Native advertising is transforming how the Indian market promotes healthcare products and services. With Indian users increasingly going online, it only makes sense to utilise existing platforms to better reach the target market. However, there’s a problem: due to banner blindness and the high costs associated with traditional online advertising, it can be difficult to achieve the outcome you want. That’s why many marketers are allocating an increasing part of their budget to native advertising. If you want to learn more about what makes native advertising a great addition to your strategy, keep reading.
Introduction to Native Advertising in the Healthcare Sector
Recently, there’s been a push against traditional advertising modes not only from consumers but also from the advertising platforms themselves. In fact, although native advertising is used across all industries, we’re seeing that healthcare brands are experiencing the greatest benefit from it.
But why is that the case? We’ll examine why native advertising is the preferred alternative for Indian marketers in the healthcare sector.
What Are Native Ads?
Before we begin, let’s define what native advertising is. Native ads differ from traditional advertising in how they advertise to your audience. Instead of standing out from the crowd to get noticed, native ads do the opposite: they blend in naturally to become part of the user’s browsing experience.
This way of promoting products and services has seen massive success across all industries. However, it is highly effective for the healthcare sector because the traditional modes are so heavily scrutinised. Often considered pushy for their practices, traditional ads focus on getting users to buy instead of educating them on why they should buy in the first place.
The Importance of Native Ads in the Indian Healthcare Market
Just to be clear, we’re not claiming that the traditional modes of advertising (both online and offline) have lost their relevance in the industry. It’s still up to the healthcare company to decide on their own strategy. However, for many brands, they are beginning to see the value in patient education and brand building. With that in mind, incorporating native advertising into the campaign is becoming more of a necessity than just one of the options.
Current Trends in Indian Healthcare Advertising
The landscape of healthcare advertising in the country is going through a major change. Indian audiences are becoming more educated about their potential options, their preferences are changing and regulations are becoming stricter.
Given the high internet penetration in India, online advertising is seen as a cost-effective way to rapidly achieve these new goals. We’re seeing doctors and healthcare providers become influencers. At a larger scale, native advertising has allowed companies to promote user education while improving brand visibility.
Benefits of Native Ads for the Healthcare Industry
In the healthcare industry specifically, we have seen companies and brands in this sector enjoy the following benefits.
- Increased patient awareness and education: This makes it easier for brands to communicate new innovations, which means less investment in educating consumers in the future.
- Higher engagement and trust in healthcare services and products: Since native ads don’t “force” your attention, users are more likely to see their relevance and naturally engage with them.
- Seamless integration with medical content, expert advice and wellness blogs: This type of medical content already has a built-in level of authority. By being integrated into it, native ads are also seen as trusted experts.
How to Implement Native Ads for Healthcare Success
You now know the benefits that native ads can bring to your healthcare brand. But how do you generate the results that you want? We’ve boiled it down to three elements: understanding your audience, crafting compliant and engaging content and choosing the right platforms. Learn more about the specifics below.
Understanding Your Audience
The healthcare industry is such a vast space, and your potential customers can vary drastically. For example, your target demographic could be patients, caregivers, doctors or wellness seekers. It truly depends on what you’re advertising.
On top of that, you also need to tailor your ads to different healthcare segments like hospitals, pharma, wellness and diagnostics as expectations of your target market will differ across segments.
Crafting Compliant & Engaging Content
In the healthcare industry, creating compelling messaging is still a priority. However, this should be balanced with informative and trustworthy healthcare content. Here are a few tips.
- Only cite relevant and verifiable sources like the Indian Medical Association and the World Health Organisation. If you’re going to cite studies, they should be from reputable journals like PubMed.
- Make the content user-friendly so that you’re not hiding any relevant information or overemphasising something that’s not important in the study.
- Encourage consulting with professionals, emphasising that all the content is for informational purposes and that it doesn’t replace professional medical advice.
In addition, all regulatory measures in India, such as the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, prohibit deceptive advertising and misleading claims. Failing to comply can tarnish the authority and reputation of the brand.
Choosing the Right Platforms
The goal of native advertising is to seamlessly blend into the existing content. So, it only makes sense that the most appropriate platforms are those that already cater to the healthcare industry.
The best option for you will depend on the product or service you’re selling, your target audience and your budget. However, to help you with this decision, we’ve summarised the pros and cons of top platforms in the table below.
