Essential Rules and Strategies for Effective Healthcare Content Marketing

Dec 13 / 2024

Healthcare content marketing has become an essential tool in today’s digital world. ‘Why’, you may ask? Let’s answer your question with a question; how many of you have searched the web to find clinics in your area instead of asking your neighbour? That’s why. We have become more comfortable gathering information and getting it verified ourselves than by asking other people for their opinions.

Through healthcare content marketing, organisations can communicate with the target group and engage them with relevant information written by professional medical content writers. But it isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are good and bad strategies, and to differentiate between them, you might need an expert, which is where a digital healthcare marketing agency comes in. Hiring a company with the proper experience can lift the burden off your shoulders. Here are some rules that might help you understand the basics of healthcare content marketing and hiring a professional marketing company.

Basic Rules for Healthcare Content Matketing

1. Keep Things Relevant

While you are sharing health information, understand that people can read and benefit from it. Before creating content, keeping the audience in mind is the first step toward successful healthcare content marketing.

Keep up-to-date with the daily news and create relevant content. Sharing irrelevant things like “Tips to Stay Healthy During This Rainy Season” during summer can create a lack of trust among the readers. It would help if you were quick and precise in producing valuable content for the readers at that particular time.

2. Bring in Your Staff and Retain the Human Element

While healthcare content marketing is quite similar to the content marketing of other sectors, one thing that distinguishes it is sensitivity. People are looking through the web to check about conditions they or their loved ones have. Thus, they might not appreciate the humour or wit that they typically enjoy with other content.

Hence, it would be best if you kept things simple and accurate. This is one of the reasons to hire a professional medical content writer who knows what it takes to provide relevant content.

Another method that has been proven to give good results is the inclusion of medical staff in the visual content you provide. Videos of specialist doctors explaining the condition can provide authenticity and a sense of trustworthiness, which would convince people to visit your organization.

3. Interactivity Is the Key

Medical content can sometimes be tricky, and it is the job of the medical content writer to simplify it but in a precise manner. But one other thing that distinguishes medical content from others is that there will be a lot of questions from the people.

Thus, healthcare content marketing does not stop with sharing blogs, videos, newsletters, and the like but extends to interacting with people. Social media platforms are the best way to communicate with the target audience since the use of social media has skyrocketed in recent times. Also, make sure that the contact forms and phone numbers work to reach the health care provider in an emergency.

4. HDPSA-Compliance Is Important

Being interactive with the audience is important but within the regulations. For example, patient stories where your patients share their journey of overcoming a specific condition by getting treated at your organization is an efficient healthcare content marketing technique.

But while doing so, make sure you have the patient’s consent to share their identity. Non-consented content goes against the Health Data Privacy and Security Act (HDPSA). Also, refrain from offering medical advice or diagnosis on social media platforms.

5. Self-Promotion Is Counteractive

Unbiased material always performs better than the ones that include self-promotion. People look for healthcare content when they are genuinely concerned about a condition and develop a sense of distrust when there is self-promotion involved. Choose to be impartial and clear about the topic you provide content for.

The results of healthcare content marketing would never be immediate since it primarily focuses on creating a relationship with the people reading or watching your content. With time, the trust increases. You can use some traditional advertising methods and content marketing to see results.

6. Be Consistent and Check Results Regularly

Reliability is the basis of healthcare content marketing, and thus your content needs to be consistent. Make sure that you provide the audience with timely and relevant material. There are numerous healthcare providers, and it is easy to switch to someone else. Thus, to keep your target audience loyal, provide regular and engaging content.

To check the efficiency of your marketing strategies, set some performance indicators like audience growth rate, response rate, and the like according to your goal. This will help you better understand your progress and plan the following strategy.

Why spend time on creating healthcare marketing strategies?

Before buying a product, it is usual for us to go through the reviews and then decide. When people take these exemplary steps for a simple product, what about healthcare which we know to be the most important thing? Statistics show that about 94% of patients use online reviews to evaluate their healthcare providers. This makes healthcare content marketing and brand awareness essential for any healthcare institution.

With about 5% of all Google searches made being healthcare-related, it is evident that people like to be aware of the condition and the treatment. A properly planned marketing plan is important to satisfy people, and instead of sticking to the old ways, it makes sense to try out some innovative ways by which you can make your brand stand out.

Also Read: The Essential Guide to Content Marketing for Modern Healthcare Organizations

Top 10 Healthcare Marketing Strategies

Agile healthcare marketing strategies are important for a brand to stay relevant since it is an industry that undergoes rapid changes and innovations. People now go online to hear more about any medical problem, but the content present on the web can be overwhelming. Since it concerns health, information from reliable sources is always valuable.

With the rapidly changing industry, marketing strategies should also be in trend. Here are some of the innovative healthcare strategies that we have come across and believe us when we say that they have worked! Thus, with properly planned healthcare content marketing and strategy, you can build confidence in your brand, increasing patient volume.

1. Patient Stories

Nothing convinces a person of your brand credibility better than a good review. This is the health of people we are talking about, and thus it is expected that people would be extra cautious about it. Therefore, a fellow patient’s assurance of the quality of your services would work better than a thousand advertisements.

Patient reviews would increase credibility and visibility in the online community. The number of reviews and their quality are some of the top-ranking signals for Google Local 3 pack on mobile devices.

Keep the reviews simple without overcomplicated medical terms since it can distract the viewer. Video reviews work better than written ones but never force a patient to leave a video review since it might look forced. Also, add your business to multiple platforms like Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, and more.

