What to Look for in a Hospital Advertising Agency

Hospital advertising is hard.

Third-party cookies are going away and privacy laws are making targeting harder than ever. Nearly half of marketers are concerned about the ability to target the right audience.¹

HCPs are using multiple devices — some households have 25 connected devices — making attribution, measurement, and return on investment (ROI) difficult to measure.²

HCPs are seeing more ads than ever, putting a premium on using the right ad types and messaging. An HCP could see between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day.³

These challenges are just the tip of the iceberg that stands in the way of effective hospital advertising.

A hospital advertising agency can help you engage HCPs, increasing patient referrals for your hospital.

The trick is to find the right one.

Here’s what to look for in a hospital advertising agency to get the best ROI.

What Is a Hospital Advertising Agency?

A hospital ad agency specializes in creating, launching, and optimizing campaigns for hospitals that want to increase referrals from HCPs, build awareness, drive recruitment, and more. Unlike traditional advertising agencies that are industry-agnostic, hospital advertising agencies only work in the healthcare space, giving them a clear vantage point into the industry’s unique challenges and nuances.

Hospital Advertising & Marketing Agencies: What Should You Look for When Picking One?

So, you’re looking for a hospital advertising and marketing agency?

Here’s what to look for to ensure you pick the right one for you:

Healthcare Expertise

The most successful people often have something in common: They’re masters at something rather than average at a bunch of different things.

Your hospital advertising agency should live by this motto. Rather than working with organizations across industries, your agency should only work with companies in the healthcare space.

Hospital advertising comes with an inherent set of challenges, like patient data privacy laws, corporate structures (i.e., hospital leadership), strict regulations, different pain points, and more.

Working with a hospital advertising agency that intimately understands hospitals, their demands, and what it takes to engage HCPs is the only realistic way to launch campaigns destined for a measurable ROI.

Accurate Data & 1:1 Targeting Capabilities

The key to any hospital advertising strategy: HCP data and targeting strategies.

If a campaign doesn’t check these boxes, you’re leaving performance and cost efficiencies on the table — ones that’ll prevent you from sustaining your strategy.

For this reason, your hospital ad agency must have accurate and brand-safe HCP data that allows for 1:1 HCP targeting.

With this data, you can target HCPs by AMA-recognized specialty, subspeciality, and other characteristics that align with your ideal HCP profile. Said another way, you can narrow your viewfinder and deliver ads to HCPs who are more likely to convert.

Transparent NPI Reporting

Utilizing NPI reporting is the quickest and easiest way to electrify your hospital advertising campaigns.

Vanity metrics are fine and can be used as a barometer for successful hospital advertising. However, relying on impressions, clicks, and other high-level performance metrics alone doesn’t tell you enough about the performance of your hospital marketing agency.

Getting the most ROI from your hospital advertising campaigns requires a deep dive into performance; your HCP hospital advertising agency must be willing to go down this path with you.

They should be willing to walk down the path you choose, giving you a clear view of the metrics you care about.

Thousands of clicks and impressions are great, but if they don’t lead to real business results, like more referrals from target HCPs, they’re not worth much.

So, when you’re looking for a hospital advertising agency, make sure they’re honest and upfront about their NPI reporting and that they’re breaking down performance by NPI numbers so that you can truly see how you’re doing.

Cost-Efficiency

We’ve seen the cost of houses, groceries, and just about everything else rise. On a fundamental level, the “why” behind the rise is as simple as supply and demand.

While using this in the context of hospital advertising isn’t quite apples to apples, it still applies. A lot of hospitals (demand) are fighting for limited ad inventory (supply). As a result, prices are going up.

As this happens, ad budgets don’t go as far, putting pressure on you to squeeze as much value as possible out of each dollar.

This is why cost efficiency is key when looking for hospital marketing services. The agency should have an understanding of your financial situation, budget, and current market conditions to help you generate performance now and for quarters to come.

Programmatic Expertise

There’s a reason so many companies trust ad agencies: Programmatic advertising is complex, time-consuming, and hard to consistently get right.

Add the challenges that come with the healthcare industry, and you have your work cut out for you.

A hospital advertising and marketing agency with HCP advertising and programmatic expertise can help you navigate these challenges while successfully steering your campaigns within the industry’s red tape.

Ask yourself these questions when evaluating agencies:

• Does the agency have a plan for HCP targeting when Google sunsets third-party cookies?
• Do they have experience with first-party data and applying it to cross-channel campaigns?
• Have they mastered ad frequency and creative versioning to prevent ad fatigue?

Programmatic advertising can be an effective way for you to increase patient referrals from HCPs, build awareness, improve recruitment, and more. For that to happen, you need digital marketing services for hospitals built on proven programmatic expertise.

3 Examples of Our Programmatic Expertise

• Pharma Company Gains Market Share With CTV
  • A leading pharma company wanted to gain market share in the United States. To do that, it teamed up with Adfire Health to launch a CTV campaign aimed at cost-efficient conversions.
  • The campaign ran on CTV devices, such as Roku and Sling TV, targeting the company’s first-party audience. Overall, the campaign outperformed the company’s other vendors by reaching 67.2% more HCPs at an 80.6% lower cost per thousand impressions (CPM). At the same time, the campaign generated a 15.9% lower cost per conversion (CPC) than banner ads.
• HCP Data Helps Rx Drug Stay on the Market
  • A #1-branded Rx drug was planning to stop sales because a generic version of its drug was coming onto the market at a lower cost to patients. Before this happened, the company contacted Adfire Health to learn about its options and what it could do to increase sales.
  • Using our proprietary HCP data, we launched a campaign aimed at a gated website. Overall, the campaign resulted in a 295% lift in conversions from the time of launch, 8,000+ total conversions, 62M+ HCP impressions, and 21,900+ site visits.
• Digital Banking Platform Targets Nurses With Proprietary Data
  • A digital banking platform wanted to generate leads for its healthcare loan and personal banking divisions. Having previously targeted doctors but now seeing diminishing returns, Adfire Health recommended advertising to nurses instead.
  • Using our proprietary database, we launched a campaign that reached 271K+ targeted nurses at a .57% CTR and $3.13 CPC, ultimately helping the banking platform generate more than 100 leads a month.

A Client-First Mindset

We’ve come full circle. In 2022 and beyond, you need a hospital advertising agency that puts you first.

Do not, under any circumstances, compromise.

Your agency and account managers should be open and receptive to feedback.

They should be timely in their communication to enable your campaigns to keep up with the always-evolving programmatic landscape.

Above all else, they should put you and your goals first — even if it’s not in the best interest of their bottom line.

If you find a hospital marketing company that checks all of these boxes, you and your campaigns are in good hands.

Hospital Advertising Agencies: The Best Way to Take Your Campaigns to the Next Level

If you could put a rocket booster on your campaign to improve performance and lower costs, would you?

We hope so. That’s what working with the right hospital advertising agency can do.

Adfire Health is a healthcare advertising agency with a proven track record of helping hospitals develop campaigns that engage HCPs across the digital world.

We do this by combining years of hospital advertising experience with our proprietary database of more than 7MM HCPs and 1.4MM registered NPIs to help hospitals build the perfect audience and achieve their goals.

Want to learn more about Adfire Health? Reach out today.