Specialized caregivers providing quality patient-centered care is the spiel you’ll find touted across home health caregiver websites from Washington State to the Florida Keys. To stand out against your competitors and raise brand awareness within your community, an advertising campaign can be vital in communicating the unique ways your care impacts its patients’ lives. When you learn how to advertise the care services you offer, you can grow your business to serve a greater number of patients. 

How to Advertise Care Services

Be strategic and thoughtful before investing time and money into advertising care services to potential clients. To see the best outcomes from your investment, you’ll want to think through your goals, reflect on your target market, review your competition, identify your unique niche, and quantify the monetary investment you can realistically make. 

Clarify Your Goals

Identify a measurable goal you hope to achieve by creating an advertising plan. Perhaps you’re interested in expanding your brand awareness, increasing the number of patients served, or building a team of caregivers. No matter your goal, make sure you can measure it and your campaign’s effectiveness over time.

Identify Your Target Market

Knowing who you’re speaking to makes it easier to build an advertising strategy to most effectively reach them. Reflect on the decision-makers in your current clients’ lives, and think about the individuals you most often interact with when discussing patient care. These people may include medical providers, hospital social workers, and patient spouses and children. Build a persona representative of your “ideal client” and build all marketing with that persona in mind. 

Investigate Your Competition

You’re probably familiar with your competition, but have you evaluated the advertising and marketing tactics they use? Review your competition with an eagle eye to look for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the services they offer and the ways they present them in the market. 

Know What Makes You Difference

After reviewing your competition, it should be clear what sets you apart from others. Whenever possible, those differences are what you should highlight in your marketing. If you have certifications and accreditation that others don’t, herald them at every opportunity. You may also choose to publish testimonials from medical providers and hospitals who refer patients to you for care. 

Establish a Budget 

Investment is required to advertise care services successfully. The level of investment depends on the type of goals set and the strategies that will best reach the decision-makers within your target market. There are countless advertising and marketing avenues available in digital, print, and people-to-people spheres, so having a maximum budget identified will enable you to prioritize which tactics to employ. 

Choose Your Strategy

There are many ways you can advertise your care services. The best way likely isn’t any one of these. Instead, you’re probably looking for a combination of approaches that reaches your audience where they are. Consider your goals and ideal clients’ unique needs when choosing your strategy.

7 Strategies for Advertising Care Services

The opportunities to advertise your services are plentiful, but some avenues may be more successful than others. There’s nothing wrong with billboards or newspaper advertisements. Still, when you have limited financial resources to commit to growing awareness of your business, it’s best to lean into the most effective deliverables. 

1. Referrals

When something happens, and care services become necessary, individuals often turn to their family, friends, and medical providers for recommendations on how to proceed. One of the fastest ways you can help your business grow is by providing exemplary quality to every patient, increasing their likelihood of recommending you to future clients.

2. Social Media

Having active social media channels helps validate your business. When you create content that positions you as an expert and thought leader within the care services space, you become a trusted resource and likely increase your reach through advertising. When you create education-focused posts that are topic-based rather than specifically about you, they are more likely to be shared broadly by professional organizations and medical providers.

3. SEO/Content Marketing

Your website is a powerful advertising tool you shouldn’t overlook. The value of digital marketing increases over time when your website is host to well-written content about care services, your business, and the services you provide – content people are searching for online. You have a higher likelihood of appearing in search engine results. Working toward Search Engine Optimization is a process that becomes more powerful with time and continues working for you long term.

4. Reviews

Create a culture where clients are prompted to provide continuous feedback about the level of care, effectiveness, and other variables you would like to capture data on. Regularly distribute surveys, so patients and their families become accustomed to providing information. Also, encourage them to post reviews about their experience with you on social media and review web pages. 

5. Ad Campaigns

Online advertising campaigns can be a cost-effective way to target individuals based on their age, gender, and location, enabling you to put your services directly before your target demographics. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads are relatively easy to understand, and you can adjust your financial commitment based on the total number of impressions. You also can measure the campaign’s effectiveness in real-time. 

6. Network

Your business can grow by engaging with the community. Look for opportunities to volunteer or have a presence at local events where prospective clients and their families will be in attendance. You’ll also want to build your professional network by attending medical conferences or networking events targeted at health care professionals. You never know when a connection will start referring others to your business.

7. Partnerships

By establishing strategic partnerships with agencies or medical providers that offer complementary specialties, you can build a pipeline of patients. Your client base will grow by cultivating your network and forming new partnerships.

Questions to Answer When Advertising Care Services

Regardless of where and how you choose to advertise your care services, you want to make sure you’re answering the essential questions possible clients will ask. Make sure that your advertising addresses the following by being clear and direct. 

Information you want prospective clients to glean from your advertising:

• What experience do you bring?
• How do you maintain quality?
• What tools do you utilize?
• How are you evolving and prepared for the future?
• What differentiates you from other care providers and agencies?

Best Practices for Advertising Care Services

Marketing is integral to the growth of your home health business, but you must remain authentic to your core values and brand. Make sure everything you advertise is something you can stand behind and feel 100% confident in. 

Consistency is Key

Advertising enables your business to define its personality. You likely want it to be known as a level-headed expert who can handle complex situations with great care. The use of consistent language and imagery across all advertising tactics builds trust and professionalism and helps cement your reputation as a trusted care provider.

Be Clear

Remove the possibility for assumptions and unmet expectations by clearly outlining the services and resources you offer. If potential clients can’t quickly gain an understanding of what’s available, they’ll move on to a competitor. 

Deliver What You Promise

Ensure that your marketing materials are reflective of the actual client experience. Don’t advertise aspirations, but rather the reality of care services received from your company.

You are Your Best Marketing

Don’t forget to engage with your current clients and any employees. Invest in those relationships and look for stories of impact you can tell to highlight how your business is making a difference through your care services. When you treat your clients and employees well, they will also refer your services to others. 

Know When to Outsource

Once you’ve selected the preferred advertising tactics to help meet your goals and fit the budget, determine what you can handle in-house and what would be best accomplished by a communications professional. Just as you wouldn’t want your accountant to draw blood or change wound care dressings, you may see more significant results if a communications mind is helping to execute your chosen strategy. 

Streamline Communication With Fokes

After creating the external advertising and communication plan for your care services, consider engaging with Fokes’ three-prong communication platform to streamline real-time, transparent communication between families and caregivers. Contact us to learn how Fokes can help you coordinate client conversations.