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Medical portals | — Highly targeted audience — Creates credibility by association — Great for B2B and B2C markets | — Strict ad approval process — Limited audience |
| Wellness and health websites | — A great fit for the fitness and wellness space, as well as other markets in the preventive sphere — Highly engaged audience — Less restrictive ad approval process | — High competition for ads — Not great for medical device or pharma marketing |
| Publisher and content networks like MGID | — Massive reach without dealing with each publisher directly — Lower cost than on medical portals — Ensures that the ad fits seamlessly into the content | — May need to specify whitelisted publishers to avoid showing up at low-authority sites — Need compelling professional content to avoid looking like spam |
Case Study: MGID’s Success with Native Ads in the Healthcare Sector
We’ve discussed at length how you can implement native advertising and what that can look like in reality. However, the truth is there’s no one way to successfully employ native advertising in the healthcare industry. So here, let us introduce to you two case studies from MGID with entirely different goals and approaches.
Background
Brand A is a one-stop healthcare app where users can buy healthcare products, have e-consultations, get relevant samples collected at home and even have prescriptions delivered to their door. Recognising that the Indian population is becoming more digital, they wanted to look for a way to increase app installs as well as in-app transactions.
Meanwhile, Brand B is an Indian brand selling products in various healthcare verticals. They wanted to drive down their Cost Per Lead (CPL) to ₹436-523 and collect at least 25 leads per day. Unfortunately, even with their diverse use of marketing platforms, they couldn’t achieve this independently. So, with our help, they want to introduce native advertising into the equation.
Strategy and Implementation
Given the scope of work for Brand A, we did extensive research to identify the audience and the appropriate creative approach, using our findings to form a solid strategy and media plan. We performed split testing of campaigns to identify whether focusing on installs or simply getting them to the landing page would make more of an impact. Our strategy was largely targeted to potential users in big cities, focusing on the message that the app makes healthcare fast, convenient and affordable.
For Brand B, we assigned an account manager to handle all the campaigns. We used GEO and device targeting approaches and combined this with contextual targeting and a whitelist of publishers. By doing so, we could reach their target audience while still ensuring that the ads only appeared on reputable sites. In terms of the creative design, we stayed away from clickbait practices in order to create a lasting impact.
Results and Outcomes
In both cases, Brand A and B achieved their desired outcomes. With an ad spend of just ₹88,070 on Brand A, we were able to generate 36,899 clicks. We also achieved an average CTR of 1.99%, a CPC of ₹2.35 and a CPL of ₹252.87. The outcomes for Brand B were just as impressive. We achieved 1,950 conversions, which is 30% higher than we expected. We also got 708,712 clicks and an effective CPA of ₹453,45.
Future of Native Advertising in the Indian Healthcare Market
In the future, we expect native advertising to take up an even greater share of the advertising budget of healthcare brands in the future. As more companies see the potential outcome that they can achieve here, native advertising will continue redefining the advertising landscape with each new campaign.
Emerging Trends
This mode of advertising in the country will evolve alongside technology. That’s why, even today, you’ll see the following trends.
- AI-driven personalisation: Advertising will become even more personalised based on collected data.
- Hyperlocal ads: Healthcare brands are increasingly recognising the diversity of India, so expect to see ads that resonate with all market segments.
- Collaborations with micro-influencers: Instead of big celebrity endorsements, there are expected to be a lot more collaborations with doctors and other healthcare providers with a good social media following.
As you can see, the future of advertising is leading the way towards personalisation and building relationships.
Long-Term Benefits
For us, the biggest benefit of these emerging trends is the increased trust in the healthcare industry. In fact, misinformation and low-quality products are becoming relics of the past. With native advertising helping to eliminate that, patients are expected to become more engaged across all forms of communication. This positive change means that they’ll convert more easily.
Preparing for the Future
As it was before, authority is highly crucial in the healthcare industry. So, brands can leverage native ads to further promote user education on the latest technological or medicinal developments. This helps them retain their authority and relevance.
By focusing on indirect ways to promote health products and services, advertisers will be less prone to committing regulatory errors. Brands that comply with regulatory advertising standards and use native advertising will be able to stay competitive amid this changing landscape.
Conclusion
Native advertising is becoming even more relevant to the success of healthcare brands. However, just using this mode of advertising won’t cut it. It’s important to still use data-driven strategies that follow detailed research of the target audience and platforms. Most importantly, to avoid any hiccups, always comply with regulations.
It’s time for healthcare firms to embrace native ads for patient education and brand growth. So, if you haven’t already done so, the best time to use native ads is now! Achieve the best possible gains by acting fast!
