Lights, Camera, Care: Harnessing Video Marketing Strategies for Better Patient Engagement

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According to one recent study, 87% of marketers who use video not only say that it helps them generate a positive return on investment, but a full 92% actually say it’s the highest-performing form of content they use.

You may not think that this applies to the world of healthcare services – but within the context of the fast-paced, digital-first world, you’d be wrong. Especially when it comes to healthcare marketing, video is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a must. In an industry where trust, clarity, and empathy matter more than ever, video offers a uniquely personal and effective way to connect with current and prospective patients.

But producing videos alone isn’t enough. The real value lies in how you use them. So let’s walk through some essential best practices to make sure your video marketing efforts drive real engagement and build meaningful relationships with your patients.

Especially if you’re the type of professional who has only been focused on caring for patients up to this point, all of the above can seem daunting to say the least. Thankfully, it isn’t that difficult to harness video marketing for patient engagement and to broaden the appeal of your healthcare business at the same time. All you need is the right approach and to keep a few key things in mind.

Success Starts with a Plan, and a Plan Starts With Your Patients

First, don’t start filming without a plan. Not all video content is created equally and if you devote an enormous amount of time and energy into creating something that nobody actually wants to see, it’s more than a waste – it’s a missed opportunity as well.

Many healthcare businesses make the mistake of creating a few promotional videos and expecting them to move the needle. Instead, take a step back and define your goals.

• Are you trying to raise awareness of your services?
• Help patients feel more comfortable before an appointment? 
• Increase bookings for a new specialty or provider? 

These are the types of essential questions you should answer before you even think about picking up the camera.

Each objective should shape the content, tone, and format of the video. For example, a video introducing your staff and walking patients through your facility works great for new patient onboarding, while a short explainer video might help demystify a complex procedure like cataract surgery or physical therapy rehab.

More importantly, your videos should always focus on the patient. That may sound obvious, but it’s easy to slip into a mode where the content becomes more about the provider than the person watching.

Ask yourself a simple question: What does the patient need to know? What are they worried about? What would make them feel more confident in choosing your practice? Using simple, friendly language, rather than technical or clinical terms, can go a long way.

Likewise, don’t be afraid to put a human face on your brand. Real doctors or care providers speaking directly to the camera, even if not professionally trained, often create more trust than polished, corporate-looking content. You could even feature real patients (with consent) telling their own success stories. Those stories don’t just engage, they inspire action in all the best ways.

Embrace Various Formats

Along the same lines, remember that there are more video formats out there than just a quick, 30-second clip. To keep pumping out the same type of content over and over again would be doing yourself – and your audience – a major disservice.

For instance, if your goal is to build trust, patient testimonial videos can be powerful – especially if they speak to common fears or misconceptions. Think about a lot of the questions you often get from new patients and have existing patients speak to them. You’d be surprised by just what a difference this can make.

To help potential patients understand your services, try an animated explainer that breaks down what to expect from a procedure or visit. Want to set your practice apart? A warm, well-lit video of your staff saying “hello” and giving a brief virtual tour of your facility can reduce anxiety before that first visit.

These different formats can help you meet people where they are in their healthcare journey – whether they’re just beginning to research or are ready to book an appointment.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

Finally, don’t make the mistake of assuming that the video format itself will be enough to get the job done. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Failing to optimize your healthcare services videos will force you to find out the answer to that question, and you probably aren’t going to like what you learn.

To put it another way, you want people to find your videos – and be able to use them. That means writing thoughtful, keyword-rich titles and descriptions, using local terms like your city or neighborhood name, and uploading transcripts and captions, so the videos are accessible to all.

It also helps your content appear in search engines, boosting your visibility to patients in your area. A video about “What to Expect at Your First Visit to Our Family Practice in Arlington” will go further in local SEO than a generic “Welcome to Our Clinic.”

Once your videos are produced and optimized, it’s time to actually integrate them into your patient experience. That doesn’t just mean uploading them to your website and hoping for the best.

Think about every digital touchpoint where your patients are already interacting with you: email confirmations, social media feeds, blog posts, appointment reminder texts, and even in-office screens.

If a patient books a mammogram, for example, why not include a short video in the confirmation email that explains what to expect and how to prepare? These kinds of thoughtful integrations can reduce no-shows, improve patient confidence, and make your practice feel more supportive and personal.

Simplify Video Marketing with Software

Whether you’re talking specifically about local SEO or small business marketing in a broader sense, the entire affair can quickly become a full-time job – which is an issue, since you already have one of those taking up so much of your time. Every minute that you’re not spending on improving your services or engaging with your customers is a minute that you might be spinning your wheels. Yet at the same time, you need a steady stream of new customers coming through the door to grow.

One tool that can help enormously to that end is Surefire Local, a powerful all-in-one marketing platform designed with local businesses like yours in mind. Not only does it allow you to handle everything you need for video marketing in one easy-to-use place, but it also includes functionality for location-based marketing, text message marketing, content marketing, competitor and keyword analysis, and more.

Local businesses in particular depend on ratings and reviews to attract attention. Surefire Local has all the tools needed to rank first across search engines like Google or Bing by requesting, managing, and responding to ratings and reviews in one place. The same is true for business listings – now, you can easily improve your search visibility by listing your business across more than 70 directories. Everything is updated from a single platform, so you don’t have to worry about remembering to update your address, your new operating hours, or anything else of that nature.

But most importantly, you can get insight into what works best for you through analytics and reporting. Remember that no two businesses are created equally – even if they’re operating in the same industry. Now, you can track calls, monitor web traffic, measure paid ad and social media campaign effectiveness, and more – all while reporting on the results and making sure that the right insights get into the hands of the people who need them the most as quickly as possible.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what type of business you’re talking about – small business marketing requires you to be as active as possible, not passive. It’s not something that you “do once and forget about” – it’s something you’ll have to work at every day. The consequences of getting it wrong involve getting passed behind by your competitors, and once that happens there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever be able to catch up again.

But by following best practices like those outlined above, and by leveraging a powerful tool like Surefire Local, you can enjoy all the benefits of this process with as few of the potential downsides as possible.

If you’d like to find out more information about harnessing the power of video marketing for patient engagement as a healthcare services professional, or if you have any additional questions that you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. You can also click here to schedule a Surefire Local demo to get additional insight into what a robust platform can do for you and your healthcare marketing efforts.