Are you aware of the staggering number of health-related searches made on Google every year?
Astonishingly, a whopping 5% of all Google searches are health-related, with a mind-boggling 70,000 health-related searches happening every minute. These stats highlight that the internet has become a primary source of information for people seeking healthcare advice.
In such a digital landscape, no healthcare marketing strategy can afford to ignore the power of content marketing. By developing effective content marketing campaigns, healthcare organisations can educate, engage, and build lasting relationships with their target audience.
Welcome to our blog post where we will walk you through a 7-step process to create compelling content marketing campaigns in the healthcare industry, empowering you to drive profitable customer action and achieve your marketing goals.
So, are you ready to explore the potential of content marketing in healthcare? Let’s dive in!
2. What Is a Healthcare Marketing Campaign?
A healthcare marketing campaign refers to a strategic and coordinated set of activities aimed at promoting healthcare products, services, or organisations to a specific target audience. The objective of such a campaign is to raise awareness, educate, and persuade individuals to take action, such as seeking medical assistance, adopting healthy behaviours, or choosing a particular healthcare provider.
Healthcare marketing campaigns typically utilise various channels, including digital marketing, print media, social media, and direct outreach, to effectively reach and engage the target audience.
Some examples of healthcare marketing campaigns include – diabetes prevention campaigns, prenatal health campaigns, organ donation campaigns, etc.
3. Why do Healthcare Companies need to Invest in Content Marketing?
- Lead Generation
Healthcare content marketing allows your organisation to connect efficiently with potential customers and generate qualified leads. You can attract prospective clients by providing solutions that help them solve their problems such as if they are looking for comprehensive information on health queries, different types of services or facilities available to them and more.
- Build Awareness
Through content marketing campaigns in healthcare, you get an opportunity to increase your brand awareness and gain invaluable attention while providing the information your audience is seeking. It’s a win-win scenario, as marketers get increased attention and the audience receives content that educates and create awareness.
- 24/7 Online Presence
The benefits of content marketing campaigns in healthcare go beyond the patient-facing aspect. A hospital’s online presence can be considered a brand extension, where the consumers reach out and interact with them anytime and anywhere through support services. Consumers can access information on your website and find medical help quickly and conveniently
- Nurture Patients
You can strengthen your brand loyalty by creating helpful/informative content and boosting your patient retention figures. Offer a consistent experience that addresses and solves their problems. With the growth of online channels, healthcare units can share content that will engage your patients in many ways from illustrations to infographics and videos. For instance, you can create content that relates to the treatment of a specific disease, human health conditions, and wellness guides that generate curiosity in the target audience and keep them connected with your brand. 
4. 7 Steps to Create Content Marketing Campaigns in Healthcare
To create a successful content marketing campaigns in healthcare, you need to start with a solid strategy. Here are the key steps to developing a content marketing strategy for healthcare:
4.1 Know the Specific Objectives of the Campaign
The first step to ensuring the success of your digital marketing campaign is to define the objectives. Before you begin any work, set out and determine the goals. Here are some common objectives of a healthcare marketing campaign –
- Boosting brand awareness
- Increasing patient retention
- Engaging and nurturing the patients
- Fostering brand loyalty
- Educating the patients
To build purposeful content, know your buyer’s behaviour and stage in the marketing funnel. You need to ensure you have enough information to create content that resonates with the goals and challenges of your target audience. The key here is to be specific about your purpose. The basic message types include educational, informational, events, announcements, and news.
4.2 Define the Audience You Are Targeting
When it comes to the audience you are targeting, it is essential to stay aligned.. Healthcare content marketing has two targets – B2C (clients, patients, and other individuals) and B2B (manufacturers, suppliers, and healthcare organisations). You need to understand the target audience to meet your specific goals. As a healthcare marketer, you must learn what resonates with their needs through continual analysis. In addition to attracting new readers, your content marketing campaign should drive your business forward. A documented business case will help you better understand the benefits, costs, and risks of implementing the right healthcare content strategy.
For instance, if you manufacture medical equipment for dental offices, you’ll probably not speak to patients. You will run campaigns that speak to dental professionals. Make sure the content aligns with the requirements of the target audience.
Mayo Clinic is an excellent healthcare branding example that creates content for its audience, not buyers. It covers topics the audience is interested in, like symptoms, diseases and conditions. You can quickly identify the target audience – doctors, health freaks, and patients. These content offerings help them identify the brand and encourage loyalty far beyond just availing the healthcare facilities at Mayo Clinic.
4.3 Identify the Content Topics
Once you understand your audience, it’s time to identify the topics that interest your audience. Build your topical authority by creating large volumes of content around a specific topic. For example, suppose you are a psychiatrist and notice a growing demand around stress, anxiety, and depression topics. In that case, you should create quality content tackling each potential subtopic on depression & anxiety.
Try online tools like – SEMRush, UberSuggest, and Buzzsumo for more content ideas. You will see a wide range of headlines and frequently asked questions from around the world. For example, the below screenshot shows the content ideas on SEMRush for the keyword “Anxiety”.
Some of the subtopics might become content pillars or content clusters.
4.4 Do Keyword Research
Once you have identified the content topics, the next step is to conduct keyword research to tailor your content to the needs of users searching online. Keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and Google keyword planner will help you pick the right keywords based on parameters like – search volume, keyword difficulty, search intent, and competition. The below images show the common keywords for your topic (anxiety) on SEMRush –
Once you have figured out the primary keywords, you can think of semantically-related keywords that help you create a more meaningful piece of content. Try to answer some popular headlines and questions related to your topic. It is essential to explore multiple platforms to get a better understanding of what your audience is looking for.
