The best content marketing advice for your healthcare business

The best content marketing advice for your healthcare business isn’t always immediately visible.

Any kind of sharing of information to do with health can be difficult. You want to ensure the correct information is given to interested parties without sucking the life out of what you provide.

Content marketing in healthcare is an important part of your marketing. Whether you’re covering mental health, physical health or animal health topics, your customers are researching. Your customer’s desire to self-research makes them especially vulnerable. Junk science, marketing claims and self-proclaimed experts are everywhere.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel that is not an oncoming train.

Here are some of the simple and best content marketing tips you can explore that help demonstrate credibility. 

Remember how healthcare marketing works

Long lasting healthcare marketing consumer relationships involve a process of:

• Research- looking for the information to solve a particular issue or query
• Resonance- the information provided strikes a chord with the individual in question
• Respect- the potential consumer defers to the advice given and integrates it into their treatment
• Reliance- the previous advice given becomes a benchmark to share with friends and family in the form of advice. And/or as a return to that treatment based on a positive experience

The best content marketing plans require proper planning and working from personas. As healthcare marketing is often shrouded in mystery, this cycle of trust is in danger of disruption. Usually by the information provided not matching the experience of the patient or end consumer.

For example, if the patient cannot relate to the outlined experience or if they encounter unexpected side effects.

It can also be interrupted by an outside influence. This is often a source that provides a higher level of information or deeper personalised connection.

An example of this would be a customer’s resonance with an individual blogger’s story.

Making sure you take the time to build a bridge with your customers that seems warm, friendly and approachable is paramount. You may not be able to produce as much content or create a “you” centred story as a blogger. But you can maintain credibility and be approachable at the same time by remembering a few simple components.

Best content marketing practises: Cite your sources

One of the easiest ways to spot someone who hasn’t done their research is the phrase “a study” in content marketing. Best content marketing practises in medical and healthcare literature means you should always cite your source.

Always lead with a credible source for your information. Link it within the body text and reference it by name. Give the researching consumer the ability to investigate the claims. Be proud of your source by naming it.

This also helps consumers of healthcare marketing to channel their research towards credible sources. By giving them places to seek out further advice, you contain their exposure to poor quality information.

Limit jumping to conclusions

Humans want certainty. We love the neat endings and the solving of a problem in short, sharp episodes.

Science, medicine, psychology and healthcare don’t offer such tidy endings.

You may not be able to give 100% proof and make guarantees. But you can assist healthcare consumers by reducing the potential for jumping to conclusions.

Help them understand how you plan to keep them informed. Let them know about the policies that affect your approach to sharing information. Help them trust you by offering a timetable of new info for them to follow.

And bypass the search for certainty by encouraging trust.

Speak in plain terms

Science, law and insurance all play significant roles in healthcare marketing. These subjects are incredibly complex and tend to have an assumed based of knowledge well and truly beyond that of the layman.

Usually, they’re tricky to break down. Even in the best content marketing circumstances.

They also have a pretty bad reputation for misleading consumers by being needlessly cryptic and convoluted.

Many consumers of healthcare information are looking for answers when they are at their most vulnerable. We begin to research during diagnosis of disease or illness or seeking disprove or approve of a particular train of thought.

We seek healthcare marketing content online and off usually when faced with a problem. It’s about a change in our health or in the health of someone we care about. Or we want to make a change to avoid a future health problem.

Your intended audience may be frightened, overwhelmed, feeling powerless, angry and confused. Your job is to share information in a friendly, soothing and factual manner. Your aim should be to reduce the probability for drama and confusion.

You can reduce drama by choosing your words wisely. Strike a balance between the language of a healthcare professional and what the average person understands. Knowledge is power.

Take the words surrounding cancer for example. To a medical professional, a cancer free statement is obtained after ten years without cancer in evidence. To a patient, they may confuse “cancer free” as a state of wellness found at the end of a procedure.

It is not the result of an operation or procedure that could lead to a future cancer free patient. It’s the absence of disease. Many patients (and their family members) won’t make that distinction.

Clarity is not only the key to good communication, it is also the key to avoiding legal problems and confusion in future.

The personal versus professional approach

Credible healthcare marketers are increasingly fighting wellness bloggers for audience. The wellness blogger has a super power medical writers don’t have. They have the ability to hand control over to the individual reader.

Wellness bloggers can place the individual’s health concerns at the centre of the writing. And make claims based on understanding the feelings as opposed to the science.

It usually works on the assumption the consumer is actively seeking to change their lifestyle. And the main driver for that lifestyle change is the consumer with the help from the blogger.

It includes heuristic thinking. These personal stories of success enjoy the individual’s continued testimony as proof. Lifestyle writers often play on the ingrained fear of the medical system. And they often bypass the need for proof with a few carefully chosen links as backup. The main credibility comes from the blogger’s story of miraculous transformation.

In order to beat the wellness bloggers, healthcare marketers need to bear the burden of proof. 

You need to:

• Cite sources and factual information
• Show the research behind the claims
• Make this information approachable, easy to understand and transparent
• Encourage questions and open dialogue
• Be available and open to criticism
• Bust the myths associated with junk science and false claim

Marketing your healthcare business doesn’t have to be boring

The best content marketing professionals know science isn’t boring. Healthcare marketing doesn’t garner credit by putting people to sleep. You can make it interesting and empowering.

Speak to your audience in language they understand. Give them the opportunity to participate in your marketing via social media. Where you identify the opportunities for confusion, open the door to conversation. Use research and facts to back up your claims.

And take the mystery out of healthcare so your consumers can understand your product better.

Want more tips? I can help you with marketing your healthcare business and all your content marketing needs. Get in touch now.