7 Healthcare Content Marketing Tips to Make Patients Care About You
July 7th 2022 by Declan Davey
Did you know Google receives over 1 billion health-related queries each day?
Medical marketing strategies will need to focus on healthcare content marketing more heavily in the 2020s.
In the article below, healthcare copywriter Declan Davey provides 7 practical tips for healthcare brands to make patients care about their content.
Introduction
Search traffic brings 3x more visits to hospitals than non-search visitors, so with 365 billion health-based questions on Google each year, that’s a lot of potential new patients for healthcare providers.
And 44% of patients who research hospitals using a mobile device will go on to book an appointment.
No doubt, then — healthcare content marketing has to be at the forefront of medical brands’ growth strategy for 2022 and beyond.
There really is no getting away from the ‘‘content machine’’ if you want to win online.
This is the reality.
Fortunately, the scope of the internet offers no shortage of digital medical marketing options to choose from, such as:
Articles
Case studies
Email marketing
How-to guides
Lead magnets
Newsletters
Podcasts
Research summaries
Social media
Videos
Webinars
Perhaps you already use several of the strategies above?
Many providers have now committed to following an expansive content plan.
The reason being?
More content creates a more sustainable healthcare lead generation stream...
A better lead generation stream brings in more patients…
More patients = More revenue.
Other businesses opt to spend most of their marketing budget on PPC (paid advertising) to get to the top of search engines faster.
Paid ads get some reasonable returns, but with the trend of people becoming more suspicious of ads not looking like it will stop anytime soon, how sustainable is PPC?
And this much is clear, too...
A business can put out ad after ad, but without high-quality content on the pages that the ads are directing to, they won’t convert.
Content production is viewed by many in the marketing industry as the more stable asset.
What’s more, content marketing gets three times the number of leads per dollar of spending when compared with PPC.
So with the above in mind, how can you hit on a leading healthcare content marketing strategy?
1. Capitalize on headline opportunities
Nobody likes a click-bait headline that deceives.
In healthcare, this is even more important. Sensitive, life-changing information is being communicated.
Take the click-bait route at your own peril…
Long-term, patients will go elsewhere.
Still, as a health practitioner or business owner, you’ll know that medical content is often thought of as dry, or even dull.
We don’t want potential patients of yours drifting off to sleep as they read your content, do we?
Headlines tend to be seen by 80% of online consumers.
The content body itself?
Only 20%.
Therefore, you need to make your headlines as attention-worthy as possible, without tipping them into the click-bait zone.
‘‘Hook’’ in consumers, but don’t mislead them…
A hard balance to get right for marketers.
Let’s take this example of an effective healthcare headline from Mayo Clinic:
A healthcare content marketing example from Mayo Clinic. The headline builds curiosity to read more.
Source: Mayo Clinic
‘‘Living His Best Life Against a Backdrop of Incurable Cancer’’ grabs your attention.
The sub-heading then goes on to give more context about how Scott Stewart — a Mayo Clinic patient — has been well-supported in his fight against a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer.
This has clarity of context (‘‘incurable cancer’’)…
… as well as creativity (‘‘living his best life against a backdrop of…’’)
Curiosity is piqued.
The prospect of a positive story is promised.
And this is done in just 10 words.
A lot more online browsers will click this than if the headline read as:
‘‘A cancer recovery.’’
In my experience as a copywriter, the three most important factors to get right with a headline are as follows:
A: Audience
B: Benefit
C: Curiosity
Check the headline of this article, for instance:
‘‘7 Healthcare Content Marketing Tips to Make Patients Care About You’’.
With a headline like this, I appeal to my target audience — healthcare practitioners and marketers.
A benefit is promised — 7 healthcare content marketing tips.
And curiosity is generated — making patients care about you.
Tick, tick, tick, on all three fronts.
Far from rocket science, but applying this ABC method made you click, right?
There is a long list of copywriting formulas out there which you can experiment with.
Here are a few helpfully summarised by Copyblogger:
‘‘The Secret of (blank)’’
‘‘Here Is a Method That Is Helping (blank) to (blank)’’
‘‘What Everyone Ought to Know About (blank)’’
Healthcare lead generation teams need to make their headlines clickable.
Source: Copyblogger
Don’t overuse any one of these, though.
