Count On Coffey

Healthcare marketing teams have long known that quality content is needed to promote brand awareness and reputation and to compel action across whatever initiatives or campaigns support the current goals.

It’s also well known that the need for content often exceeds the resources to accomplish its creation at the level marketing teams need.

Here are five ideas to help your marketing team create a content system that enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your content.

1. Set up a workflow planning cadence

It's crucial to start with the foundation of content creation: a centralized system to provide visibility into all content-related areas. This will ensure that all content meets the compliance standards set by your organization, whether they're legal, brand or regulatory.

You'll also need an editorial calendar with collaboration capabilities to help support assignments and deadlines and identify distribution channels. Set up regular meetings for planning, which will also encompass reporting on and optimizing content performance.

2.Create cornerstone content

It's helpful to develop large content assets that can be repurposed into multiple smaller pieces. For example, an original long-form topic (like managing diabetes) could be produced as a webinar or an e-book with one of your providers and then broken down into multiple blog posts (essential tips, the role of exercise in managing diabetes, understanding medications, etc.), podcasts or webinars.

From there you can create smaller distribution pieces for social media posts (e.g., signs and symptoms or myths about diabetes debunked), infographics, newsletters or video content.

3. Personalize your patient journeys

Analyze existing patient data to identify touchpoints in the patient journey, including demographics, medical histories and communication preferences. Develop personas for patient segments to guide content creation, and create targeted information for key stages: pre-care, during care and post-care follow-up, with tailored content to cater to identified personas. Then use available channels, such as email campaigns, SMS reminders, portal notifications and social media posts, to communicate personalized messages effectively throughout the patient journey.

4. Organize around campaigns, events and patients

You likely already plan content around your marketing campaigns as well as health observances. Take it a step further by bringing in patient testimonials specific to service lines—highlighting specialties, treatments and the excellent care received. Tie events and campaigns back to your cornerstone content plan. For every topic you plan, consider the patient story angle.

5. Monitor and optimize content

Closing the content loop from planning through execution, a key step is to consistently monitor results and use that data to optimize future content. Use a HIPAA-compliant analytics option—which will ensure that you're following current guidelines to not track users' IP addresses—to analyze engagement metrics and conversions.

As part of the content planning cadence, review content and update it with fresh information and research—and collaborate with your internal subject matter experts to ensure accuracy and credibility.

Categories: Marketing