Guide to Podcast Advertising for Healthcare

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The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Advertising for Healthcare

Date

May 15, 2024

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Healthcare marketers face a dual challenge in advertising—maintaining trust while targeting their audiences with effective strategies. Given how essential credibility is in the healthcare industry, marketers must find channels that protect their reputation and align with their values and message.

Podcast advertising offers a unique solution. Podcast listeners choose shows according to their niche interests and follow podcast hosts they see as industry leaders in their fields. For healthcare advertisers, this gives you a unique opportunity to leverage a podcast’s credibility to connect with your target audiences.

Learn why podcast advertising works so well for healthcare providers and how you can choose the right shows to advertise on with more clarity and confidence.

Why are podcasts so effective in healthcare marketing?

Podcasts are becoming a top channel for healthcare and medical marketing because of their ability to reach a relevant, engaged audience.

According to Edison Research, there’s been a 50% boost in podcast listeners over the last five years. Health and lifestyle podcasts have also surged to the third-most-popular podcast category today.

Podcast advertising is contextually relevant when you choose the right shows and episodes to advertise on. Reaching listeners who are already interested in the topics you’re marketing helps you connect with more prospective customers through highly targeted ad campaigns. As a healthcare brand, this makes finding listeners who will relate to your services easier. You might target listeners based on specific health conditions, risk factors, demographics, psychographics, or another characteristic that aligns with your campaign strategy.

Podcast listeners remember podcast advertisements:

76% of listeners say they can recall at least one brand they’ve heard advertised on a podcast
63% of podcast listeners interact with a business after hearing about it in a podcast ad.
Half of Americans who listen to podcasts have bought something after hearing a podcast ad about it.

For healthcare organizations, this means you’re accessing highly relevant audiences who remember your brand and are highly likely to buy products and services.

The importance of brand safety and suitability in healthcare podcast advertising

Podcast advertising is an effective sales channel, but automating ads without brand safety and brand suitability measures puts your organization at risk.

Imagine crafting the perfect ad for your healthcare brand and seeing it appear next to medical misinformation. This could damage individual patient and customer trust. Even further, if your audience shares these poorly placed ads with others, it could lead to wider reputation damage and negatively impact campaign performance in the long-term.

When it comes to podcast advertising, context matters. With brand safety and brand suitability strategies, you can ensure your ads don’t end up next to content that conflicts with your unique message or potentially harms your organization’s reputation.

For example, if your organization advertises a new research-backed treatment for cancer but your brand appears next to content on herbal cancer remedies, it could undermine your research’s credibility. Instead, advertising on cancer support podcasts or shows about healthcare breakthroughs would be far more suitable.

But while healthcare organizations must maintain safety and suitability, it’s not easy to guarantee that your ads will appear in relevant, appropriate contexts if you’re working manually or using programmatic ad placement.

Unfortunately, podcasts have the unique issue of conversational nuances—discussions can often detour into controversial topics and be difficult to monitor for brand safety. For instance, a healthcare podcast focusing on mental wellness might veer into discussions around unconventional spiritual practices. Without the right brand safety and suitability tools to flag these conversations, you are missing the true context of the spoken conversation.

That’s where a tool like SeekrAlign™ comes in. Combining proprietary contextual AI and Global Alliance of Reliable Media (GARM) guidelines, its sophisticated AI algorithms assess each podcast episode’s words, tone, and context to help brands optimize their podcast placements for the highest safety and suitability. Its powerful content scoring system ranks shows based on civility to help you find the most relevant podcasts that align with your organization’s target audience—while preserving your brand’s safety.

How to pick suitable podcasts for healthcare advertising

To reach people who want your services, you need to know what your ideal customer looks like, what they value, and how they behave. Knowing who buys your products can help you strategize which podcasts those listeners head to. Let’s look at how to pick the right podcasts for your healthcare brand.

How to work out your target audience

Not everyone is your patient. You need to target listeners who would find a suitable use for your healthcare product or service.

Start by looking at your ideal existing customers and finding similarities between them.

List their demographics, such as their age, location, gender, and other relevant characteristics. Consider the demographics that may affect their health or put them at risk of conditions your brand can help with.

Next, think about their lifestyles and values. This helps you get a better feel for their healthcare interests and concerns.

Then, identify their specific healthcare needs and challenges. Consider who may need your information or service, whether you’re offering preventive care, specialized treatment, or general wellness information.

How to choose podcasts that align with your healthcare marketing efforts

The best podcasts for healthcare marketing will align with your target audience’s interests and concerns. If you advertise within the right conversations, you can position your brand as the solution to the health issues covered in the podcast.

When you’re picking podcast shows, think about the discussion topics. Focus on health and wellness topics that align with your specialties and services. For example, if you offer cardiac treatment, look for podcasts that focus on heart health. Consider audience alignment, too. Pick podcasts whose listenership mimics your target audience. If you focus on women’s health, it doesn’t make sense to advertise on a men’s lifestyle podcast.

You also want to look for podcasts that trusted experts host. Be sure to vet each podcast to make sure it covers high-quality, accurate, and informative healthcare content.

Finally, make sure every podcast episode you choose is brand-safe and suitable. This is where SeekrAlign comes in. Its AI-driven content scoring ranks shows in a huge database of over 40,000 podcasts and growing, so you can find safe and suitable content that aligns with your brand message.

SeekrAlign’s one-of-a-kind civility detection and detailed transcript analysis thoroughly assess every word and tone to pinpoint negative or harmful conversations that could impact your brand’s reputation. Thanks to its advanced search and filter options, it’s easy to find appropriate podcasts that fit with your brand’s message. Seekr’s sophisticated recommendation engine also opens up advertising opportunities with suggestions that mirror the genre and civility level of your preferred shows.

Designing impactful healthcare podcast ads

To thrive in the healthcare industry, you must build credibility and trust. New patients and customers want to know that your medical practices align with their values. Here are some digital marketing tips you can use to design impactful healthcare podcast ads.

5 tips to crafting better healthcare podcast ads

Speak directly to a solution: Be specific about the issues your healthcare brand handles to qualify ideal customers immediately.
Choose the right ad format: If you’re advertising to increase brand awareness, ads read by professional voice actors work best. If you’re trying to drive sales, opt for host-read ads.
Stay compliant: Make sure all messaging complies with laws and regulations within your healthcare sector. Steer clear of claims you can’t prove, and be ready to back up anything you do say.
Use Voice SEO: Ad placement tools can better categorize the topic of your ad when it’s full of relevant keywords.
Craft audience-specific messaging with AI: Seekr Generative AI can help you craft the perfect ad copy to resonate with your ideal target customer. Thanks to Seekr Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), you can feel safe knowing your AI content is specific and highly accurate.

What’s next for healthcare podcast advertising

Podcast advertising offers so much potential for your healthcare or pharma marketing strategy. It’s not just about raising awareness—people actually listen and buy based on these ads. To make the most of this medium:

Embrace dynamic ad insertion and contextual targeting to deliver ads that feel natural and relevant without disrupting the listener experience.
Explore native ads and podcast sponsorships for stories that truly engage and stick with your audience.
Use advanced tools and AI insights to track how well your ads perform and understand listener behavior, helping you spend smarter and get better results.

Begin by choosing the right podcasts that align with your brand and connect authentically with your ideal customers. With SeekrAlign, you can pinpoint the perfect settings for your ads, ensuring they reach the right people at the right time.