Smart Content Marketing Tips for Healthcare Practices

Be clear with your message

You’ve invest­ed in a new web­site for your prac­tice and got­ten a flaw­less blog design and some decent-look­ing con­tent. So, now what? Why aren’t the patients flood­ing in? If the amount of new site vis­i­tors per month is leav­ing you deflat­ed, you need a bet­ter way of get­ting eye­balls on your site. And not just any eyes but actu­al qual­i­fied traf­fic that will lead to patient acqui­si­tion and retention.

Check out these tips for health­care prac­tices that will help you grow your business.

Understand the customer journey

Busi­ness­es in the health­care indus­try are par­tic­u­lar­ly searched for on the web. Patients like to car­ry out research before plac­ing trust in your prac­tice. Accord­ing to a Pew Inter­net Research sur­vey, eight out of ten health inquiries start with a search engine, with 72 per­cent of U.S. con­sumers admit­ting to look­ing online for health-relat­ed infor­ma­tion. The major­i­ty of poten­tial patients will start their cus­tomer jour­ney through Google. And if your prac­tice fails to appear, you’re falling at the first hurdle.

Some 60 per­cent of all these search­es are now ini­ti­at­ed on a mobile device, which means that you need to make sure your web­site is opti­mized for all plat­forms. Patient­Pop, an online mar­ket­ing plat­form that focus­es on accel­er­at­ing growth for health­care com­pa­nies, defines one of the basics as “hav­ing a mobile-respon­sive site.”

So, make sure you’re using a flash play­er com­pat­i­ble with iOS and that your mobile ver­sion is opti­mized for speed–40 per­cent of cus­tomers will exit out of a web­site that takes more than three sec­onds to load. If yours is crank­ing into life like a rust­ed engine on a win­ter day, you’re los­ing out on valu­able business.

Be clear about your message

While try­ing to jump on the viral con­tent wag­on and fol­low the lat­est social media trends, it can be easy to lose your focus. This can cause your mes­sage to become dilut­ed and for site vis­i­tors to feel as if they’re land­ed in a for­eign place when they reach your site.

Instead, focus on writ­ing con­tent that lets you estab­lish your­self as an author­i­ty in your niche. If you run a chi­ro­prac­tic clin­ic, for exam­ple, you should be blog­ging about the lat­est tech­niques in your field, how patients can find relief from chron­ic pain, or any­thing else relat­ed to your industry.

Accord­ing to Luke Kervin, CEO of Patient­Pop: “Blog­ging about spe­cial­ty-rel­e­vant top­ics posi­tions you as a help­ful, edu­ca­tion­al, trust­ed resource who wants to pro­vide infor­ma­tion.” Try using a key­word research tool like Moz or Key­word Plan­ner. This will allow you to see what patients are actu­al­ly search­ing for and craft rel­e­vant con­tent based around these topics.

Be sure to opti­mize your posts with the right key­words that will draw qual­i­fied traf­fic to your site. And fol­low on-page opti­miza­tion guide­lines by using key­words in your meta­da­ta and con­tent. Kervin advis­es to “write engag­ing con­tent, reg­u­lar blog posts and a page title with a URL that clear­ly explains what your site is about.”

Obsess over user experience

As high as 88 per­cent of cus­tomers will nev­er come back to a web­site after hav­ing a bad expe­ri­ence the first time around. So, you real­ly nev­er get a sec­ond chance to make a good first impression.

Your site should be log­i­cal and easy to nav­i­gate, with plen­ty of space that lets the con­tent breathe and the user zero-in on CTAs (calls-to-action). They should be able to find what they’re look­ing for quick­ly and easily.

As Kervin adds, “Opti­miz­ing your site for all screen sizes, includ­ing tablets, smart­phone and lap­tops, is no longer option­al these days.” Patients need to be able to book appoint­ments, request fur­ther infor­ma­tion, call a con­sul­tant and watch your pre­sen­ta­tion video from any device they’re on. With 77 per­cent of North Amer­i­cans now own­ing a smart­phone, the impor­tance of mobile opti­miza­tion can’t be stressed enough.

Get socially active online

Around 30 per­cent of total time spent online is now on social media sites. So, you need to find out where your cus­tomers are and make sure you’re tar­get­ing them through the right chan­nels. Kervin rec­om­mends, “Beef up your direc­to­ry pro­files and review sites with rich con­tent — add pho­tos, maps and infor­ma­tion to your prac­tice profiles.”

All busi­ness­es can make con­tent mar­ket­ing work for them to dri­ve con­ver­sions and onboard more clients. When it comes to health­care prac­tices, focus on being a trust­ed source of infor­ma­tion and offer­ing trans­paren­cy through social media plat­forms and infor­ma­tive con­tent. Craft a user expe­ri­ence that keeps your vis­i­tors on the site, answers their ques­tions, and urges them to take action.

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