Social marketing and the mainstream media are key influences on health behaviours and health outcomes. There is therefore, a great deal of enthusiasm in utilising digital marketing in public health communications.
As a tool of information sharing and behaviour change, research has shown that carefully curated digital marketing campaigns from an experienced digital marketing agency, can cut through the online clutter. Read on to find out why you should utilise digital marketing, in order to promote positive health outcomes.
Encouraging Participation
When formulating a digital marketing campaign for health products or services, establishing a brand community and identity is integral to encourage sustainable change in participants.
Popular social media functions, such as photo tagging and retweeting, can be leveraged in order to create an online community and encourage participation through peer influencing.
Highly connected people and agencies that support and promote the campaign, can also influence others to both join and further share the campaign. By fostering these online communities, digital marketing can promote positive health outcomes and influence a culture of healthy choices.
Global Influence
Social media marketing is a digital powerhouse when it comes to promoting healthy eating habits and generating awareness of serious health issues. Digital networks connect people on a global scale, in ways that traditional marketing methods simply cannot accomplish.
In 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social network users around the globe. Social networks therefore provide digital marketers with the largest platform available to reach their audience and promote the benefits of healthy practices.
Insight Research
Getting to the core of people’s motivation is integral in order to influence sustainable positive behaviour change. Traditional health programs were influenced purely by professional assessments and limited community participation.
A substantial benefit of digital marketing is the ability to track and attribute results to specific campaigns and outreach efforts. Digital marketing platforms provide program leaders with the ability to integrate insights from audience and demographic research. Social media and digital platforms provide users with considerable data regarding their audience. This data can help program developers track their engagement, and determine which content is most influential upon their target audience. Digital marketing therefore benefits health programs, by getting to the core of people’s motivations and the environmental context to understand and ultimately influence behaviours.
Engagement
The loss of participants over time within a health intervention is well known problem and is caused by a loss of interest in participants the amount of content available is overwhelming. Consumers routinely take gym brochures and healthy living magazines, only to never take notice again.
Digital marketing promotes positive health outcomes, by retaining the interest of the target audience, at a fraction of the price needed for traditional marketing campaigns. With users consistently logged on to the Digital World, digital marketing allows program leaders to post regular updates, pose questions and encourage audience participation on posts. By retaining the interest of their target audience, digital marketers can promote positive health outcomes and sustainable behaviour change.
Transparency
Ignorance is a major factor in deterring the community from being proactive about their health. Digital marketing campaigns can therefore promote positive health outcomes, by providing a wider audience with transparent and easy to understand information, regarding issues in health and wellbeing.
Search engines now drive three times as many visitors to hospital websites than any other source. Consumers are now informed about their healthcare choices, and demand transparency and two-way communication with providers.
Digital marketing allows positive health promotion campaigns to move beyond informing and increasing knowledge, to actively influencing behaviours that benefit the health and wellbeing of individuals and the global community.
Bio: Laura Costello is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Law/International Relations at Latrobe University. She is passionate about the law, the power of social media, and the ability to translate her knowledge of both common and complex topics to readers across a variety of mediums, in a way that is easy to understand.
