5 Tips for Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is key for health facilities, hospitals and doctors.

The thing is, even though you may be new to it, content marketing has been around for many years.

It’s a way that you provide useful and engaging information, and benefits include:

Increasing brand visibility
patient engagement
Patient retention
professional reputation building

Medical practices and physicians have been creating meaningful content marketing for years. Internet moved content online. WebMD is a well-established example of an online provider for health information.

What is content marketing?

Definitions of content marketing vary.

“In general, content marketing is the timely creation and distribution of pertinent and engaging materials that are of interest to—and influence the purchase decisions of—select current and prospective patients or prospects.”

Your message(s) can be communicated by:

Blog posts
Case study/trend analysis
Data-driven content
Discussion Forums
Ebooks
Educational game/quiz
eNewsletters
Instructional articles/guides
Technical report interpretation
Podcasts
Print newsletters
Research reports
Videos
Virtual conferences
Webinar/webcast
Website
White papers

Thought-Leader. Expert.

By producing and disseminating authoritative information, a physician can achieve various business goals and become the trusted and respected resource that is the answer to a medical or healthcare need.

5 Tips for Content Marketing

Begin with relevance.

Focus your material in a way that is not only relevant to your target audience or group but also is in sync with your services. Remember that it is about what interests them (not you).

Be human.

Content marketing materials should be presented in an easily understood way. Liberally sprinkle in people-oriented story-telling or conversational tones to humanize the meaning or consequences of dry data or technical details. Physicians should draw on their people experience.

Self-promotion is destructive.

In contrast to direct response advertising, content marketing engenders a relationship over immediate action. Let the added third party testimonials boast of your achievements rather than you.

The reader gains a profoundly greater sense of trust and believability from material that is unbiased. An impartial and informative voice is convincing and reliable.

Results take time and effort. The benefits of content marketing develop over a period of time that is needed for the audience to grow in size and in acceptance. Depending on the marketing goals, this can be used in addition to traditional (and more immediate) advertising methods.

Begin consistent.

The value of content marketing comes from being a reliable, timely and consistent resource with regular fresh material. Match your efforts to your resources, beginning with a modest effort that you can support (and prospectively grow). A blog, for example, can build credibility, but neglect (infrequent posts) is suspect and no longer trustworthy.

Benefits of Content marketing: