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7 Vital Steps to Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy in Healthcare

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As a medical supply distributor or manufacturer, your clients depend on you for the highest quality, professionalism, and reliability in your products and services.

Your content marketing strategy in healthcare must prioritize those same values.

Now, professionalism doesn’t necessarily equate to stuffy and boring – two qualities you absolutely must avoid in content marketing. 

As with most things healthcare-related, an effective content strategy starts with comprehensive research and thorough planning.

Research shows 60% of B2B companies with the most successful content have a documented strategy. Meanwhile, only 21% of the least successful B2Bs can say the same.

How to Start Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy in Healthcare

Every piece of content you create should serve a specific goal and purpose. 

Without a documented strategy, your content will come off as irrelevant or generic. This type of lackluster content in an industry like healthcare can end up damaging your reputation – the exact opposite of what you need your content to do.

1. Research Your Audience

You cannot produce effective content without understanding who you’re creating content for. Your content can inform a handful of audiences, but the point is to pick a specific audience for each piece. 

At Share Moving Media, for example, we have several publications to reach thousands of people in distinct audiences.

Ask yourself some questions as part of your audience research:

  • Who do I want to educate and inform? End users/office workers, doctors of private practices, office executives at hospitals, etc.?
  • Where do they hang out online – Facebook, LinkedIn, industry blogs, Twitter, Reddit?
  • What are their biggest pain points each day? 
  • Which influencers do they follow and trust?
  • What format do they prefer – blogs, social media, infographics, video, podcast?

2. Plan Your Goals

Gartner research shows the B2B journey is long and convoluted. It’s foolish to end every piece of content with a CTA to “buy now.”

Timeline Description automatically generated

Gartner

Your content marketing strategy in healthcare should play the long game. Set up short-term and long-term goals for each stage of the buyer’s journey so each piece of content serves a broader strategy. 

Short-term goals:

  • Increase monthly website traffic and retention
  • More lead magnet downloads
  • Boost social media followers
  • Increase email subscribers

Long-term goals:

  • Improved brand awareness and recognition
  • Preventing customer churn
  • Expanding customer base

3. Conduct Keyword Research

Keyword research is a must for SEO. Plus, keyword research aids in audience research because it shows what questions your audience is asking and what problems they face.

You can use tools like BuzzSumo and SEMrush to investigate keywords and topic inspiration.

4. Set Up an Editorial Calendar

Quality content always trumps quantity. Google’s algorithms, social media algorithms, and your readers all appreciate in-depth high-quality content. 

In your calendar, plan for about two blogs and about ten social media posts each week along with some multimedia, depending on your resources available. 

If you have the resources to produce two high-quality videos a week, certainly go for it – but don’t sacrifice quality. 

Plan your editorial calendar and posting schedule about 60 days out so you’re always working from an offensive position.

5. Choose Your Creators Carefully

People need to know they can trust what you have to say. 

Google cares too. According to Google, sites promoting your-money-your-life content (such as healthcare), must prioritize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. 

For healthcare, this means experts should create your content. Choose expert creators that mimic your audience – such as doctors in their respective fields and medical assistants. Don’t use generic author names like your brand name or “news desk.”

Strive to uplift specific people at your company as influencers and thought leaders. Eventually, your target audience will learn to trust them and seek out their opinions. 

6. Keep a Consistent Tone

A set of brand guidelines goes miles toward building trust in your audience through a content marketing strategy in healthcare. 

Consistency breeds trust. People come to expect a familiar voice, format, and tone from you at every touchpoint.

An inconsistent tone accomplishes the opposite: it’s unsettling and provokes distrust.

Your brand guidelines should outline rules for your content to follow:

  • How does your content “sound?” Is it warm, friendly, and subjective or encyclopedic and technical? 
  • How will you adapt your tone for different platforms? For example, email requires a more personal tone than Twitter.

7. Get Personal and Engaging

Even doctors and executives don’t want technical content all the time. Give your content some personality to boost engagement:

  • Interactive quizzes 
  • Gamified content
  • Polls 
  • 360-degree or 3D photos

Squeeze More ROI from Your Content Marketing Strategy in Healthcare

An effective content marketing strategy in healthcare is all about reputation. Building a trustworthy reputation takes time and consistency, so there’s no room for slacking in content marketing.

Remember to:

  • Research your audience’s needs, mindset, and pain points.
  • Plan your short- and long-term goals for content marketing.
  • Research your keywords and SEO plan.
  • Focus on producing high-quality content on a consistent schedule.
  • Look for fresh ways to engage your audience via content.