You can also attend industry events to stay on top of content trends and create helpful content.
For example, Mayo Clinic created a series of videos presenting scientific evidence on combating Covid-19. Each video has 7k to 300k views, as mayo clinic managed to answer the frequently asked questions.
4.5 Diversify your Content
The next step is to create and publish informative and engaging content. You can diversify your content by adding different formats like blog posts, videos, podcasts, ebooks, white papers, and case studies. The healthcare content can sometimes be limited to formal tone and academic styles. Here are some content formats you can experiment with –
- Explainers or informational videos that educate the viewers
- Online how-to-guides that help the viewers
- Podcasts, infographics, and illustrations that explain to the viewers
- Quizzes, polls, and surveys that engage the viewers
You need to create content to nurture the leads at different funnel stages. According to a survey by statistics, the top 3 successful healthcare content types are blog posts and success stories. Leverage healthcare expertise to create content that meets the audience’s requirements. You can work with in-house content creators or outsource medical writers to create high-quality content.
Get your content organised and improve the user experience. Each content you create and publish should be specific, logical and visually appealing.
4.6 Promote the Content
Once you publish healthcare content, you need to promote it on multiple platforms for a wider reach. Content promotion involves distributing blog posts and other resources via paid media and organic channels. A strong healthcare content promotion strategy for healthcare includes influencer outreach, PPC advertising, PR marketing, social media promotions, email marketing, and content syndication. Some of the ways to promote your healthcare content include –
- Posts blogs posts on social media
- Talking about success stories of patients
- Emailing the contacts to subscribe newsletter
- Telling patients to follow up by directing them to the website
When deciding on a healthcare content promotion strategy, determine the goals you wish to accomplish. For instance, if you want to generate qualified leads, you can create ebooks and run a healthcare advertising campaign for more ebook downloads. Conversely, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you can publish informative posts regularly on your website.
4.7 Monitor the Performance
Content marketing campaigns for healthcare mean more visibility, leads, and patients for your brand. While every healthcare content strategy varies in purpose, you must understand which KPIs make sense.
Based on our experience and extensive research, the KPIs for healthcare content marketing include patient acquisition cost (PAC), patient lifetime value (PLV), patient retention rate, conversion rate, cost-per-click, organic revenue, and social media engagement.
It is essential to understand how people access your website i.e. on a laptop, mobile, or tablet. Google Analytics is website analytics that helps you track the results of your content marketing efforts. You can generate many different reports and dashboards using Google Search Console and optimise your content to drive more traffic.
5. Case Study Examples of Content Marketing Campaigns in Healthcare
- Johnson & Johnson
A video campaign conducted by Johnson & Johnson to address the national shortage of nurses in the U.S is one of the best healthcare marketing case studies. This $50 million initiative was designed to enhance the image of the nursing profession and retain existing nurses. To achieve its objective, J & J created a dedicated microsite that provided educational content. In addition, the video campaign on nurses’ day-in-life & patient perspectives helped connect with the target audience emotionally.
- Arkansas Children’s Hospital
Arkansas Children’s Hospital ran a hashtag campaign, #100DeadliestDays, that featured informative content on fireworks safety, injury prevention, a downloadable parent-teen driving agreement, and more. This is one of the best examples of healthcare social media campaigns that caught the attention of many healthcare centres worldwide. The message behind the campaign is to provide safety tips to help families stay safe during some of the most dangerous activities held between Memorial Day and Labour Day.
6. How Can a Digital Marketing Agency Help?
Crafting successful content marketing campaigns in healthcare can be a challenging task. That’s where a digital marketing agency specialising in healthcare can make a difference.
Growth Ganik, a full-stack digital marketing agency can help you develop a tailored content marketing strategy. We bring expertise, resources, and industry knowledge to create high-quality content, and execute effective promotion strategies.
For creative tailor-made content marketing solutions, get in touch with us!
7. FAQs
- What Are the 5 Ps of Healthcare Marketing?
The 5 P’s of healthcare marketing are – physicians, patients, professionals, policymakers, and payers.
- How Do You Create Content in Healthcare?
To create content in healthcare, you first need to understand the needs of your target audience. Create educational, engaging, and unique content that solves the problems of your target audience (patients, medical interns, stakeholders, equipment suppliers, volunteers, and the community).
- What Are Content Campaigns?
Content campaigns are goal-focused initiatives to attract, retain, and engage audiences by creating relevant content. It can be in videos, articles, podcasts, and other media.
- What types of content are most effective for healthcare marketing campaigns?
While the specific types of content that work best for healthcare marketing campaigns may vary, educational content such as informative blog posts, videos, and podcasts tend to perform well. Additionally, patient success stories and content that showcases your healthcare professionals can be highly effective in building trust and credibility.
- How can I ensure my healthcare content is compliant with regulations and privacy laws?
When creating healthcare content, it’s crucial to adhere to regulations and privacy laws such as HIPAA. Ensure that you have a thorough understanding of these regulations and consult with legal experts if needed. Additionally, consider obtaining consent from patients before featuring their stories or testimonials.
- How often should I publish new content for my healthcare marketing campaigns?
Consistency is key when it comes to content marketing. Develop a content calendar and aim to publish new content regularly. The frequency will depend on your resources and the preferences of your target audience. However, it’s important to prioritise quality over quantity.
- How can I make my healthcare content stand out from the competition?
To make your healthcare content stand out, focus on providing unique value to your audience. Conduct thorough research to identify gaps in the existing content landscape and create content that fills those gaps. Additionally, leverage storytelling, visuals, and interactive elements to create a memorable and engaging experience for your audience.
