Posts

5 Tips to Level Up Your Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy

Did you know that healthcare-related queries account for about 7% of all Google searches? According to David Feinberg, head of Google Health, they get approximately 70,000 healthcare queries every minute. This translates to about 1 billion searches a day.

With these statistics, it’s pretty clear that people need a trusted and reliable source of healthcare information. This is your chance to position your practice in front of potential patients.

Use these tips when creating a content marketing strategy for your healthcare practice.

Begin with the audience in mind

Content marketing is about attracting the right audience. To do that, you need to know your audience on a deeper level.

– Who is your ideal audience?

– What’s important to them?

– What are their most common concerns?

– How can you serve their needs?

Once you have a better understanding of your audience, it will be easier for you to craft messages that resonate with them. Plus, you’ll be able to speak their language. Remember, content marketing is about the reader, not your brand.

Set clear, measurable goals

Creating content for your practice can be overwhelming given the sheer volume of options you have. Blog posts, video content, social media posts, podcasts, and ebooks are just some of them.

But when creating content, it is essential to take the time and decide what you want to achieve from it. Simply writing and publishing blog posts is not enough. Getting views isn’t a clear goal either.

When creating content, ask yourself:

– Do you want to educate your audience and turn them into clients?

– Do you want to increase engagement and connect with potential clients?

– Do you want to build trust with your audience and position yourself as a thought leader?

Identify how your content can serve your audience and then create pieces that tie back to that.

Focus on your area of expertise 

Some organizations focus on a specific niche. Similarly, every doctor has an area of expertise. Before you start working on your content marketing strategy, it is best to define your area of focus and the main problem areas in your niche.

Start by listing down some of the main concerns and pain points that people in your niche struggle with. You can easily list down some topic ideas based on these problems.

For instance, an ophthalmologist can educate their audience about the dangers of working on a computer for extended periods. On the other hand, dentists can talk about the importance of flossing every day or how to brush teeth with braces properly.

You want to become the person your audience relies on when they need information related to your area of expertise.

Go beyond written content

Content marketing isn’t just limited to written formats. Many businesses are fighting for people’s attention, so you need to figure out how to stand out. The key is to diversify your content strategy.

With the rising popularity of videos, it is good to include videos in your content marketing strategy. You can share short and informative videos on social media. Or do a live Q&A. This will not only help educate your audience but also increase engagement. Other content ideas include infographics, podcasts, webinars, and quizzes.

Humanize your healthcare brand 

A patient is more than just a name on a medical chart. They’re someone’s son, daughter, parent, sibling, or spouse. You won’t win their loyalty unless you show them that you care.

People are more likely to engage and connect with you if they know a real person behind your practice. Post regularly on social media. Create some video content. Respond to comments. Make sure, though, that you have a clear policy to let people know that they should contact their physician or 911 in emergency cases.

We can help!

Content marketing has been proven to be highly effective. When done right, it can help you improve your online visibility, boost SEO, and even position yourself as an expert in your industry. Keep in mind, though, that results take time.

To reap all the benefits of content marketing, you need to do post content regularly. It usually takes about six to nine months for your content marketing efforts to bear fruit.

Feel free to reach out to us if you need help with your content marketing strategy. Whether you’re just starting or you’re hoping to double down on your content marketing efforts, we’re to help.

Schedule a free 30-minute consultation call with us. Let us help you create engaging content that attracts the right traffic and converts leads.

 

5 Tips to Level Up Your Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy

5 Tips to Level Up Your Nutrition Content Marketing Strategy5 Tips to Level Up Your Yoga Content Marketing Strategy

5 Tips to Level Up Your Acupuncture Content Marketing Strategy

What’s Next for Content Marketing and SEO?

Increased focus on content will provide new challenges as more businesses invest in the area. Competition for those lucrative top spots in organic search results, is likely to increase further as more and more businesses adopt a content focused strategy. More competition in paid search too, means that budgets will need to increase in order to support the higher bids necessary to maintain visibility.

As social media reaches full maturity, so the techniques being used to
build and grow communities will need to be revised and sharpened in
order to rise above the hubbub

When it comes to social media, in order to rise above the high level of noise generated by increased adoption, boosting visibility will become even more crucial. Paid advertising, for example promoted posts and Facebook ads, will become increasingly necessary in order to reach customers. This means that companies who choose not to invest in this area and SMEs who simply don’t have the resources, will gradually loose out to competitors with deeper pockets.

Branding will become ever more important as businesses need to stand out from the competition. Smaller businesses whose activities are not currently strategically driven, will need to up their game in terms of both understanding and conveying their USPs and they will also need to get smart about how they measure their success and how they devise actionable insights.

If small businesses can remain both creative and agile, they will be able to grow their communities and more importantly, they’ll be able to leverage the power of those communities to their advantage. I’m pretty certain then that in 2014 we will see more investment into not just content marketing and relationship building, but into branding too.

Whilst opportunities will continue exist for those of us not lucky enough to have an internationally recognizable brand or large budgets, It’s not going to be easy. As 2014 progresses, small businesses will learn that investing in content marketing and developing their brand isn’t optional, it’s something they have to do in order to maintain their online visibility.

Marketing Insights for 2014

  1. Greater competition as the volume of content being published and promoted online continues to increase, making paid search more necessary
  2. Increased need to differentiate, making branding all important
  3. Increasingly necessary to pay for social media advertising alongside existing organic activities
  4. Social media continues to be an important communications with Increased adoption of Pinterest, particularly for online retailers and increased business adoption of  YouTube
  5. Responsive design will become even more widespread as the use of mobile devices for browsing the internet continues to increase
  6. Greater use of location based marketing, primarily Google Places/Google+ local
  7. Smarter metrics necessary in order to obtain clearer insights and more accurately measure ROI
  8. Strategically driven activities will become ever more widespread as social media reaches maturity
  9. Creativity, agility and innovation will become more important in helping marketers to grab and hold the attention of their audiences