COVID-19 transformed B2B marketing and sales processes. Over the next few years, the healthcare supply chain will shift away from traditional seller-focused strategies and focus on the buyer’s needs and benefits. Content marketing for supply chain leaders will take center stage in this change as more buyers go directly to suppliers instead of working through sales representatives.

Is your healthcare distribution business ready for this shift?

Learn how you can succeed in this new age of marketing and sales through an innovative healthcare content marketing strategy for supply chain leaders.

Key Takeaways:

• Content marketing provides essential information for buyers performing the research phase of their journey.
• Many buyers are interacting directly with suppliers instead of working through sales representatives.
• Your content improves buyer interactions by controlling your online reputation and providing solutions that build trust with your customers.

What Is Content Marketing for Supply Chain Leaders?

Content marketing for supply chain leaders is creating and distributing online content like blog posts, videos, social media posts, and images. These online assets spread brand awareness and build trust with potential buyers.

While some content might turn into a conversion, most of your content aims to provide valuable information as healthcare facilities and workers find solutions and research their options. Your return from content marketing will be greater customer loyalty, more quality leads, and increased trust in your company.

You will also indirectly increase your sales through content marketing. Only 17% of the B2B sales process includes meeting with suppliers. The rest of that journey often occurs through independent research. You can be part of their journey from an earlier point by offering online content that moves them towards your products and solutions.

5 Ways Content Marketing Helps the Healthcare Supply Chain

Here are five reasons why content marketing works for healthcare supply leaders and how marketing helps with supply chain issues.

1. Connects You Directly with Buyers

Gartner reports that by 2025 80% of B2B sales between buyers and suppliers will be through digital channels. Additionally, 44% of millennial buyers would rather connect directly to the suppliers instead of working through a sales representative. This is 2.2x more than previous generations.

With more buyers coming directly to suppliers and distributors, your content and online image matter more. When you invest in content marketing, you offer your customers an alternative approach to learning about your products. This approach will increase your sales because of your broader market reach instead of your marketing team relying only on buyers who still use a traditional sales representative approach to find and purchase new products.

2. Controls Your Online Reputation

Over 89% of B2B buyers will conduct online research before purchasing. What shows up online will influence how buyers view your business. If you don’t create online content to inform buyers about your products, they may get their information from online reviews and less credible sources.

Content marketing helps you control your online reputation by managing what information will appear at the top of your buyers’ searches. Here are several ways you can perform online reputation management through content marketing:

• Use SEO to rank your content above other information
• Control what healthcare decision-makers learn about your business and products
• Use social media accounts to interact with customer feedback
• Engage personally with buyers on different channels
• Encourage positive online feedback

Online reputation management doesn’t include deleting or hiding negative reviews. Keeping negative reviews and addressing them for others to see shows buyers that you strive to resolve issues. It also increases your trustworthiness as a business that only has positive reviews might come across as fake.

3. Creates Solutions for Your Buyers

Your business might sell products, but your content marketing sells solutions. Creating audience-centric content is more effective than sales pitches. Today, 87% of B2B marketers focus on informing their audience rather than promoting a company message or agenda.

The healthcare supply chain has many challenges that hospitals and care facilities are concerned about. You can use your content marketing to address those challenges and solve pain points.

For example, supply chain shortages are weighing heavily on many healthcare facilities as they look to diversify their distributors or stockpile supplies to avoid running out. Your content can offer solutions to their supply chain issues and reassurances about how you combat supply chain challenges to avoid delays in delivering their needed products.

4. Increases Your Return on Investment

Content marketing can increase your ROI by decreasing your marketing spending while improving your results. For example, Marketers say content marketing is 3X more cost-efficient for lead generation than PPC, and those with an active blogging strategy are 13X more likely to increase their ROI.

Content marketing is a strategy that continues to work even after you initially invest in content creation. You don’t have to continue to pay like with PPC ads or compensate sales representatives. Instead, your content sells itself and your business if you create it using SEO strategies that help it rank well.

Content marketing works best alongside your other marketing efforts to broaden your reach and fill in marketing gaps different strategies might miss.

5. Builds Trust with Your Buyers

About 88% of marketers said their online content created brand awareness and built credibility with buyers. Those were the top content marketing results that B2B brands saw from their efforts. 

Consider using these methods for building trust with your buyers through your online content:

• Create thought leadership in the healthcare industry
• Write at a higher level and avoid fluff
• Share and support your business values
• Personalize the customer experience
• Share case studies and feedback

Most importantly, always remain authentic with your content. Over 90% of customers want to do business with genuine companies. An authentic company is real and honest about who they are, what they value, and what it can offer its buyer.

The following video explains how to make content marketing work in 2022, so you can continue receiving these five results of effective healthcare marketing.

Transform Your Marketing Strategies

Are you ready to upgrade your marketing strategies?

Share Moving Media are experts in healthcare distribution marketing and can help you succeed with your new content marketing strategies. Our training, publications, and industry insights provide the data and knowledge you need to grow an effective content marketing strategy in 2022.

Contact us to learn more about our healthcare marketing solutions.