When content marketing increases lead generation for a whopping 74% of companies, developing a solid content marketing strategy for healthcare should be an integral part of your business plan. As tech continues to invade and innovate in the healthcare space and competition increases, it’s more important than ever to look for smart ways to make your business stand out. And that’s what good content marketing can do for you.
What is healthcare content marketing?
Before we dig into healthcare content marketing, let’s quickly recap what content marketing is. Essentially, content marketing is the creation and distribution of any type of content (written, video, audio) designed to attract and acquire a defined audience and ultimately profitable customer action. So what does that mean for the healthcare industry?
It’s a way for you to cut through the noise and misinformation prevalent on Google, Meta, and other less trustworthy sources by putting your industry expertise to good use. By creating content that directly addresses patients’ concerns or answers questions other businesses in the industry may have, you can build trust, draw engaging audiences to your site, and ultimately start bringing in new customers and/or patients.
Why is healthcare content marketing effective?
The reason that content marketing is so effective is because much more so than other industries, the healthcare industry relies on trust to build its business. Healthcare means you’re dealing with sensitive medical information and true matters of life and death which means customers need to trust you to even consider giving you their business.
Successful content marketing strategies for healthcare understand that this is the best way to show off their expertise and that doing so is one of the smartest ways to build trust. It shows audiences that you care about their concerns and can address them directly and honestly, which in turn can make them feel more comfortable turning to your business when they need to most.
What should a content marketing strategy for healthcare look like?
There are many ways to develop a plan of attack for getting your content marketing off the ground. Here’s how to get started:
- Define your target audience.
Are you selling to patients or healthcare providers? What do their individual needs look like? What is your ideal customer like?
- Determine what success looks like.
Use SMART goals to set realistic KPIs that you can track and record. While the ultimate goal may be to boost your revenue, your KPIs can include everything from site traffic to post engagement.
- Choose your marketing channels.
Pick where you want your content to appear and most importantly, where you think it’s most likely to reach your target audience.
- Create unique, useful content using SEO.
Use intelligent and relevant SEO keywords to help guide the subject of your content and tailor that content to fit the marketing channels you’d like it to appear on.
If that sounds like a lot, don’t worry — you don’t need a whole healthcare content marketing agency to come to your aid. Ranq can develop an entire content marketing strategy for you, plus even create the content itself!
Best content marketing ideas for the healthcare industry
With a general outline of how to get started in place, you’ve got a great base to launch your strategy. Now let’s look at some of the most helpful tips to make sure your campaign is a successful one.
Write on health topics relevant to your audience
Your content should speak directly to your audience which means you need to understand what they want and what they’re looking for. Doing some basic keyword research is a great way to get started. Looking at what phrases and questions your audience is looking for can help you see where you can provide useful answers.
If you’ve created an ideal customer profile (ICP) for your target audience, you can also use that to help guide you. Take what you know about your ICP and consider what topics would be most interesting to them. You can also do competitive analysis to see where current top performing pages are falling short.
Use straightforward, accessible language and graphics
Whether you’re speaking to future patients or other businesses, your content should be accessible above all else. Showing your expertise doesn’t mean alienating potential customers with insider jargon and technical terms. Your goal should be to break down healthcare concepts and terms to the most straightforward interpretation possible. Visuals like charts and graphics are a great way to do this.
A recent study showed that original infographics were by far among the top performing visuals marketers could lean on. When done right, it’s a simple way to make sure your audience is following along and engaging with what you’re sharing. Making anything more complicated than it reasonably needs to be just runs the risk of a high bounce rate and missed opportunity.
Build authority with social proof
Social proof can be a powerful tool to help create trust and give your business a reputation as an authority in the world of healthcare. Considering that 82% of consumers seek recommendations from friends and family before making a purchase, ensuring your business’s rep is sterling is sound advice. But there are a few different ways to achieve this that can be a great place to start:
- Case studies: These are detailed examinations and analyses of a specific strategy or marketing campaign that for shows how and why it was successful. (Note that the goal is not to skew results to SEEM positive, but to choose your most successful cases.)
- Reviews: Honest, unedited reviews from real consumers can go a long way toward establishing your credibility because it shows that people really love the product.
- Awards: Highlighting any awards you’ve received can hold more authority with potential consumers.
Rely on subject matter experts (SMEs)
It can be tough to find experienced writers to craft your content in any industry, but in the healthcare content marketing field it’s even tougher because you need writers that are also SMEs. SMEs are “subject matter experts” which means they actually have a background in the particular field they’re writing about. Thankfully, if you’re working with Ranq, all our healthcare content is well-researched and written by those with that necessary experience in the field.
Fight back against health misinformation
A great and necessary source of content can be to fight back against any pertinent health misinformation. There’s a lot of it out there, and if you can create thoughtful and well-researched content to combat it, you’ll not only be doing your audience a favor, you’ll be boosting your own credibility.
This is also another area where doing a little competitive research can give you an edge. Doing everything you can to make sure your response to the misinformation isn’t just accurate and credible, but easily digestible can help your pages rise in the search results.
Optimize all content for search engines
The same keyword research you did to help guide the subject matter in your content should also be used to optimize it. Using SEO best practices, you can help make sure your site shows up prominently in the search results for the terms most relevant to your audience.
That said, just because you got a page or article set up with the right keywords doesn’t mean it’s good to go forever. Keep your site fresh and competitive in the Google rankings with regular updates to make sure your pages stay high in the search results.
That’s another reason why it’s great to work with Ranq: we can optimize existing content and create new optimized content simultaneously.
Ranq: Your very own healthcare content marketing agency
While creating and maintaining healthcare content marketing can take a lot of work, you don’t have to do it alone. Ranq is here with a team of experts that can optimize your entire site, and even craft brand new, engaging content designed to help your business perform. We can write, edit, and audit your site, which means there’s no time like the present to talk to Ranq today!