The Power of Live Streaming - for small local healthcare practices

digital marketing healthcare marketing live video local marketing Feb 29, 2024

We all know that technology and marketing are moving at one heck of a speed and keeping up is really hard, especially if it isn't your forte, passion, or area of expertise.

BUT we also know (hopefully) that as the owner of a small healthcare practice, you can't just stick your head in the sand and hope it will all go away - BECAUSE IT WON'T!!

So how can you maximize the impact you can have with your marketing in the least amount of time?

I give you Live Streaming . . . .

The Rise of Live Streaming in Healthcare Marketing

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, small local healthcare practices need to find innovative ways to connect with their potential patients. One powerful tool that has gained momentum recently is live streaming. In this blog post, I want to help you explore why live streaming could be a game-changer for your practice's marketing strategy and how it can enhance the key elements of the patient marketing cycle.

OK let's take a step back and start with the basics.

What is Live Streaming?

Well according to Wikipedia

"Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as streaming, the real time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other forms of streamed media, such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos."

So basically live streaming is live transmission of video or audio broadcast across one or more of your digital platforms.

It's an online real-time, interactive way of engaging with your audience whoever they may be. It's similar to sharing a video on your social platforms, but because it's live it is much more personal and has much more power to connect with the kind of people you want to surround your practice with, and build relationships and trust with them.

Live streaming is emerging as potentially a great promotional marketing tool for small local healthcare practices, like physiotherapists, osteopaths, and podiatrists, not just for broadcasting a message; but it's also about building a community.

(If you are not sure if you should be building a community around your practice take a look at our recent blog )

Back to live streaming - let's dive in and explore why it could be a game-changer for your practice.

How live streaming can impact your small local practice?

1. Building a community of patients

With its three way engagement, live streaming isn't just about sharing information; it's about creating a sense of community.

You ➡️ Patients
Patients ➡️ You
Patients ➡️ Patients

As a local healthcare practice, you can use live streaming to build connections in all three categories and engage with your audience on a personal level, so that you build a strong community of like minded patients, potentially sharing some common ground in terms of health concerns or activity type for example.

2. Supporting your patient marketing cycle

Your patient marketing cycle is made up of 7 elements

Here is how Live Streaming can help support the first 4 phases of the cycle.

1. Know: Helping people discover your practice

You can use live streaming to increase your practice's visibility and let potential patients know you're there in their local area.

💡 Idea - Live events and workshops

Host live events or workshops to showcase your expertise. This not only educates your audience but also positions your practice as a go-to resource in your community.

💡 Idea - Local collaboration

Use live streams to collaborate with other local businesses or specialists to help address a problem your potential patients need help with. This introduces your practice, showcase your team, and establishes you as local. It lets the community know you exist and are more than a healthcare provider; you're a supportive neighbour.

2. Like: Help people decide if they like you as people

Connect with your audience on a personal level, allows them to get to know you as a person and decide if they like you - part of the buying decision.

💡 Idea - Personal insights
Share personal anecdotes, interests, or even your journey in healthcare. This humanises your practice and helps potential patients relate to you on a personal level.

💡 Idea - Behind the scenes
Give people the opportunity to see behind the scenes in your practice and the things you get up to away from work. This transparent approach allows viewers to understand the personalities behind the practice.

People choose practitioners they can relate to and live streaming can help you with that.

3. Trust: Help people see and believe in your clinical expertise

Establishing trust is crucial in the healthcare industry. You can leverage live streaming to help build that all important clinical credibility.

💡 Idea - Expertise showcases
Demonstrate practical skills through live demonstrations, explaining common issues and their solutions. This showcases your knowledge and skills, instilling confidence in potential patients.

💡 Idea - Case studies
Sharing real patient stories live on video can help people see you have a track record of helping people like them - you could even interview a patient live about their story to add real weigh to your live stream.

💡 Idea - Host live Q&A sessions
Addressing common health queries live really shows people the depth of your knowledge and expertise by sharing success stories, explaining treatments, and offering valuable health advice.

4. Try: Provide a taste of your clinical expertise for free

Encourage potential patients to experience your expertise firsthand before committing to an appointment.

💡 Idea - Free exercise or wellness classes

Offer short live classes demonstrating simple exercises or wellness routines. This not only promotes a healthy lifestyle but allows potential patients to try your expertise giving them more certainty about booking with you.

💡 Idea - Live group consultations

If possible within your profession, set up regular mini live consultations to address minor concerns with groups of dream patients. This allows individuals to experience your expertise, making them more comfortable seeking your services in the future.

Letting potential patients experience your expertise firsthand, creates a low-risk opportunity for them to try your services and confidence to book with you.

Where can you live stream?

There a number of platforms you can use to broadcast your live video streams including:

Your own website: Keeping the traffic going to your own site helps people become familiar with it but also helps improve your site's SEO performance.
Facebook Live: Ideal for reaching a broad audience, and fostering engagement through comments, reactions, and shares.
Instagram Live: Perfect for connecting with a younger demographic, utilizing features like questions and emojis.
YouTube Live: For those looking to create a library of informative sessions and build a long-term presence.
TikTok Live: Vibrant platform with huge growth in audience sizes
LinkedIn Live: Ability to target live streams to your chosen groups or target audience, but stil visible and discoverable to anyone

Maximising your reach, minimising the effort

Going live on one platform is pretty straightforward, but the ability to curate the experience with slick intros, streaming simultaneously to different platforms, auto recording, use of logos, overlays, and backgrounds to create a TV programme type of experience, plus the ability to chop your recorded live down into bite size chunks to use elsewhere in your marketing, requires the use of a third party platform like Ecam-Live or StreamYard.

To find out how these third party platforms can help you raise your Live Streaming game come and join me & my good friend Joe Shepherd on Thursday 7th March at 12pm GMT inside our Free Practice Momentum Academy.
Register to join the Academy and get access to the live workshop or the recording if you can't join us live.

Live Streaming in healthcare - See how it's done

Here are some healthcare practitioners already using Live Streaming effectively to grow a community as well as building their know, like, trust and try.

Dr Mary Claire Haver - Menopause specialist

Dr Tea - Podiatrist

Dr Clayton - Physical Therapist

Dr Michal Waldman - Foot and ankle surgeon

Conclusion: Your Practice, Your Community, Your Success

In a world where personal connections increasingly matter to the success of local businesses, live streaming is emerging as a powerful promotional marketing tool for small local healthcare practices. By figuring out how best to use live streaming, you're not just marketing; you're building a community, one live session at a time.

By building a community, increasing visibility, and showcasing your expertise, you can enhance the patient marketing cycle, creating a positive impact on your practice.

Fourteen years ago I was talking about the power of social media marketing and people thought I was nuts, that it was a fad and would go away. Well here we are in 2024 and I believe live streaming isn't just another trend; but that it's a powerful tool that will change how small local healthcare practices build and connect with their community. By incorporating live streaming into your digital marketing strategy, you can create human connections, build trust, and create a supportive community around your healthcare practice.

Ready to take the leap into live streaming - FREE workshop

Find out how it works and how you can leverage some pretty simple live videos to help create all of your online digital content for your marketing by joining me & my good friend Joe Shepherd on Thursday 7th March at 12pm GMT inside our Free Practice Momentum Academy.
Register to join the Academy and get access to the live workshop or the recording.

Your patients are waiting to connect with you in real-time!

Until next time . . . . stay curious