4 Essential Elements of a Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy
When our healthcare marketing agency started, healthcare was a very niche category. We were one of the few agencies working directly with medical and dental practices and hospitals of all sizes, patient volumes, and revenues. Now, as we've expanded our healthcare marketing, healthcare content marketing has become fiercely competitive. Providers and health systems are all fighting to get their content seen on every device and channel.
So how can you make your content stand out and draw in the patients you want?
4 Essential Healthcare Content Marketing Strategies
These fundamental elements can make healthcare your content appealing to the right audience at the right time and in the right place. The best strategies stem from a custom marketing plan that incorporates several elements (not just one) in a multi-channel campaign to hit audiences at multiple touchpoints.
1. Relevant, targeted messaging
Engaging an audience with content begins with knowing all about that audience. What do they do for a living? How old are they? What is the dominant ethnicity? What social media or online groups do they frequently visit? When you have key demographics, creating relevant content to reach an audience such as, “Hispanic moms ages 25-40,” or even more specifically “Hispanic moms ages 25-40 who want to lose the baby weight” is sure to get you clicks, calls, and website inquiries.
2. A responsive website
When people go online in search of healthcare information, a provider, or a hospital, they typically do so using their smartphones. No matter if they end up spending the bulk of their time researching on another device, like a tablet or a laptop, the majority of searches start on a mobile device.
It’s no wonder Google, one of the most popular search engines, recent updated its search results to mobile first indexing. This means Google now only displays the search results of websites that are responsive—meaning they adapt automatically to a smartphone screen. It makes sense, when you consider that in 2018, 52% of web traffic came from mobile. So, if you don’t have a mobile responsive website, your practice isn't as likely to appear in the search results.
3. Video, stat!
Video is the undisputed user engagement champion. Take the popularity and cultural influence of YouTube for example. Beyond viewership, it’s also a widely used search engine. YouTube averages 4 billion searches each month; dwarfing Bing and Yahoo combined, according to Forbes. Forbes also notes that more video content is uploaded to the internet in a single month than network television has produced in over 30 years.
Video is what the people want. So imagine the results a series of brief videos could generate to an audience looking for your services. Consider providing key benefits of a procedure, filming staff interviews, or sharing patient success stories. The power of video allows you to personalize your brand and invite people into your practice or hospital anytime.
4. Solid reviews
Some of the best healthcare content isn't actually generated by you and your team. Establishing a trusted reputation—through your website, social media or wherever your brand is present on the internet—is a must in today’s instant gratification, consumer-driven healthcare marketplace. Patient reviews, in the form of those little, yellow stars, can be your best friends. Displaying positive feedback (and immediately addressing negative comments) is the first step to building trust with patients. You can automate this process with a reputation management system in place as well.
If this all sounds a little overwhelming, it’s a good idea to partner with experienced healthcare content marketing professionals who can weave these important elements into a customized content marketing plan. One that includes social media strategy, website creation and monitoring, localized SEO and complete analytics to track engagement and ROI.
The success of your organization, your brand and your reputation are too important to get lost in the shuffle, or worse, to generate a mish mash of confusing brand messaging. Call 800-656-0907 today to learn more about our marketing partnerships.
