The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant disruption has led to several changes in our business approach. While digitization has penetrated every industry, its evolution in healthcare has been most significant.
The healthcare industry adopted a digital approach to providing quality care in the midst of the pandemic. From telehealth services to remote healthcare monitoring, technology has facilitated healthcare processes to be efficient and maintain social distancing norms.
Can content marketing form an essential part of digital marketing strategy in healthcare in this changing digital era?
Healthcare content marketing is now a must-have to help hospitals and healthcare providers educate and reach out to their customers. It enables healthcare companies to create awareness and engage with the patients for a more holistic approach. In just the past two years, healthcare content marketing adoption has increased by 25% and demonstrated positive results.
If you are thinking of using content marketing in healthcare, here are four tips to help you get ahead in the digital race -
1. Set Objectives For Your Content Marketing Strategy
The first step towards a successful content marketing strategy is having a plan of action. Before you implement content marketing in your approach, think of the goals and KPIs you'll focus on.
For example, if your content marketing KPI is increasing readership, your objective should be to get an 'x number of readers to your website' using your content marketing efforts.
Depending on your objective, you will need to plan your content marketing efforts.
2. Humanize Your Healthcare Content
Today, most healthcare content is written for medical professionals and doctors, which is not something that a layman can easily connect to. The biggest challenge in healthcare content marketing is to create content for the patients, using less of the industry jargons and more explanatory content.
Humanize your content by understanding your target audience and writing accordingly.
This is especially important when it comes to optimization. Most SEO efforts use keywords like top orthopaedic when the patients' searches are focused on their issues, like hip or back pain, muscle tear, joint pains, etc.
Unless you use the keywords and phrases that the patients are looking for, the chances of your content being showcased in the top search results are limited.
3. Repurpose Content To Explore Multiple Distribution Channels
Healthcare content marketing doesn't just have to be written articles or blogs. There are other channels of distribution like podcasts, video tutorials and more that can also be explored. While content forms the crux of these channels, there are several other methods to distribute and repurpose your healthcare content marketing approach.
To ensure that your top-performing content gets noticed, you could explore options like:
- eBooks or whitepapers on the subject by collating all the healthcare blogs you've published around the topic
- Video marketing to talk about medical procedures and healthcare topics that the patients want to know of. Video marketing is highly impactful since the patient gets an inside view of the topic. Research indicates that 80% of online visitors searching for relevant content will watch a video instead of reading content on the same topic.
- Create an FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website to answer the most common questions on a particular topic
- Host webinars or online chats to inform and answer patient questions live
There are many digital marketing strategies like SEO, social media marketing, and others that you can leverage to optimize your healthcare content marketing. Start with content but make sure you keep optimizing and expanding, using other channels of distribution.
4. Choose Topics That Are In The News & Relevant
The media needs doctors and healthcare professionals to provide well-informed opinions on the latest events unfolding around you. If your experience can add value to events taking place, these are the ideal healthcare blog topics to start with.
If there's a medical breakthrough or an outbreak of a new virus, you can be the first to break the news and provide valuable content to your readers.
Medical procedures and the outbreak of diseases often create fear in patients' minds, and professional opinions can help them get the right facts. Choose health and wellness articles that can focus on these major events and provide an honest opinion of the reality.
Not only will it get high readability, but it is also a great opportunity to build trust and establish authority in the industry.
Summary
Digital marketing is now a must-have, no matter which industry or target audience you are catering to. Even the most traditional industries and audiences have now embraced digital and are comfortable with it. In this day and age, content marketing in healthcare is a great opportunity to reach out to patients and to inform them of your offerings.
Start using healthcare content marketing to create a positive image of your brand and stay ahead in the game!
Contentago (www.contentago.com) is a content platform that provides consistent and effective SEO optimized articles for health and wellness eCommerce brands. We offer free topic ideation to identify topics that would resonate with your audience as well as a sample 1000 word article. Click here to try a refundable $50 sample article.