How Healthcare Companies can Leverage Content Marketing to Drive Sales
We know that everybody, including your customers and investors, is online, reading, researching, looking to connect with the right people in healthcare. Healthcare marketing, therefore, must focus on online lead generation to convert to sales, investment or partnership.
How do you start a conversation with a potential investor, partner or buyer online?
First impressions count. A healthcare website design that fully reflects your brand and conveys your business’s strategy, the benefits you provide and patient focus is key. But that’s only the first step in your online marketing.
How do you quickly inform your target audience of your unique offering in an increasingly competitive and challenging market?
How do you reach new or multiple audiences?
When you search for a particular topic or question online, you are met with an overwhelming amount of information and sources. This forces you to ask: ‘Which sources are relevant?’ And then ‘Which sources can I trust?’. The same will be true for a potential investor or buyer.
Therefore, it’s important that your website gives your target audience relevant, high-quality content on a consistent basis and offers succinct answers to their questions as they embark on the discovery phase of their customer journey with you. Content marketing for healthcare businesses can really help you to target your audience, bring them to your website where you can start to build a strong relationship, providing trust and shaping their decision-making towards ultimately creating a lead or a sale.
Not all healthcare companies have a large marketing team, and many have only a sales team with some marketing responsibilities.
So, how do you know what content to create and how do you promote it?
Choosing the right type of marketing content
What do we mean when we talk about content?
Content includes everything from landing pages on a website to blogs, social media posts to infographics, video content, white papers, manuscripts, case studies and more.
Choosing the right type of content depends firstly on the needs of your audience and your business goals.
Secondly, you will need to create content that considers the stage of the customer journey that your audience is on. Are they a potential new customer just starting to search for information online, or are they an established partner looking for detailed information about your new product line?
If we look at the new customer entering the discovery phase, they might be searching for answers to questions online or looking for solutions to problems. Content for this type of audience might include landing pages, blog articles, case studies, useful downloads, social media and SEO (search engine optimisation).
Blogging for marketing content
A blog is a tried and tested content marketing method and integral to an organisation’s content strategy. It can help you start a conversation, talking directly to your audience about the topics most important to them.
Unfortunately, blog articles are often under-utilised or contain long-form pieces of scientific work that fall short of delivering the immediate answers that a buyer at this stage of their customer journey craves. Blogging should be viewed as an opportunity to offer highly researched and curated information to your target audience; information that tells a story, builds your reputation as an expert in your field and addresses your potential customer’s needs.
A blog should avoid ‘the hard sell’ and focus instead on:
- cultivating a relationship with your audience,
- building trust,
- creating value for your audience, educating them about your product/service and showing them that you understand their needs and how you can help them
- identifying you as a company that cares about its customers/investors/partners
The beauty of a blog is that once written, you can share it across multiple platforms, e.g. social media, branded publications etc., reaching your audience wherever they are.
Healthcare businesses create content every day, including reports, manuscripts, white papers, case studies, newsletters, graphs, flow charts and schematics. This comprehensive bank of content speaks to your field expertise; answers questions that you know your customers are searching for, information about how you can help them. But it must be easily accessible to your target audience and presented in a compelling format that starts a conversation.
While long-form pieces like manuscripts will be of interest to your current clients who are further along the customer journey, they won’t attract new clients in the discovery phase who are just getting to know you. They seek clear, concise answers and solutions. But that doesn’t mean to say that key points and infographics from a manuscript can’t be repurposed into a blog article or case study to meet a potential buyer or investor’s needs.
As you can see, promoting your business online requires commitment, time and resources and a clear understanding of how content creation can engage potential customers and increase lead generation at every stage of the buyer journey.
However, a focused content marketing strategy has many benefits and can help you stay relevant in an ever-changing marketplace.
The benefits of a focused content marketing strategy
#1 You'll understand your business and audience better
Focusing on the needs of your potential buyers, investors and partners will help you stay relevant. You’ll see your product or service through their eyes and learn how to explain what you do, clearly and in an engaging way. You’ll learn how to have a conversation rather than delivering a sales pitch, which in turn will develop more leads
#2 Your visibility will improve.
Suppose you’re providing your audience with relevant, engaging content, and you are being found more easily because of carefully chosen keywords. In that case, your website will get better SEO results which in turn will generate more traffic and more links to your website.
#3 You’ll stand out from the competition.
By focusing on your target audience’s needs, while ensuring you always evidence your expertise, you will gain recognition as an authority in your field and your audience will perceive you to be ‘better’ than the competition. Your reputation will increase, and so will your brand awareness.
#4 Your target audience will trust you and start to share your content.
As your audience becomes more engaged in the content you are providing, they will enter into that all-important conversation with you. They will trust you to give them answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Your brand image will improve, and your customers will start to share your content with others.
#5 You’ll make more connections.
Competing effectively in the healthcare marketplace is not all about size. It’s about knowing your audience and giving them what they need. Companies that compete effectively attract high calibre candidates, investments and partnerships.
But the pace of change within the digital arena can challenge the most capable marketing manager, and if you’re a small team, you may not have expertise in all areas. We, at Arttia Creative, can help you.
Working with a specialist healthcare marketing agency ensures that you get the best value from your content, generating brand awareness, leads and sales opportunities for the lowest possible investment.
At Arttia Creative, we are specialists in clarifying complex concepts and creating engaging healthcare websites that have a human focus and a clear understanding of marketing in this space. We help businesses focus on their customers’ needs rather than the hard sell and develop an emotional connection through their content, answering questions and finding solutions to healthcare problems.
The Takeaway.
A powerful content marketing partnership
Together we can unlock the value of your long-form pieces such as white papers, manuscripts and reports, delivering the benefits of your product or service in a clear, concise and engaging way that attracts the attention of a wider audience.
Arttia Creative are website specialists; however, our highly skilled team can also provide online marketing strategy and planning. We can help you:
- create a tailored content marketing plan,
- deliver content topics to a regular publishing schedule,
- write the content, giving you access to a team with an expert skillset.
Talk to us and learn how we can save you money, reduce business risk, and take the pressure off your in-house marketing and sales team allowing them to concentrate on what they do best: growing your successful healthcare business and converting leads to sales.
Belinda White | Creative Director