Successful Content Marketing: It’s All in the Prep Steps

The secret to a successful healthcare content marketing campaign is preparation. A good healthcare content strategy is critical for practitioners and providers to gain a competitive advantage.

This guide is about the crucial preparation stage in every content marketing campaign. It focuses on:

• Conducting an audit,
• Assessing content creation resources,
• Placing the audience in the center,
• Selecting key metrics,
• Choosing a variety of content, and
• Tying all content to a consistent brand.

Find out how efficient preparation makes great healthcare content. Let’s go!

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Conducting a Content Audit

Start a new content marketing campaign with a thorough audit if you have an existing strategy. It reviews content across the site, including landing pages, blogs, and other customer touchpoints.

An audit checks an existing campaign's effectiveness and looks for areas that are ripe for improvement. An expert conducts an audit by:

• Determining the audit's purpose and goals — assessing quality, identifying gaps or duplications, optimizing for SEO, and aligning with the company's goals
• Compiling an inventory of all assets, including blog posts, articles, videos, etc., and other data such as URL, publishing date, author, and performance stats
• Reviewing each asset for relevance to the target audience and company goals, removing or updating obsolete content
• Examining each piece for correctness, readability, richness of information, grammar, and formatting
• Analyzing page views, engagement, conversions, and backlinks
• Identifying topics or themes not in the inventory yet relevant to your target audience
• Checking keywords, meta tags, headers, and URL structure for search engine optimization (SEO)
• Organizing assets by themes, topics, formats, or buyer journey stages
• Recommending content updates, repurposing, SEO optimization, and content removal
• Checking for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance to determine the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI) 
• Creating an action plan with steps, responsibilities, and deadlines for implementing the suggested changes
• Monitoring performance after implementing changes and regularly revisiting and updating the audit to ensure accuracy

Assessing Your Content Creation Resources

Reviewing content creation resources beforehand ensures practical marketing efforts. By evaluating available resources, companies can determine whether they have the necessary expertise, budget, and tools to create high-quality content.

An assessment identifies resource gaps or limitations, allowing companies to make informed decisions about resource allocation, training, hiring, or investing in the right management tools. Check for resources using these techniques.

• Identify the available resources within your organization, such as team size, expertise, and budget.
• Assess the skills and knowledge of team members and determine whether additional training or hiring is needed.
• Evaluate tools and technologies such as content management systems, analytics platforms, and design software.
• Analyze distribution channels and audience reach to understand how effectively you can distribute and promote content.
• Consider any existing assets that can be repurposed or used in marketing.

Placing the Audience in the Center

Adopting an audience-centered approach means shifting the focus from solely promoting products or services to providing value and solving customers’ problems. By deeply understanding their target audience's demographics, behaviors, pain points, and needs, healthcare practitioners and providers can create content that speaks directly to their audience.

An audience-centered approach to content marketing starts with these tactics.

• Develop buyer personas by creating detailed profiles of ideal customers, allowing businesses to gain insights into the audience's motivations, challenges, and preferences.
• Listen to the audience and ask for feedback through social listening, surveys, comments, and direct interactions.
• Monitor performance by analyzing metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and audience behavior for consistent delivery of valuable content.

Selecting Key Metrics

Selecting key metrics is critical in content creation preparation because it ensures focus on relevant data for evaluating success. Businesses can make data-driven decisions that improve effectiveness by analyzing metrics such as engagement rates, conversions, and demographics.

Choosing the right vital metrics also optimizes resource allocation, leading to campaigns that are more efficient and make a bigger impact. Remember these strategies when selecting key metrics.

• Clarify the content marketing campaign's goals, such as brand awareness, website traffic, leads, engagement, or conversions.
• Determine marketing-related performance indicators. For brand awareness, metrics such as social media reach, website traffic from new visitors, and online discussion mentions might be relevant.
• Assess the buyer's journey and identify metrics for each stage. Website traffic, social media engagement, and downloads might be relevant during awareness.
• Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals.
• Use Google Analytics, social media analytics, email marketing analytics, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to measure performance.
• Choose actionable metrics such as website traffic, page views, bounce rate, time on page, social media engagement, conversion rate, lead generation metrics, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value.
• Customize or define additional metrics that align with your unique situation. Consider specific key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the business and content strategy.

Choosing a Variety of Content

One way to improve the engagement of healthcare clients is to prepare content in various formats. Nowadays, people prefer visual content, especially when encountering complex healthcare information. Instead of providing text content, explore formats such as images, videos, infographics, podcasts, social media posts, and interactive content.

Here are techniques to help healthcare professionals and providers select various forms:

• Understand the target audience's demographics, interests, preferences, and behaviors.
• Establish marketing goals. Do you want to teach, inspire, entertain, or persuade? Do you want more website traffic, leads, brand awareness, or customer loyalty? 
• Find formats that engage and communicate. Consider articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, case studies, e-books, white papers, webinars, social media posts, and interactive content such as quizzes, surveys, and calculators.
• Match formats with marketing objectives and the preferences of the target audience.
• Create a mix of content types to provide variety and cater to different learning styles and preferences.
• Include a combination of educational, entertaining, and promotional articles and posts.
• Repurpose existing articles to expand their reach and adapt them to different formats. For example, turn a blog post into a video or transform a webinar into an infographic.
• Test and analyze content performance to determine audience response. Track views, shares, comments, and conversion rates.

Tying All Content to a Consistent Brand

Behind a successful strategy is a consistent brand. A strong brand establishes credibility and trust with the audience, making them more receptive to the content. Strong brand identity and messaging guide creation, ensuring consistency and coherence across various channels.

These techniques can help creators tie their content to a consistent brand.

• Define the brand's identity, including its values, personality, voice, and visual elements.
• Create brand guidelines that outline the specific policies and standards for content creation, such as guidelines for tone of voice, messaging, visual elements, and style.
• Create a compelling brand story that conveys your brand's mission, values, and unique selling point. Align with the brand story to create a unified message.
• Establish a style guide with instructions for grammar, punctuation, formatting, and writing style.
• Implement consistent visual branding elements. Consistently use your brand colors, fonts, and logos in visuals, such as images, videos, and infographics.
• Ensure that messaging and tone of voice align with the brand identity, whether formal, casual, authoritative, or playful.

Summing Up

Marketers and healthcare providers can ensure campaign success by following these prep guides. You can guarantee better results in audience engagement, conversions, and revenue through an audit, content creation resource assessment, an audience-centric approach, variety, and brand consistency.

Contact Digital Authority Partners for the latest in content marketing for healthcare providers and practitioners.