Content from Share Moving Media reaches the offices and homes of several thousand healthcare decision-makers across the country. Get in touch with us to start planning your comprehensive content strategy today!

4 Key Insights for Manufacturers from Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 Report

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In a competitive healthcare manufacturing landscape, B2B companies are beginning to invest resources and budget into building substantial content marketing strategies. With 78% of CMOs believing that content is the future of marketing, a vast majority of businesses have embraced content marketing over traditional marketing tactics. 

Quality content is an effective way to grow audience engagement, boost brand awareness, and drive sales. Not only that, but it also helps you build trust and loyalty with your audience to improve conversions over time. 

In a modern world, your healthcare customers expect you to develop valuable content that answers their questions.

Even if you run a small marketing team, content marketing can work for you. If you’re involved in any type of content marketing, reading through the Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 B2B report is essential to understand how you can get started. Let’s take a look at a few content marketing insights for healthcare manufacturers that you can start implementing today.

Why are Content Marketing Insights Important for Healthcare Manufacturers? 

Marketing moves fast. In an ever-changing landscape, you need to stay ahead of the game. 

91% of B2B marketers are committed to using content in their marketing strategy. With more healthcare companies developing content, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of current trends to remain competitive. Content marketing insights for healthcare manufacturers help you understand how to reach customers at every stage of the funnel and carry a consistent message. 

Staying updated on marketing insights allows you to:

  • Understand how your customers research and purchase products
  • Keep abreast of new changes in healthcare consumer behaviors and priorities
  • Stay relevant to your target audience, marketplace, and competitors
  • Forecast and budget better so you’re not wasting any resources

4 Content Marketing Insights for Healthcare Manufacturers

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is dedicated to providing resources to professionals who are looking to propel their company forward with content. As a leading global content marketing training and educational organization, they teach brands how to engage, attract, and retain customers through storytelling.

Healthcare manufacturers can take advantage of CMI’s 2020 report to learn more about developing impactful content. Here are the key insights from the report:

1. Top-of-the-Funnel Content Increases Engagement

Most B2B marketers focus on content that targets top-of-funnel engagement and goals. While 86% of respondents use content marketing to build brand awareness, there has been a notable increase in those that use it to build loyalty (9% increase) and generate sales (8% increase). 

For healthcare manufacturers, top-of-the-funnel content includes:

  • Infographics
  • Blogs
  • Videos
  • Ebooks or whitepapers

Top-of-the-funnel content doesn’t attempt to sell your target audience products, but instead focuses on developing educational materials that solve pain points.

2. High-Performing Content Formats Drive Results

While marketers are focusing on top-of-the-funnel content, it’s essential to understand what formats perform best throughout the entire customer journey. High-performing content at every stage includes:

  • Awareness: Blog posts/articles (31%), social media content like tweets and stories (25%), and in-person events (8%)
  • Interest: In-person events (19%), webinars/online events (16%), and ebooks/guides (13%)
  • Consideration: Email newsletters (31%), blog posts/short articles (13%), and in-person events/case studies (9%)
  • Purchase: In-person events (25%), case studies (23%), and webinars/online events (11%)

Regardless of the B2B company size, half of the marketers create content for their targeted audiences who are in the early stage of the lead flow. To successfully engage with your customers, your content needs to speak to every stage of their customer journey so you can provide relevant and personalized information to drive conversions. 

3. Paid Distribution Channels Remain Essential

While content marketing fundamentals focus on building an organic presence, 84% of B2B marketers use paid distribution channels to promote their content marketing strategy. In the same group, 72% of professionals report that LinkedIn is the top paid and organic social media platform that generates the best results. Additional paid content distribution channels include:

  • Sponsorships (66%)
  • Search engine marketing (61%)
  • Display ads (46%)
  • Sponsored email content (32%)
  • Native advertising (31%)
  • Other (14%)

Additionally, marketers report using social media (91%), brand’s website (89%), and email (87%) as the preferred free distribution channels to earn higher customer engagement. 

4. Marketers Continue to Measure Performance and ROI

When it comes to measuring content performance, 65% of marketers utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) and 43% measure content marketing ROI. Marketers track ROI with the following metrics:

  • Email: Opens, clicks, and downloads (90%)
  • Website traffic: Pageviews and backlinks (88%)
  • Website engagement: Time spent, bounce rate, form completion (86%)
  • Social media: Shares, followers, likes, and views (83%)
  • Conversions: Traffic to subscribers and sales (78%)

From the 43% of marketers who measure ROI, 59% of them rate their ability to demonstrate ROI as very good or excellent.

