Patient care, especially since covid, has become much more digitally focused. This means that a healthy online presence is an essential part of being able to provide excellent patient care, especially for healthcare providers navigating an increasingly competitive and tech-driven environment.

Whether you’re a private clinic, physiotherapy practice, dental surgery, or wellness brand, your digital strategy plays a key role in building trust, attracting new patients, and supporting existing ones. 

Here are six digital marketing tips to help your healthcare business thrive online:

1. Get Found Locally with Smart Local SEO

Most patients search for healthcare providers near them, and if your practice isn’t showing up in those results, you’re missing out. Local SEO helps make sure that your business appears in searches like “physiotherapist near me” or “private GP in Clapham.”

Key actions to take include creating and fully optimising your Google My Business Profile and including your business name, address, and phone number consistently across all listings (this is called NAP consistency). You can also encourage happy patients to leave Google reviews to improve your Google My Business Profile, and create local landing pages tailored to the areas you serve. 

This builds trust, boosts your visibility in local map packs, and puts you in front of the people who need your services most.

2. Use Paid Social Ads to Reach the Right People

Paid social advertising on platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and YouTube allows you to reach specific demographics. Whether it’s new mums looking for postnatal physio, professionals seeking mental health support, teenagers looking for a dermatologist, or older adults researching eye care.

You can tailor your ads based on location, age, interests and behaviours, life events (e.g. new parents). 

Paid social is also a powerful tool for raising awareness of new services, sharing health education content, or promoting time-sensitive offers like free consultations.

3. Optimise for Generative Search and the AI Shift

Search engines are evolving. Fast. Tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Microsoft’s Copilot are changing how people find and interact with healthcare information online.

To stay visible in these emerging AI-powered experiences make sure that you structure content clearly with FAQ sections, schema markup, and conversational language. 

Write authoritative, informative content that directly answers patient questions and build trust signals with reviews, credentials, user generated content, and links from respected sites. 

Generative Search tends to favour clear, helpful content from trustworthy sources, which means there’s never been a better time to invest in high-quality educational content.

4. Show, Don’t Just Tell: Testimonials and Case Studies

Patients want to hear from people like them. Authentic testimonials and case studies help humanise your services and build confidence in your care.

Make it easy for potential patients to find and connect with stories that reflect their own situation. Consider using short video testimonials from happy patients, written case studies outlining the journey from symptoms to solution, and highlight specific treatment outcomes or experiences. 

Just make sure to always get written permission, give patients the option to opt out of their stories being used at any time in the future, and protect patient privacy where appropriate.

5. Make Accessibility a Priority

Your website should work for everyone, including people with visual impairments, motor difficulties, or neurodiverse conditions.

Digital accessibility isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a legal and ethical obligation in healthcare and something that might actually be vital for some of your patients. 

Make sure your site uses clear, high-contrast colours and easy-to-read fonts, allows for keyboard-only navigation, has alt text for all images, and includes descriptive link text and properly labelled forms. 

We recommend a professional digital accessibility audit to identify gaps and ensure your site meets recognised standards. 

6. Create Helpful Content That Builds Trust

Blog posts, guides, videos, and downloadable resources are a great way to position your team as experts and support patients on their journey.

Great healthcare content might include answers to common patient questions, guides to specific treatments or conditions, behind-the-scenes videos introducing your team and facilities and walking patients through what a treatment with you is like. 

This not only helps with search visibility, but also reassures potential patients before they walk through your door.

Your online presence is often your first, and most important, interaction with a potential patient before they walk through the door and meet you in person. 

By investing in local visibility, smart advertising, accessible design, and content that builds trust, you can connect with your community and grow your practice in meaningful, ethical ways.

If you’re ready to take your digital marketing to the next level, we’d love to help. From SEO and paid media to accessibility audits and content creation, our team has experience working with healthcare professionals who want to make a bigger impact, online and off.

Let’s have a chat about how we can support your practice.