Your audience will catch on if you’ve sent them the fifth ‘‘what everyone ought to know about’’ headline in a row.
Instead, mix and match.
And remember that a combination of clarity and creativity wins the click.
The click then leads to a new consult booking or email inquiry.
If you’d like some help with writing headlines for the healthcare industry, feel free to contact me here for advice.
2. Invest in video content… now! (to stay ahead in medical marketing media)
Video content is the thing right now.
It probably will be for a while, and healthcare is no different. Video should be prioritized as part of your online medical marketing plan.
92% of marketers report that video content is a key part of their strategy and the average person will watch 100 minutes of video per day, according to this forecast.
This should serve as a warning for healthcare providers…
Don’t miss out on the amazing opportunity for growth and audience exposure.
Here’s a video healthcare content marketing example from Johnson & Johnson about a young man with HIV:
Johnson & Johnson’s have included video content as part of their healthcare marketing.
The reality is, though, most healthcare brands aren’t capitalizing on video.
They may blog and post images on social media (both of which I highly recommend), but they’re too shy or cost-averse to opt for video.
Getting on film offers patients more insight into who you are and what you do.
The patients can then put faces to names, which builds trust more than a logo will.
They can also make viewers emotionally invest in what your brand has to say.
I get it, though — video content can demand a lot of energy and resources.
You don’t need to be perfect every time.
Good video content is better than no video content.
And outsourcing some of this work is often a sensible idea.
Consider hiring a healthcare copywriter who can write your video scripts, and a video editor who can make the visuals and audio flow.
Bear in mind, these don’t need to be 30 or even 10-minute videos.
A 60-second clip — or even GIFs — can have just as much impact when done well. Real estate copywriter, Tom Gil, does an excellent job with the GIFs on his site to help with readability and content flow.
3. Dig deep on patients’ pain points
This one’s all about getting specific.
To choose the right kind of medical marketing for doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers, it’s essential to focus on patients’ pain points.
Let’s consider a stroke clinic’s marketing efforts for a second…
Should they aim to appeal to everyone with a health problem?
No.
Everyone with a neurological problem?
Nope.
Everyone who’s either had or knows someone who’s had a stroke?
Maybe.
But the clinic could take this one step further and concentrate their marketing (e.g. blogs, YouTube videos) on resonating with people who’ve had a specific type of stroke…
Perhaps it’s TIA’s, hemorrhagic strokes, or ischemic strokes.
Different types of strokes create different kinds of problems for the patient.
So forget a tagline like:
‘‘The healthcare provider you can trust.’’
This is too general unless the brand is already known on a national or global scale.
No specific pain points are expressed.
Instead, go for an approach like the team at IBS Coach, who treat people with irritable bowel syndrome using a low FODMAP diet:
The best healthcare content marketing isn’t afraid to get specific on pain points and symptoms.
Source: IBS Coach
75% of people reducing or eliminating symptoms of IBS is a specific and impressive (yet realistic) figure.
Ironically, a figure like 75% will probably attract more patient inquiries than 100%.
It’s simply more believable.
IBS Coach then proceeds to specify the symptoms they’re treating, such as bloating and cramps.
But what if you’re marketing for medical devices or healthcare tech, instead?
The copy and design team at Cylera have done a fantastic job on their homepage tagline:
‘‘Patient safety is our DNA’’ leads nicely into the specifics of how healthcare businesses can benefit from their cybersecurity:
Another great example of medical marketing, this time from Cylera.
Source: Cylera
An introduction such as the one above isn’t going to appeal to virtual security teams around the globe.
It’s going to appeal specifically to the virtual security teams in hospitals, and identifies the main problem they address — patient safety.
4. Test ‘‘positive’’ vs. ‘‘negative’’ content
Let’s begin this section with a quote from a well-respected book called Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins, viewed by many as the father of modern advertising.
Here goes:
‘‘Don’t show the wrinkles you propose to remove, but the face as it will appear. Your customers know all about the wrinkles.’’
Scientific Advertising proposes that ‘‘the positive ad outpulls the other four to one.’’ '
Source: Goodreads
Hopkins also says ‘‘show beauty, not homeliness; show health, not sickness,’’ and that in his decades of experience, ‘‘the positive ad outpulls the other four to one.’’
Hard to argue with, when this book was created from his very own research and experimentation.