2. Wellness Challenge

Starting a wellness challenge is a great marketing technique, especially in these pandemic times when people are quite pumped up about their health. You can begin to do it with your patients and encourage them to share it with their friends and family.

The most important thing with using wellness challenge as a marketing strategy is using a branded hashtag and tagging your organization’s name with the posts. You can even include prizes for consistent participation, which would increase the interest. United Health Care campaign “We dare you” is an excellent example of the perfect execution of this strategy.

3. Get a Medical Website SEO Audit Done

Having a website has become a digital asset to any business, and it is the same with the healthcare industry. Your website would be the face of your institution to the online community, and thus it is important to maintain it properly. Having it rank high in SERP is important to increase your visibility.

An SEO audit can identify the weak areas in your website and help you formulate a personalised plan. The audit can evaluate your performance with factors like page speed, click-through rate, quality backlinks, and ranking keywords. There are hundreds of tools (paid and free) that can do the job for you. Hiring a digital marketing expert would be helpful since they can make a detailed plan with the audit results.

4. Videos Featuring Physicians

YouTube is the second most popular media platform and search engine. Instead of reading about the treatment, people prefer watching a video of the procedure explained by a certified physician since it is more credible.

Create a YouTube channel that features your physicians and medical staff explaining your healthcare content. Make sure that your physicians use simple terms and understandably explain the process. Visual healthcare content marketing is known to boost SEO and digital presence.

Always add your logo and branding template overlay with your videos but make sure it isn’t too noticeable. Quality is the most important thing and thus, make sure to use professionals while creating and editing the videos. Viewers recognise sub-par content in seconds, and it also affects credibility.

5. Hashtag Driven Campaign

Using hashtags to promote an event would be a successful and memorable marketing strategy. Social media has become a powerful tool for digital marketing, and hashtag campaigns are its favourites. Thus, creating a relevant campaign with a catchy hashtag would provide you with content worth sharing.

For example, the vaccination awareness campaign of Kauvery Hospital used a relevant and intriguing hashtag called #ShotOfHope. This is an excellent example of staying on the trend and utilising the present situation for healthcare content marketing.

6. Leverage Instagram the Right Way

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., play an irrefutable role in marketing, with Instagram being one of the fastest-growing. With Instagram being a visual platform, it is an excellent opportunity to promote healthcare content innovatively.

Patient testimonials and before and after results of the patient after your treatment would help reach out to customers without being overbearing. Use simple and easily understandable content for the short Instagram videos.

Instagram uses unique search and geo-targeting to help your content reach its target audience. With Instagram as a marketing tool, you can promote specials and events, advance physicians’ capabilities, and boost SEO. Here are some tips that might help you set up your Instagram marketing account:

• Keep the content clear and consistent with relative location-based keywords for brand promotion.
• Add unique photos and your brand logo for the medical videos.
• Have a theme for the overall style of your page.
• Include your physicians in your videos.
• Have tracking and analytics for website clicks and direction requests.

7. Infographics

Medical knowledge sometimes can be complicated to understand, thus making visual content more popular among digital marketing audiences. Infographics resonate better with people who are not interested in reading a long blog, even if it is an important topic. Infographics are also easily shareable, helping them reach more people.

There have been many more innovations in the marketing field, and staying on top of the trend matters the most. For example, a marketing campaign by a medical institution uses a virtual reality (VR) product owned by Facebook to educate the audience on healthcare topics. There are also surgical procedures explained for medical professionals using this technique.

8. Focus on Local SEO

Local SEO is an important factor to focus on for healthcare brand marketing since patients usually prefer hospitals close to their location, especially in times of emergency. Adding local SEO to your strategy will also help you get noticed by Google, and you will be seen in the Google “Local 3 Pack” (first search results).

Create a business listing and update accurate details of your business. If you have been in business with a notable brand image for a long time, Google might have already created a listing of your business. In this case, check the details in the listing and then claim it. It would be suitable for SEO if you add your business to some other business directories too. Keep the business details consistent through all the listings and update them regularly.

9. Digital Advertising

SEO would help people looking for specific services find you, but it is best to focus on digital advertising to garner new patients. As the market becomes more competitive, digital marketing has become vital.

Advertising platforms like Google have high-level data about their customers, such as age, sex, geographical area, and income level. Thus, have a clear goal for your first pay-per-click ad. It might be local popularity, more traffic to your website, or anything else. Choose one and then create content focusing on it. Test the ad, get it optimized, and retest until you get desirable results. Track call conversions for critical and useful data.

10. Use Guest Blogging Opportunities

Guest blogging is a great healthcare content marketing strategy since it can increase brand awareness and reach a new customer base. While looking for guest bloggers, make sure to go with those who serve the parallel audience and focus on a similar area.

Backlink building is another great advantage of guest blogging. With each high-quality backlink to your website from relevant websites, you become more reliable from the perspective of search engines. Whenever a solid piece of your content appears on an appropriate website, the backlink helps you win more in local SEO along with added audience exposure. Find websites that look for guest contributions and reach out to them.

LBN Tech Solutions

We at LBN Tech Solutions have been working with big names in the healthcare industry for quite some time now. We have only scratched the surface with the ideas listed here about healthcare content marketing. Digital marketing is constantly evolving, and thus it is best to let a professional help. We can take care of promoting your brand with content creation and advertising. Click here to know what our clients are saying about us.