While content marketing today comes to be associated with digital marketing, it has been around for as long as the printing press was invented. Today, brands need to create high-quality, topical content to create trust, build relationships, increase conversions, and generate leads.

Introduction

Content marketing is often considered to be the backbone of modern digital marketing. From multibillion-dollar tech companies to small mom-and-pop shops, brands are increasingly under pressure to have a content marketing strategy. 

The healthcare industry has not been spared from these changes either. Healthcare medical content is now being considered existentially important for healthcare businesses in the modern age. Healthcare businesses have had to increasingly adapt to the changes in the marketing landscape to stay relevant and succeed. 

The absence of content for a brand on the web today spells nearly certain failure. With 9 out of 10 patients looking for healthcare information on the internet, long gone are the times when patients would just choose the closest or most reputed healthcare service. Customers now turn to the web to select their healthcare providers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this shift for healthcare businesses, with some surveys finding that nearly 90 percent of healthcare businesses are already engaging in content marketing and 98 percent of businesses already have a content strategy in place or planning to document it in the next 12 months. 

Healthcare medical content, especially that relating to the pandemic and associated ailments, has boomed over the past two years.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a type of marketing that has been around for a surprisingly long time. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”

Though the definition misses some of the nuances, it is functional for basic understanding.

Content marketing allows your healthcare business to interest potential customers in the products and services that you are offering. This can be done through the medium of blogs, videos, social media posts, infographics, and more but can also include other channels like infographics, articles, white papers, eBooks, podcasts, and more.

Unlike most other forms of marketing, content marketing is not aggressively promoting the brand alone. Instead, the goal is to create brand awareness by providing customers with content that has impactful value in whatever journey they are on.

Content marketing allows businesses to engage the customer even before they step put within the premises, build trust and improve customer flow.

One of the best examples of content marketing is over a century old. Michelin, the French multinational tire manufacturing company, is now known just as much for its tires as its prestigious Michelin Guide that rates and reviews restaurants and more. Today, the company is the second-largest tire manufacturer in the world.

Role of content in healthcare industry

While this may be all well and good for Michelin, their success doesn’t necessarily translate into success for your healthcare business. Research shows that healthcare marketing is essential for today’s healthcare businesses. But at the same time, studies have shown that healthcare marketing cannot be based solely on the same principles as those used by other fields. 

Healthcare in marketing has as a result seen many different trends over the past decades, as executives and leaders tried to understand what works best for their businesses. Some of these trends include; shifting away from the mass market approach for healthcare, bringing more personalized marketing into the mix, and emphasis on longer relationships rather than a single healthcare episode.

With such trends emerging, it can be wise to question whether content marketing can be a successful marketing strategy for healthcare businesses. The rousing success of blogs and content marketing systems like the ones used by the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic are testament to the fact that while some adaptations are needed, content marketing remains a vital strategy for healthcare organizations. 

Content marketing allows healthcare businesses to establish a brand presence on the web through the use of content like personalized medicine articles to build a relationship with customers that are aiming to serve. By creating valuable content, healthcare businesses can establish trust and loyalty with customers even before the start of the healthcare journey. 

Customers are also more likely to remain loyal to the same healthcare business if they had found the business through its medical content or presence on the web. Since trust has already been established by way of giving out informative content, patients would rather stick to businesses that they trust. In a highly competitive market, patient retention is just as important as patient acquisition. 

All of these factors and benefits come down to directly affect the healthcare business’ bottom line and value proposition.

Conclusion

So we have established that content marketing is of paramount importance for a healthcare businesses’ success and longevity. But implementing a successful content marketing strategy is not as easy. 

Content in a content marketing strategy needs to be authentic, valuable, communicative, and effective. For healthcare businesses, the added resources, time, and effort to maintain this can often prove to be incredibly hard. 

BraveLabs gives healthcare businesses services to manage their content marketing strategies and medical content. We provide the expertise to make sure that your content marketing strategies come out to be a rousing success, for the benefit of your businesses and your patients.