Develop an Impactful Content Marketing Strategy

As health manufacturers compete for conversions and internet rankings, it’s essential to utilize CMI’s insights to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy. With the right strategy in place, you can build brand awareness, delight your customers, and boost your bottom line for years to come.

Ready to develop quality and valuable content? Get started today with Share Moving Media. 

Content Marketing 101 for Medical Equipment Manufacturers

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For many medical equipment manufacturers who operate a lean organization with limited resources, content marketing might be a foreign marketing strategy. However, with the right development and cross-promotion, content marketing can take your business goals to the next level.

In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing tactics but generates three times as many leads. How can you take advantage of content marketing for medical equipment manufacturers? Let’s discover how you get started driving results through content marketing.

Why is Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers Important?

Content marketing focuses on developing valuable and relevant content for your target audience. 86% of B2B marketers use some sort of content marketing over traditional advertising to build brand awareness. However, the truth is, any business can benefit from creating content.

When it comes to a successful content marketing strategy, the keyword is value. In a competitive landscape like medical sales, content marketing will highlight your credibility to build brand awareness and increase sales.

However, it’s important to note that while your content should drive customer action, you’re not pushing an obvious sale or advertisement. Your content should be educational and provide actionable takeaways that make your brand stand out against the competition. 

5 Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers Best Practices

Whether you develop infographics full of statistics or in-depth educational whitepapers on your industry niche, your content should deliver enough value to persuade your readers to move into your lead funnel. To develop a content marketing strategy for medical equipment manufacturers, consider the following best practices.

1. Strategize and Set Goals

Before you begin writing any content, you need to develop your content marketing strategy. A comprehensive strategy will not only help you save resources and time, but it will also keep you organized and agile. 

The most important part of your strategy revolves around setting goals. Do you want to earn more leads? Boost your search engine optimization efforts (SEO)? Or, are you looking to drive more sales?  You can get started by using the SMART method (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) to formulate your content marketing objectives.

Once you establish your goals, you can build your entire strategy and marketing calendar around them to drive more engagement and boost your bottom line. 

2. Perform Keyword Research

With your goals at the center of your strategy, you need to complete in-depth content and keyword research to understand what your target audience prefers. Content research will help you determine:

  • What content formats are most popular for your niche
  • The topics your audience is most likely to share or learn more about
  • How to develop an ideal piece of content in terms of length, headline type, etc. 

You also need to understand what keywords are relevant to your industry and the long-tail phrases your audience is searching for. Using the right keywords in your content will boost your SEO efforts and help you rank in top results so you’re found by more people. The higher you rank in search pages, the more traffic and conversions you can capture

3. Develop Evergreen Content

Evergreen content provides ongoing value to your audiences and drives long-term traffic to your website – sometimes even years after publishing. Evergreen content types include:

  • How-to guides
  • Checklists
  • Presentations
  • Case studies
  • White papers
  • Ebooks
  • Podcasts
  • Video

While evergreen may take longer to create than a traditional blog post, you won’t have to rewrite it on a bi-weekly schedule. By developing content that your audience is more likely to consume and enjoy, search engines will take note and rank it higher in search results over time.

4. Target Audiences with Personalization

Personalization continues to be an important factor in content marketing strategy. With consumers bombarded with daily digital ads, emails, and blog posts, your content needs to quickly capture their attention to keep them actively engaged with your brand.

To develop personalized content, consider creating buyer personas for all the different audience types you plan on targeting. You can then start creating specific content for your target audiences that include highly personalized and relevant material. 

For example, different age groups will require different tones and topics depending on their needs. If you’re a medical equipment manufacturer focused on a certain geographic area, your content can also include more localized information.

5. Use Analytics to Optimize Future Content

While your content marketing strategy may start with trial and error, don’t become discouraged. Analytics not only show you the content that your audience prefers to consume, but it also helps you understand trends that you can optimize. For example, your content analytics will teach you:

  • The content that gets the most and least traffic
  • How often your content is shared on social media
  • The content that converted leads the best
  • Headlines or images that earned the most clicks

If you notice certain content formats or topics perform better than others, you can improve future content based on similar fundamentals to capture more audience engagement. 

Discover Valuable Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers 

The content marketing landscape for medical equipment manufacturers is wide open for you to take advantage of and grow your company’s bottom line. With the right strategy and optimizations in place, you can develop high-quality content that not only captures your prospect’s attention but also turns them into loyal customer advocates.

