How Will Voice Search Impact Your Healthcare Marketing?

The number of ways prospective patients can find your business is growing by leaps and bounds. Whether it is through social media, an online review, search engine advertisements, or now, through a voice search query – staying in front of your target audience requires a multi-faceted approach. As the number of smartphone users in the United States has grown to over 224 million, using voice searches have also grown in popularity. With increasing access to voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri, how patients search for information is quickly changing and healthcare providers must adjust their marketing SEO strategies or risk being left behind.

Here are the top three reasons why voice search will have a lasting impact on how you attract new patients and how you craft your future marketing campaigns.

The popularity of voice search has exploded.

In 2017, it was estimated that over 35 million Americans used a voice-activated assistant device, accounting for a billion individual searches1 each month. This represents a 128.9% increase from the previous year.2 Though only 10% of Baby Boomers currently use voice-assisted technology, the number of Millennials expected to use voice-enabled digital assistants will be more than 39% by 2019.3 As the technology evolves, positioning your business in front of your target audience will require you to incorporate voice search best practices into your marketing strategies.

It could change how new patients search for healthcare providers.

Consumers are using voice search as a personal assistant for various tasks, like getting entertainment news, sports scores, and most importantly, to quickly search for local information. In fact, nearly one out of every five voice searches are to find contact information for a local business.4 Since new patients are more likely to consider healthcare providers in their area, making the necessary SEO adjustments to capitalize on voice search represents a significant opportunity for healthcare providers looking to outpace the competition.

Your marketing strategies must evolve.

Though voice search is still a new and quickly changing technology, staying ahead of the curve and adding in new marketing strategies now will give you a competitive advantage. How patients look for healthcare providers is shifting, making incorporating SEO keywords into all of your company’s online content more important than ever. It is important to note that how consumers search using text is often different than how they search with voice-enabled devices. The key is to take a holistic marketing approach to your SEO and consider what phrases may be used for typed and/or voice searches. In addition, making sure your website is built with a mobile-first approach will ensure that your company ranks higher on searches of all types.

Staying ahead of emerging technology trends and finding proven ways to enhance your marketing efforts to match is essential to how you attract new patients.

Is your company well positioned to take advantage of voice search?

Now is the time to dive deeper into your marketing campaigns and make sure they are optimized to succeed. If you’re not sure how best to capitalize on voice search or how to increase your marketing ROI, then contact the digital marketing experts at Response Mine Health today for a complimentary marketing strategy consultation.