Content Marketing is the most cost-effective marketing strategy that helps medical practices attract more patients through consistently educating them about your products or services while generating awareness around your brand.
Key takeaway: In order to be successful with content marketing it is important that you consistently show up and always provide value. Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.
1. Start with a Content Strategy
The most successful content marketing starts with a well-planned purpose and a carefully thought out content marketing strategy.
Oddly enough, most medical practices don’t have a well-planned content marketing strategy, which means they resort to coming up with topics 'on the fly' and then get frustrated with the results.
So, why do you need a Content Marketing Strategy?
Developing a content marketing strategy can help you improve your marketing results and increase your return on your marketing investment.
A content marketing strategy helps you understand what content to create, clarify why you should create it, understand who you’re creating it for, and set clear goals or objectives in order to be successful.
So, how do you create a Content Marketing Strategy?
Follow this step by step process:
01. Define your goal
02. Research your target customer
03. Perform a content audit
04. Choose a content management system
05. Brainstorm content ideas
06. Determine which types of content to create
07. Publish and manage your content
Now if you need extra help, feel free to check out our medical marketing agency - Visual Vybz Studios, where we'll do everything for you!
2. Create a Content Calendar
If you’re a planner you’ll definitely love this! Create a monthly content marketing calendar and stick to it.
What is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar helps you plan your content marketing around relevant industry dates or seasons and gives your medical practice just enough time to plan ahead with relevant valuable content.
A well-maintained content calendar keeps all of your content marketing efforts focused on the same goal. It also allows your content and campaigns to tell a consistent story, you’re able to devise a better action plan and analyze your data or audience engagement across multiple marketing platforms.
What should you include in your Content Calendar?
Relevant headlines
Content deadlines
Publishing dates
Types of content
Relevant CTAs
Assign tracking codes
Establish who’s in charge
3. Focus on Visual Impact
Here’s the creative part, where you get to pick the most impactful visual medium for your content marketing efforts.
A lot of elements in your strategy will impact your choice in medium. For instance, if your target customer is an avid reader – you may want to consider focusing on ebooks, blog posts, and case studies.
Again this varies for every medical practice.
Here are some popular content marketing mediums and platforms:
Graphics
Social Media
Blog Posts
Podcasts
Ebooks
Case Studies
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Who are you creating your content for?
What problem is it going to solve for your audience?
What makes you unique?
What formats or mediums will you focus on?
What channels will you use to publish your content?
How will you manage creation and publication?
If you’d like to explore this step a bit deeper. Check out our blog post on How to Create Valuable Visual Marketing Content for step-by-step solutions that will help you create actionable content and achieve actionable results.
4. Promote your Content
What good is your content if no one is able to see it?
After spending hours developing podcasts, ebooks or even filming video content - you definitely want to make sure that it's reaching the right audience, and the easiest way to do that is through promotion-based ads or email campaigns.
Now if you’ve never run promotional ads before, I would definitely recommend learning the basics on how to do it yourself and then outsource it.
It’s important that you have a clear understanding of what goes into running promotion-based ads before directing an expert or agency to do it for you.
One more thing.
Don't forget to monitor the performance of your ads and improve or enhance your content marketing strategy for next time. Because the goal is to keep showing up consistently.
5. Modify and Repeat the Process
Once you have created a content marketing strategy and a content marketing process that works, it’s never a bad idea to evaluate or reflect on what worked and what didn’t.
Make lengthy notes as you go along in order to modify and improve any areas that seemed ineffective or did not achieve your targeted goal.
Learning from your experiences is the first step towards making them better!
Do you need help putting these tips into action?
Our team of content strategists, content creators, and creative marketers would love to help. Book your free virtual consultation with us at any time.