You want your brand to represent positivity and hope for people facing health issues.
Who wants to go and see a medical practitioner who’s all doom-and-gloom?
Not many…
But when it comes to specific ads, some would dispute with Hopkins.
Whilst positive sentiments such as achievement and gratitude are powerful, so is a negative emotion like anxiety, according to this review of over one million marketing messages.
The ‘‘Wheel of Emotions’’ in a review of one million marketing messages.
Source: Persado
Although it should be noted that this review covered retail, e-commerce, financial, and travel, rather than healthcare, the results are still worth considering.
There is a place for negative emotion in ads when brands take care over how they produce it.
Let’s look at this example from a health advertiser, which saw a 47% increase in CTR (click-through rate) using the ad below:
Negative sentiment in healthcare advertising can be effective too.
Source: Wordstream
This increase is in comparison to previous ads with positive images.
Why did negative sentiment work better here, rather than an image of a happy, slim individual celebrating their weight loss?
Well, for an overweight individual, the image above is far more relatable than six-pack abs.
In addition, the shock value of ‘‘size does matter’’ invokes a high enough level of anxiety or guilt for the viewer to click.
Now, healthcare providers ought to be careful with this kind of thing…
Too much, and it may turn patients off.
But when you’re trying to communicate the importance of a specific problem like obesity, negative sentiment can be more lucrative.
Test, test, test would be my honest advice.
Create content with both ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative’’ sentiments.
And then you’ll be able to see which performs better.
A positive headline could be:
‘‘4 Strategies for You to Beat Type 2 Diabetes This Year’’
And a negative headline could be:
‘‘Ignore Type 2 Diabetes at Your Own Risk’’
Both can work, dependent on the context and the content you go on to talk about beyond the headline.
5. Choose social media wisely
Some medical marketing agencies may advise you to be available on every social media out there.
Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Pinterest. LinkedIn. Quora…
And the seemingly endless list continues.
If you have either a) lots of time (which most healthcare professionals don’t)…
Or b) a huge team with endless resources…
Then you might be able to maintain posting content to a long list of social channels.
In my experience, most providers can’t keep up the frequency or consistency of this.
A Twitter account with under 100 followers and no posts since 2018 looks worse than no Twitter account at all.
Focus on a maximum of two or three social channels, is my tip.
This will be more manageable.
Post regularly on these channels (at least every 1-2 weeks) to engage your audience and build up authority over time.
6. Aim for first place in the patient’s mind
You may have heard about a fantastic little book called ‘‘22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,’’ by Al Ries & Jack Trout.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend bumping it up your reading list.
Pay attention to ‘‘The Law of the Mind’’ in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
Source: Goodreads
One of the 22 laws is ‘‘The Law of the Mind.’’
To summarize this law in one sentence, it tells us that more important than being first in the market is to be first in the customer’s mind.
The law in question describes the case of IBM, the giant computer company, who weren’t actually first in the marketplace…
Yet, after investing heavily in their marketing, IBM got into the customer’s mind first.
Business names can help too, according to the authors, Al Ries and Jack Trout.
Apple is one such example…
They were trying to succeed in the personal computer market (a sub-sector of general computers).
Fortunately, their name was simple and memorable enough for the public to remember their brand.
And then they called their product Apple II.
Meanwhile, Apple’s competitors at the time called their own products things like:
IMSAI 8080
MITS Altair 8800
Commodore Pet
Radio Shack TRS-80
All of them are a mouthful and definitely don’t have the standout factor of Apple.
If you’re still at the stage where you’re able to choose your healthcare brand’s name, I recommend you don’t go with a name like this:
Transformative Healthcare & Medical Solutions.
Way too wordy.
Healthcare brand names such as Anthem or Johnson & Johnson are much simpler for the customer to recall.
The names may not instantly showcase them as healthcare companies, but this doesn’t seem to matter.
Look at Amazon.
Look at Google.
Look at Instagram.
None of the above states what they do in an obvious way.
The main point is that they’re catchy and can become part of the public’s daily vocabulary.
Would someone say, ‘‘hey did you find a blender on Amazon?’’
Yes.
Would someone say, ‘‘hey did you find a doctor on Transformative Healthcare & Medical Solutions?’’
Probably not.
Be first of mind with a short, sharp brand name.
