Accessible Healthcare Marketing

Creating and maintaining relationships is at the heart of any marketing strategy. This begins with identifying a target audience and appealing to your demographic through a variety of channels. And just like any other industry, inclusive marketing is especially important in healthcare. Here, AMNY Health Marketing discusses the primary considerations for your audience and some of the ways your organization can hone its digital marketing tactics to become more inclusive.

Why Inclusive Marketing Matters

According to World Health Organization (WHO), almost everyone will temporarily or permanently experience disability at some point in their lifetime. Could your marketing campaign be missing the mark with millions of people? For your strategy to resonate with a disabled or aging audience, accessibility must be taken into account.

To help marketers, web designers, and social media influencers make their digital platforms more accessible for people with disabilities, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed a collection of strategies and standards. These resources are based on four core accessibility principles:

  • Perceivable: The content can be readily seen or heard.
  • Operable: The interface is easy to navigate and can be accessed using different input modalities.
  • Understandable: The content is designed with readability and comprehension in mind.
  • Robust: The content is compatible with a variety of assistive technology.

Keeping these principles at top of mind should inform your accessible healthcare marketing strategy going forward.

How to Create ADA-Compliant Online Marketing

To start, learn to identify inclusion for those with diverse dexterity, vision, hearing, and cognitive experiences. Healthcare marketing teams incorporate a variety of methods to help ensure their messages achieve their goals in terms of reach. Some examples of ADA-compliant web design elements include the following:

Videos

From helping patients get to know your organization to attracting new hires, videos can be incorporated into a marketing campaign in a variety of ways. Including subtitles, transcripts, and audio descriptions help ensure your message is heard loud and clear.

Images

Images help bring your message to life. For many healthcare organizations, they’re also powerful social media tools. Be sure to include alt text and descriptive captions with each post to help ensure they achieve your desired impact.

Colors

Many people suffer from some form of color blindness. This means that fill patterns, borders, icons, and whitespace should be used thoughtfully.

Navigation

For a more holistic view of your healthcare organization’s online presence, consider your website. Does it support screen readers? Are call-to-action buttons accessible? These play a significant role in readability and audience interaction.

Longform Content

Headers in news articles, healthcare blog posts, and other types of longform content help those with screen readers and visual impairments navigate content well. Following a natural hierarchy and using the appropriate heading tags help make your content easier to follow.

Hyperlink Anchor Text

“Click here” doesn’t just sound elementary – it’s also not very helpful for the visually impaired. When crafting anchor text, use phrasing that’s more descriptive. This helps ensure internal and external links in your emails, websites, and blog are easier to find.

While creating a more accessible web presence that drives engagement means taking several details into account, meaningful changes can pave the way toward a more equitable future for your patients.

Prioritizing Inclusivity in Healthcare

One of the most important things you can do as a healthcare organization is make representation a priority within your marketing capabilities. This helps your healthcare facility or private practice ensure all patients feel seen and welcome. This is especially important if your services directly benefit people with disabilities. Some examples of this include:

  • Celebrating awareness months/days on social media
  • Publishing blog posts that discuss disability topics
  • Use images that highlight individuals with disabilities

Representation in advertising does more than appeal to diverse groups within communities – it shows your commitment to inclusivity and better enables people to find the compassionate, comprehensive healthcare they need to thrive.

Create a More Accessible Campaign with AMNY Health Marketing

At AMNY Health Marketing, we help hospitals, health systems, private practices, and home health agencies create campaigns that help them achieve their goals. Our team can help you identify potential problem areas within your current strategy and make recommendations backed by a history of success in the industry. For more information about accessible healthcare marketing and how you can tailor your strategy, contact us today.