Online marketing can help you generate tons of leads for your business. If you’re a Medicare provider or supplier, you must be in search of Medicare leads. There are multiple ways you can use to generate leads from online sources. But you’d have to adhere to specific guidelines while marketing and generating those leads.
If you’re just getting started with your campaigns, then read this article before moving forward. It explains the top Medicare lead generation guidelines businesses must adhere to.
HIPAA
Since you’re operating in the healthcare and insurance domain, you must comply with HIPAA or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This act lays out the guidelines on how to handle sensitive data in the electronic format. Since you’re involved in handling the data, you are responsible for protecting the patients’ privacy and security. HIPAA has rules for the following:
- Privacy Rules – There are privacy rules that set national standards when you can and cannot use or disclose protected health information.
- Security Rules – The security rules specify protocols that businesses must implement to protect electronic information.
- Breach Notification Rule – This rule makes it mandatory for businesses to notify individuals whenever there’s a security breach.
To become HIPAA compliant, you may have to hire a consultant.
GDPR
GDPR is another regulatory compliance requirement that you must abide by. GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation, came into effect on May 25, 2018. Initially made for the European Union region, the compliance is now being adopted all over the world.
The regulation has policies for collecting, processing, and securing personal information. As opposed to HIPAA, which is concerned with protected health information, the rule applies to all data types, including genetic and biometric data.
SEO Guidelines
If you’re going to market your business and services through the search engine, you must comply with the SEO guidelines. These are the guidelines laid out by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Though the list is long, some of the measures you must take are:
- There must be no plagiarism on your website
- You should use keywords organically and not forcibly and excessively
- You must focus on the user experience first and aim to provide a better experience
- Your website must be mobile-optimized
- Your website should load fast across all devices
These are just the basics of SEO to get more Medicare leads. Without following these guidelines, your website will not rank well on SERP or even may get penalized and blacklisted.
EAT Principles
EAT is a subdomain of SEO specifically for sensitive industries like healthcare and finance. EAT stands for Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness. To rank well in the healthcare space (which also covers Medicare), you need to demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in your content.
Google has modified its algorithm to weed out low-quality and spam-like content in this sector to protect its users. For more information, you can refer to the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Since these guidelines are checked manually by Google employees, you must take extra measures to ensure you follow the EAT principle.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads Guidelines
The best way to generate Medicare leads is to run ads. You can run ads on websites like Google and Facebook, but only when you comply with their ad policies and guidelines. Both companies have specific requirements when it comes to running ads on their platforms. They are quite exhaustive, and you must meet all of them. From ad copy to images to call to action, you must comply with the guidelines.
As the world of online marketing evolves, the guidelines will undergo modifications and will change. If you want to keep generating Medicare leads, you must stay updated with these regulatory changes and implement them in your marketing activities. With that said, it’s imperative to work with a certified and qualified agency if you’re going to outsource your marketing.
