As you prepare your 2023 marketing strategy and budgets, consider
investing in content marketing. In the simplest
of terms, content marketing involves creating and sharing things like videos,
newsletters, blogs, patient testimonials and social media posts online to
create interest in the services your practice offers - and ultimately help you
grow your business.
Content marketing is an important consideration for any
healthcare marketing strategy, as it is an effective way to build awareness,
gain trust and confidence with prospective patients. Useful and engaging
content can help you drive people to your site, improve your search engine
optimization (SEO) and get better engagement on your social media channels.
Here are some tips to help your practice get started with
content marketing:
- Do it well: While it's great to have your providers author content, most are so busy that they won't have time to dedicate to writing blog posts or creating video scripts from scratch. Consider partnering with freelance writers and videographers to help you communicate complicated medical terms in a consumer-friendly way.
- Do it consistently: Build out a content strategy that covers topics for six months to a year. Use tools like Google Trends to understand what topics consumers are frequently searching. Add in some flexibility for "of the moment" news topics that relate to your practice. For example, if your practice offers orthopedics and sports medicine services, a blog post about a local or national athlete's recent injury, surgery and recovery might capture the attention of your target audience.
- Do track engagement: When you use data to help understand what content is getting the most clicks, comments and questions, you can make marketing decisions for your practice that will help you allocate your funds better. Make sure you're sending potential patients who want to learn more to an engaging landing page that includes a form to capture their information.
- Don't expect to reach everyone: Once you've been creating content long enough to have meaningful data, you'll start to get a better sense of what topics to push out, and your content focus may narrow. This is progress!
- Don't make it just about yourself: It's important to use content to highlight the talent and services your practice offers, but the most engaging content is tied to popular search terms. Google receives about 1 billion health-related questions a day; use resources like Google Trends to understand what timely topics you can use for content.
- Don't expect short term results: Marketing is not a one-time event. It takes time to build trust and reputation with potential patients.
Start the new year off right by developing a
robust content marketing strategy for the upcoming calendar year. Partners like
CMG Health Marketing can help you get ready. Reach out today to learn more.