with, healthcare consumers’ levels of trust depend on their socio-demographic characteristics, which is why creating content to target particular populations might be helpful. For instance, racial minorities experience significant distrust of the healthcare system due to unpleasant experiences as patients (Chandler et al., 2021). Ensuring that hospitals’ social media accounts post enough materials for prospective clients belonging to the said minorities could make the latter recognize healthcare providers’ intercultural competence and empathy for minority patients. Another option, the use of patients’ key questions to inform the institution’s social media strategy, is specifically relevant today, in the COVID-19 era (Daily Briefing, 2020). Misinformation is what fuels consumer distrust, and healthcare institutions that are active on social media can collect data on clients’ areas of misunderstanding by means of online or offline surveys. This information can then inform the creation of educational posts that would dispel common myths about COVID-19 or other topics with reference to credible sources.
References
Chandler, R., Guillaume, D., Parker, A. G., Mack, A., Hamilton, J., Dorsey, J., & Hernandez, N. D. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 among Black women: Evaluating perspectives and sources of information. Ethnicity & Health, 26(1), 80-93. Web.
Mehta, P. (2017). What ails healthcare marketing: The reasons why marketing fails to make a prominent impact in most healthcare business units, is glaring at our faces. LinkedIn. Web.
Daily Briefing. (2020). 4 ways to use social media to rebuild patient trust. Advisory Board. Web.