This post is sponsored by Fathom.
Regardless of differences among health systems, one similarity is certain: They all want to know what their competitors are doing online and how they can do it better.
Much of the reason for the concern about competition is the fact that two or three health systems are typically situated within a 10-20 mile radius of each other. Patients generally have the option to choose where they get treated. In addition, the Affordable Care Act is shrinking hospital margins and adding pressure on marketing teams to help generate incremental patients.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Fathom has seen a recent increase in the number of healthcare advertisers using PPC to drive more patients. This trend is reflected broadly in the U.S. healthcare and pharma industry. In fact, according to eMarketer, digital ad spending in that category will increase to $1.47 billion within three years (by 2017).
Knowing the attention health systems pay to competition, Fathom decided to perform a competitive study—“Health Systems & Paid Search: A Study of Service-Line Competition” —using a research tool called The Search Monitor. It allows you to survey keywords, search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) and a location. The basic package offers scans of the search-engine results pages every four hours.
How can “spying” work to a health system’s advantage? By determining which competitors’ ads are listed for particular keywords, how often, and their average position. In hospital terms, it allows Fathom to tell clients which service lines their competitors are promoting and estimate how much they are spending in order to bring sharper strategy to their online marketing campaigns.
One of the most important competitive metrics that Fathom’s health-system clients want to know is what their own impression share is vs. their main competitor(s). Impression share is basically how often ads are showing up vs. the number of searches for the keywords bid on. Impression share—found within Google AdWords—is either limited by budget or rank (average position). The Search Monitor allows advertisers to see keyword rank relative to frequency, which not only shows how often a health system and its competitors show up, but also reveals on average where each ranks!
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
The tool also allows systems to see their “Biggest Threats by Market Share” at the level of each service line or even keyword. This information is especially important, allowing the tracking of market share week over week to see who’s spending more or less and gaining or losing market share. The technology also provides a report of “Newest Threats by Market Share” to better keep track of who’s gaining traction and taking away incremental patients by increasing visibility.
In addition to spy technology tools, simple keyword searches can determine what competitors are bidding on, as well as analyses of ad copy and landing pages. Important questions to ask are:
- Does the competition have multiple variations of ads for different service lines and keywords? Are they testing ads?
- Do they have the searched keyword in the ad copy? What is the call-to-action?
- Is the competition using ad extensions, such as sitelinks, call extensions, review extensions, and location extensions?
- What is the experience like from a mobile device? Are they promoting the same service lines on mobile? Do they have a responsive or mobile landing page?
- Are the competitors sending all ads to a homepage (seen all too often!). Are they using custom PPC landing pages or just sending users to a related page on their regular website? Is there a clear call-to-action, and is it consistent with the call-to-action on the landing page?
To learn more about the competitive study, see: “Health Systems & Paid Search: A Study of Service-Line Competition.”