If you’re ready to develop quality content that engages your audience, contact Share Moving Media today.

4 Ways Marketers Can Successfully Execute Audience Targeting in Healthcare

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The medtech industry continues to grow and is expected to have its worldwide sales reach $522 billion by 2022.

With an aging Baby Boomer population and Americans facing chronic illnesses more than ever before, medical facilities need the right technology to provide quality patient care. For healthcare marketers, this means you have to get your products in front of your niche targeted audience, at the right time, if you hope to land a sale. 

With a growing need and competition saturating the industry, it’s more important than ever for medical suppliers to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that targets the right audience. Marketing to the right audience allows you to develop brand awareness, increase sales, and create trust between you and customers. 

Sounds good, right? But, what’s the best audience targeting in healthcare strategy that drives sales? Let’s take a look at a few ways you can boost brand recognition with audience targeting. 

Why is Audience Targeting in Healthcare Important?

Instead of the traditional one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, targeting specific audiences puts a clear focus on who your products will serve and why. In doing so, you’re able to allocate a budget that’s more likely to produce a high ROI. 

A target audience is a set of customers who share similar needs and pain points that your products will serve. The correct audience targets give you further insight into which customers of yours are long-term and which are one-time only so you can identify your most qualified leads to connect with. 

When segmenting audiences in healthcare, you need to not only consider the hospitals or facilities you sell to, but also their patients. The different ways you can segment your audiences include:

  • Demographic: Age, education, gender, race, etc.
  • Psychographic: Values, interests, personality, lifestyle, etc.
  • Behavioral: Brand interactions, purchase habits, budget, status, etc.
  • Geographic: City, area code, neighborhood, etc. 

4 Ways Medical Suppliers Can Market to Target Audiences

To get started targeting your niche healthcare audience, consider implementing the following tactics:

1. Produce Thought Leader Content

Did you know that 51% of B2B buyers search for educational content before making a decision? With technology that saves and improves the quality of lives across the country, your brand has a story to tell. Use your product’s story to develop thought leadership material that provides solutions to your audience’s pain points.

The right content will establish your credibility and further your brand awareness throughout the industry. Types of thought leadership content you can produce include:

  • Articles or whitepapers to demonstrate how your products benefit patients
  • Webinars that dive deeper into relatable subjects
  • How-to or about videos that speak to who you are

2. Utilize Social Media Advanced Targeting

Medical suppliers who are active on social media have a huge opportunity to improve their reputation with potential customers. With 46% of medical professionals engaging on social media, it’s essential to understand what platforms your customers spend the most time on and develop valuable content that speaks to their needs.

For healthcare sales, consider spending time on LinkedIn to connect with niche medical professionals that will buy into your brand. LinkedIn also provides advanced targeting features that allow you to advertise to specific organizations, job titles, and more to ensure you’re reaching the right person. These additional touchpoints will help you increase engagement and improve lead generation to potentially result in a sale. 

3. Develop a Website that Provides Solutions

Dealing with complex technology that saves lives, your website can’t rely on flashy imagery and witty one-liners. It needs to answer who you are, what products you sell, and why your audience should be interested. Within your website:

  • Display your mission statement on an about page 
  • Discuss the features and benefits of your product pages
  • Highlight past customer success stories and testimonials
  • Showcase thought leadership content to display your credibility
  • Drive conversions by allowing users to schedule consultations

Within your content, make sure you’re using search engine optimization best practices so your target audience can find you with a quick Google search. Consider what keywords your audience might search for and use them throughout your website to earn more organic website traffic. 

4. Stay Top of Mind with Email Marketing

Of course, audience targeting in healthcare wouldn’t be complete without mentioning email marketing. Not only does email marketing produce an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, but it allows you to send personalized messages to your leads and customers to build loyal relationships. 

With email marketing, you can send valuable content directly to your customer’s inbox about your brand or products. When targeting a specific audience, utilize segmentation to send relevant messages that speak to their challenges. For example, if you have a consultation with a family doctor, send targeted emails about how your products help family members of all ages. To sweeten the deal, include testimonials from past customers in the same audience segment. 

Additionally, utilize a customer relationship manager (CRM) to create email workflows that automatically send the right emails to a relevant audience segment. 

Target the Right Audiences with Strategic Marketing Campaigns

Developing a marketing strategy for your medical supply company has never been more important. In the ever-evolving healthcare industry, the right audience targeting is the difference in providing patients with the best technology or failing to stand out amongst the competition. 

