Research and development, R&D, is the key to advancement in the healthcare industry. From pharmaceutical companies to med-tech suppliers, healthcare companies must continuously innovate to find new treatments to improve the patient experience. And all that innovation? It costs.
Getting a return on R&D investment is more challenging than ever. R&D leaders face numerous challenges, such as the increased complexity of global regulatory requirements. Unfortunately, this has led to dwindling investment, particularly in the med-tech field.
Companies that want to increase their market share shouldn’t be cutting back on R&D investment. They should be focusing on securing a greater return on investment (ROI). Content marketing is one avenue to do this.
This guide explains how content marketing assists R&D in healthcare and provides five golden rules for using content marketing to squeeze more ROI out of your innovation.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing uses relevant content to attract a clearly defined target consumer audience with the ultimate aim of driving profitable consumer action. The term “content” encompasses digital media, like websites, blogs, infographics, and traditional media, like healthcare conference speeches and print magazine articles. Content marketing gives you a huge toolbox of ways to reach consumers.
How to Create Content Marketing That Assists R&D in Healthcare
The med-tech industry is expected to grow at a rate of 5.6% annually in the years to come, reaching $595 billion by 2024. Now is not the time to cut back on R&D investment. It’s time to harness content marketing to increase your ROI.
Here’s how to use content marketing to reach your target audience, boost consumer engagement, and ultimately increase ROI.
1. Create Content with Value
To create content that converts into sales, you need to know who you’re selling to. Healthcare buying behaviors have changed. Physicians themselves are less influential as many now work for hospitals, group practices, or medical centers, instead of independently.
These larger organizations are the economic buyers, mainly focused on cutting costs – especially in cutting-edge segments like implantable heart defibrillators and knee implants. As a healthcare supplier, it’s up to you to understand such decision-makers’ hurdles (like tumbling product costs coupled with increased regulatory burden).
Create buyer personas to get in the mind of your target audience. You can then craft content that speaks to the points they care about. This allows you to ensure that your content adds value – the secret to success in any marketing endeavor.
2. Diversify Content Platforms
One of content marketing’s most valuable traits is its versatility. Content can consist of blogs, webpages, thought-leader articles, infographics, e-books, print books, white papers, videos, podcasts, and more. The list goes on.
Content marketing can be easily adapted to diverse purposes and target audiences. It can also be integrated with other marketing techniques. For example, you can use social media to drive consumers to a webpage or blog.
3. Create a Content Calendar
Content marketing isn’t made to be stagnant. Update your marketing materials regularly. For example, if a new iteration of an ultrasound machine you are selling is coming out, plan a publishing strategy for your blog to highlight this development.
A content calendar is an excellent way to track all of your content marketing efforts. Advanced planning allows you to roll out campaigns highlighting new R&D developments and whet the consumers’ appetites. If you know your company has a cutting-edge product that will enter the market in 2021, you should start planning content to flag this innovation in 2020.
4. Repurpose Content for Maximum Efficiency
Just because you plan, it doesn’t mean that your content marketing plan is set in stone. Again, content marketing is versatile. Finding ways to repurpose content across diverse platforms reduces costs while improving reach. For instance, a series of blogs can be adapted to a white paper or even an ebook, while talking points from a conference presentation can be used for a blog.
5. Analyze and Optimize Content’s Impact
Rely on healthcare marketing tools to create, track, and analyze content. Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) in advance will help you measure success and pivot as needed. For instance, if you publish a thought-leader article in a healthcare online magazine, you should be able to get feedback on how many clicks this drove to your website – and how many of those visitors became buyers.
Optimizing content doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing the wording of a headline or swapping out images. Even the format of a concluding call-to-action (CTA) can influence whether a consumer decides to click or not. Timing is also a factor: Sending out an email newsletter at 2:00 a.m. when your target audience is sleeping isn’t a great idea.
Learn More About Content Marketing for Healthcare
Share Moving Media can help you increase healthcare sales with comprehensive content marketing. A full-service media company, we create many types of content, including webinars, blog posts, e-books, graphics, and more. With this diverse array of healthcare marketing tools, we help your brand grow.
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