Here’s another good quote from The Law of the Mind:
‘‘Being first in the mind is everything in marketing. Being first in the marketplace is important only to the extent that it allows you to get in the mind first.’’
As medical markets become more saturated, it gets harder for healthcare businesses to be first of mind.
But with the help of technology, the potential reach is also far greater.
You can now market to almost anyone, anywhere in the world.
This is why choosing a sub-niche to focus on is so important.
Make sure your healthcare brand can offer something unique to the market and go all-in on this.
Maybe you won’t be the first of mind brand for virtual appointments...
And maybe you won’t be the first of mind brand for mental health virtual appointments…
But maybe you CAN become the first of mind brand for Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) virtual appointments.
7. Publish long-form articles (1500+ words)
Blogging is your most faithful friend when it comes to making patients care about you.
Here are a few intriguing facts about blogging, from Neal Schaffer’s 2020 business statistics article:
A blog gets businesses 94% more links to their website
Businesses with 4+ blog posts per week get 3.5x more traffic than those who post one or less per week
23% of social media posts include links to blogs
65% of content marketers use blogging more than any other marketing stream
65% of businesses routinely blog, making it the most well-used marketing tactic.
Source: Postfunnel
The great thing about a blog is, although it’s a lot of upfront work to research and post relevant topics, the content can be repurposed…
A long-form blog article can be turned into a YouTube video…
It can be split into mini-nuggets of information for Facebook and Twitter…
You can use the images from the blog article and share them on Instagram…
And you can send a helpful email to your subscriber list with a link to the article, which will build their trust in your brand.
See how one piece of content can expand into many more, and at no cost?
There are two main forms of blogging, as far as I’m concerned…
The first type is pumping out lazy content at 500 words a pop.
Marketers used to do this.
Some still do, but it doesn’t really work anymore.
The second type is producing well-researched, long-form articles with 1500+ words.
1500-2000+ word articles are getting the best results these days.
Source: Orbit Media
Take this healthcare content marketing example from Evidently Cochrane.
They wrote a blog post about severe aortic stenosis, where they compare the options of open heart surgery or keyhole treatment.
Several of the blogging best practices are followed in this post:
Long-form at around 1500 words
A variety of relevant images are included (with captions)
The heading includes the target keyword/s
Content is split into sub-sections for easy readability
If you’re wondering what some other blogging best practices are, check out the graph below.
You might not be able to fulfill them all and that’s fine, but do aim for as many as possible:
For optimal healthcare lead generation, medical marketing services should aim for as many of these blogging tactics as possible.
Source: Orbit Media
These practices are particularly important for marketing medical devices and services.
Everyone knows that medical content tends to be more dense and science-based than typical content.
The information is harder for most readers to understand.
With this in mind, it’s key to hire a healthcare copywriter who can break down complex concepts and talk about them as simply as possible.
Oh, and please make sure your brand doesn’t ignore this stat…
The average blog post was 808 words in 2014.
But by 2019?
As the landscape for content marketers (and this includes medical marketing companies) gets more competitive, blog posts will need to get longer.
In reality, creating extensive blog articles, along with other digital marketing tasks such as social media, is a lot of work for healthcare businesses to take on.
Outsourcing at least some of this work seems to be the best option for maximal growth.
Conclusion
The 7 healthcare content marketing tips above will give your brand the advantage and help you stay relevant in the modern, online market.
To sum up, the points we went through were:
Capitalize on headline opportunities
Invest in video content… now!
Dig deep on patient pain points
Test ‘‘positive’’ vs. ‘‘negative’’ content
Choose social media wisely
Aim for first place in the patient’s mind
Publish long-form articles (1500+ words)
What do you think are the best content marketing tactics for your healthcare brand?
I hope you found the article useful and can apply some of the tips if you’re not taking action on them already.
Thanks very much for reading!
Wishing you a great day,
Declan Davey
Need help with your content marketing?
Hire a freelance healthcare copywriter.
Submit the form below and I’ll be in touch.
Medical marketing for doctors:
“I’ve been impressed with Declan’s video copy for my heart health YouTube channel, Dr. Dave’s 411. A particular video that Declan wrote the script for has a 5:1 view-to-like ratio.
If you want a health writer for well-researched copy with personality, he’s the guy to engage your online audience.’’