To start developing valuable content for your target audience, contact Share Moving Media today.

The Share Moving Media Blog: Your Marketing Resource for Healthcare Contracting Professionals

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The Share Moving Media blog is the ultimate marketing resource for healthcare contracting professionals, such as medical suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors. Our goal is always to help you increase your customer market share through value-added content and opportunities for increased visibility and brand awareness.

Your feedback is important to us. If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered here, let us know. Meanwhile, be sure to subscribe, so you don’t miss important content that can show you how to create ideal customer relationships, boost revenue, and increase your authority in the field.

Healthcare Industry Challenges

A new world

At Share Moving Media, we believe now is the perfect time to launch our new blog series. Healthcare industry challenges have perhaps never been greater than in the last six months. However, we see this time as a window for rethinking business practices and creating new methods for addressing customer needs.

You’ve no doubt experienced some of the hurdles brought on by the novel coronavirus and the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic:

  • Supply chain disruptions at all levels for equipment, pharmaceuticals, raw ingredients, and materials
  • Supply/demand imbalances, shortages, and allocations
  • Increased marketplace competition in some sectors
  • Abrupt price changes and quality control issues
  • Development of nontraditional distribution pathways
  • Formation of government consortiums
  • Reallocation of medical and support staff, as well as budgets
  • Timeline shifts for mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations
  • Stock market volatility and unpredictability
  • Shift from B2B to B2C selling and vice versa
  • Expanded focus on COVID, PPE, and vaccines
  • Decrease in non-emergent medical care
  • Implementation of telemedicine for routine care
  • Reduced onsite personnel and more remote work
  • Customer workplace visitation restrictions
  • Retail outlet closures and an increase in online business
  • Academic institution shutdowns
  • Patient loss of insurance coverage with unemployment

The healthcare industry as a whole has been reeling since the start of 2020. While the remainder of this year may seem shrouded in mystery, many companies are starting to see the fog clear. We want to assist you in developing marketing strategies moving forward, to the degree we are all able to plan for the future. Therefore, we will be addressing these challenges and much more in upcoming blog posts.

Introduction to Share Moving Media

Our publications and services

For readers not yet familiar with Share Moving Media, we are a full-service media and content company dedicated to medical providers, manufacturers, and distributors. Through our associations, educational services, and publications, we provide news, information, and brand visibility via advertising and sponsored content.

Our high-quality content includes:

  • Articles
  • Blog posts
  • Ebooks
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Podcasts
  • Graphics

We produce multiple publications in the healthcare contracting vertical. You may already be familiar with Repertoire, our magazine for the healthcare distribution channel focusing on physician offices, hospitals, surgery centers, and long-term care institutions. We also publish The Journal of Healthcare Contracting for healthcare supply professionals. This popular publication features content for healthcare systems and facilities, manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and group purchasing organizations.

Pillars of our mission

We’re confident that Share Moving Media stands out from other healthcare contracting media companies by virtue of our three mission pillars:

  • To provide and promote marketing excellence in healthcare
  • To enhance healthcare brand communications via storytelling and unique case studies
  • To use persona-based marketing to help clients finetune consumer demographics and to identify and address evolving industry demands

Healthcare Contracting Help Where You Need It

How our blog will elevate your business

Whether you’re a small niche supplier or an integrated delivery network, our blog will help you take your business to the next level. In future posts, we’ll be discussing diverse topics in the industry, such as:

  • Contract management software
  • Medical device innovation
  • Integrated delivery networks
  • Equipment purchasing
  • Hospital inventory management
  • Healthcare marketing analytics
  • Brand messaging
  • Thought leadership

Through examples and best practices, we want to help you:

  • Tell the story of your brand and earn an audience
  • Guide your brand through its lifecycle, from launch to customer conversion and retention
  • Demonstrate how your products are beneficial
  • Evaluate different content forms (blogs, white papers, videos, etc.) to determine which one is right for your varying needs at any given time
  • Develop one-of-a-kind marketing content to set you apart from the competition and to provide invaluable tools for sales staff
  • Discover how to use content and advertising together to complement each other

We’ll be talking about health insurance trends, group purchasing, medical distribution, supply chains, sales creativity, and more.

Reach Out to Share Moving Media Today

Interested in how you can start working with Share Moving Media to help your business reach its goals? Contact us today and let us know how we can assist you. And we look forward to welcoming you as a new blog subscriber.