Content marketing is the best way for healthcare businesses to start getting new patients and retain existing ones. But starting a content marketing plan is not that easy. Using some simple guidelines, healthcare businesses can implement content marketing plans with a much higher chance of success.

Introduction

Marketing is a constantly changing field. As society and consumption habits change, so do the ways that companies market their products. From the days of direct marketing to highly targeted online marketing, the field has seen plenty of changes in the last hundred years or so.

The healthcare industry has witnessed similar changes and evolutions over the same time period. As healthcare turned, evolved, and became more precise, there arose a need for healthcare businesses to start marketing their products and services to potential customers.

Today, the healthcare industry is at a precipice of digital evolution. The world is shifting towards the digitalization of businesses and services at a rapid pace. The pandemic has only hastened the speed with which this change is occurring.

If healthcare organizations don’t adapt to the changes today, they’ll be left in the dust. Content marketing is one of these changes that the healthcare industry has to contend with.

Content Marketing

If you want to sell a product or service without “selling” it, then content marketing is the ideal marketing strategy for you and your business. Content marketing operates on a very simple principle – you can get businesses success by engaging and interacting with your potential customer base.

By creating, sharing, and curating information that would be relevant to your customer base, your business can create a loyal audience that would be much more interested in your products and services. This loyal base of customers is not only a better source of leads than more aggressive marketing tactics, it is also more sustainable over a longer period of time.

But at the same time, creating an effective and impactful content marketing strategy is not that easy. Though that shouldn’t stop you from at least starting your medical content marketing at the simplest level. To help you along the way, here are our top 3 best practices for content marketing that you should keep in mind.

Content Marketing Tips

Stick To Your Niche

Effective content marketing requires you to showcase your abilities as an expert in a particular field. For medical content, this is doubly important. That’s why healthcare professionals should stick to their field of expertise in order to make the most out of their years of study and medical practice. Deep knowledge and value addition are what sets apart the most successful content marketing plans from the ones that just look like filler material.

This is not to say that your healthcare organization cannot write about other topics, just that the majority of its content should be focused on its field of expertise.

Highlight Social Proof

Social proof is the phenomenon where you choose to try a new Korean restaurant at the behest of your family and friends’ recommendations. Similarly, you can utilize social proof by highlighting patient success stories and similar content pieces to show off your services as well as your expertise in solving the problems that patients care about.
Keep in mind that whatever you are writing still needs to be HIPAA-compliant. Try to include real stories while staying on the safer side of regulations.

Don’t be Afraid to Act Human

Professional mannerisms are taught to healthcare professionals for a very long time. For many healthcare professionals, this takes the form of acting stoic and emotionless with patients. But today’s patients are a different breed, and it doesn’t hurt to show some personality and empathy, especially in the various content marketing channels that your healthcare organization uses.

Another facet to take into consideration is increased interactiveness with readers (and potential customers) through your content marketing channel. Higher interactiveness leads to higher engagement, which further translates to better prospects of new patients coming to you.

Conclusion

Content marketing can be a highly effective marketing tactic that gives a long-term return for a business over many other traditional marketing methods. While content marketing has a high return on investment, like any other marketing medium it does require careful planning and execution.

Many healthcare businesses confuse the ease of getting started with content marketing with the ease of executing it. Getting a content marketing strategy is easy, getting a good marketing strategy is much harder in comparison.

That is why you should trust BraveLabs, the medical content company that partners with healthcare businesses to get the best possible results out of their content marketing plans.

Contact us today to learn what your content marketing strategy looks like.