Every health system wants more patients, especially in today’s uncertain climate. Healthcare marketers mostly rely on B2C campaigns to bring those patients through the doors. This B2C work is essential – but we often scratch our heads about why more marketing teams don’t also embrace B2B referral marketing. 

So we thought we’d map out how referral marketing can make a difference, and offer tips on how to get started in ways that increase volumes and prove ROI.
 

Healthcare Referral Marketing: Reasons to Believe

Here’s the TL;DR about why health systems should invest in referral marketing: 

• When a patient needs to see a specialist, a recommendation from their primary care provider or another specialist is the most influential factor in who they choose. 

• This means that persuading one doctor to send patients to your health system can influence the decisions of many future patients.

• In turn, referral marketing ROI can be much higher than B2C ROI. Why? Because consumer marketing wins one patient at a time, and that patient might only come in for a single service or procedure. When referral marketing wins one physician, it can influence hundreds of patient decisions, creating a long-term pipeline. 

  
  

Don’t worry, we’re not recommending you de-emphasize B2C – it’s critical. We’re just encouraging you to consider a strategy where B2C works hand-in-hand with referral marketing: Your consumer campaigns build affinity that helps patients feel comfortable with your system when their physician recommends you.
 

Two Common Referral Marketing Mistakes

Of course, referral marketing is tricky and we see health systems make two common mistakes. 

Mistake #1: Treating Physicians Like Consumers

The most common mistake is to take consumer marketing and distribute it across physician platforms. We get it: You’ve invested tons of resources in your B2C work and it (hopefully) turned out great, so it’s tempting to repurpose it. But physicians need something tailored to their wants and needs.  

Mistake #2: Promoting Instead of Educating

The second most common mistake is to churn out marketing assets that tout your differentiators and services, without stopping to ask what’s going to be truly engaging for physicians. 

You’ve seen this content: Emails, print pieces and posts that boil down to “Here’s what makes our (insert service line) great”. They list everything you offer, the doctors on your team and maybe a few things that set you apart. And they get lost in the sea of sameness that fills each physician’s overloaded inbox.
 

Five Tips to Set Referral Marketing up for Success

1. Start with a pilot. This will help you establish your B2B content marketing strategy, build its infrastructure and demonstrate ROI on a relatively small budget. The ideal candidate: A service line where you have a competitive advantage, relatively fast access, a need for more volume and physicians who are eager to collaborate with marketing. A one-year commitment is enough to show results.
   
   

2. Develop a brand narrative just for physicians. You probably already have a B2C brand platform that maps out your differentiators and key messages. For referral marketing, you need to make it come alive for physicians. This means creating a narrative and key messages that echo your core branding and also address things like referral barriers and why physicians should send patients to you. 
   
   

3. Use an educate-first approach. Physicians live in the same overwhelming media environment as the rest of us. The best way to break through is to create content they find valuable and can even enjoy. This means developing assets that add value to a physician’s practice. Instead of just telling them what your heart center offers, help them sort through new guidelines or learn about new treatments. Then weave in your differentiators along the way. 

4. Partner with your liaisons. They’re experts in the people you’re trying to reach and in what’s resonating with physicians on the front lines. Solicit their insights to better understand referral drivers and barriers. Be sure everything you create is useful to them. That way, they can use your content as touchpoints in their outreach, which amplifies your referral marketing and makes it easy to get feedback on your content directly from physicians. 
   
   

   Your campaign should also include NPI tracking so you know which physicians are engaging with your content. Liaisons can use that information to follow up with those physicians, answer questions and guide them across the referral bridge.
   
   

5. Use multiple channels and media. An ideal pilot campaign includes email, social media, print referral guides or handouts, and a physician-facing web page that hosts the campaign content (articles, videos, webinars etc.). 

Setting this up with NPI tracking and syncing with your CRM lets you tie referrals back to your campaign, so you can prove ROI and open the door to a larger referral marketing push.
  

Need Help Getting Started? 

Message Lab Media is the only healthcare content marketing agency with a dedicated B2B team, and we help health systems nationwide develop strategies that set referral marketing up for success. To learn more, you can: 

• Read a case study of how we’re helping a key client increase referrals. 

• See a blog post with in-depth tips on how to bring referral marketing to life.

And don’t hesitate to contact us or schedule a call – we always love meeting new people and trading ideas!