Three Content Marketing Steps to Achieving Success For Medical Practices

Generic content marketing will not be useful in the future with medical practices increasingly creating new content to raise brand awareness, recognition and domain authority.

Competitive medical practices cannot afford to ignore the power of content marketing anymore and must create strong content and ensure it reaches the intended audiences. However, successful medical content marketing is more than merely creating good content and ensuring proper distribution.

Every piece of content that is made is a step toward building a brand’s identity. It's important to understand how to use it fully. Marketers will need to experiment and fine tune to achieve this, but content marketing cannot be successful without pushing the limits.

Here are three factors to help succeed in content marketing a medical practice:

1. Going Beyond the Tried and Tested

If current content marketing initiatives center around placing content on a blog and high-authority blogs and sites, then it may seem apprehensive to try other forms of marketing. This is not the right approach. In fact, creating diversification in a content format can help to stay ahead of competition.

Take note of podcasts. As per Salesforce, 25 percent of Americans heard a podcast within the last month, which makes this particular format an excellent way to target the audience.

In this case scenario, an experienced medical marketer would go ahead and try podcasts to promote content, however, a marketer who is scared to step out of their comfort zone would want to stay within a restrictive area.

If you want to achieve success via content marketing, then do not be afraid to experiment and try something new.

The primary question is what does it take to become a fearless marketer? The answer? Well, it takes a conscious decision to head in that direction. Start by being up to date on the current trends in content marketing and determine which of these are ideal.

Then, it's important to start integrating this trend in the content marketing plan. For instance, if the podcast is a trend that may be useful, then get up to speed. Understand the method to construct and launch a great podcast, even if it's not successful at first, keep trying.

2. Create Content for the Target Audience

This sounds so intuitive. But evaluate it. Is a significant amount of time spent in trying to understand the choices of a target audience (potential patients) before creating content? Furthermore, are the needs of niche influencers understood, and is there generated content that aligns with discussions?

The audience comprises of present and potential patients along with the thought leaders. Most content marketers emphasize on converting consumers into brand loyalists, however, that is just the initial step in the extended process of creating optimum deliverables via content marketing. The next step involves turning influencers into thought leaders. After this occurs, the maintenance of a healthy relationship through creative and meaningful content is key.

Experts provide some significant insights into this issue. One key insight is that in trying to understand the audience's innate preferences before creating content, it is challenging to access conversations that will help gauge audiences' preferences — hence, a broadened search scope. It's necessary to utilize outlets like social media and discussion boards to help understand consumers.

Understanding requirements of the audience is half the story, the other half involves creating content that is relevant to potential or existing consumers.

3. Hire Excellent Storytellers and Content Creators

This propels us toward the last and most important suggestion.

A huge challenge in content marketing is regularly generating content that is top-quality and worthy of sharing. The lack of consistency in producing content hampers many practices from receiving the full benefits of content marketing.

Hire great content developers. They will be the foundation of your marketing strategy. But how does one push the boundaries and bring good content creators onboard? That's a valid question, and the answer is to look at it as an investment and set apart a budget. Being willing to spend more to hire solid talent is important. Many medical practice marketers are willing to spend on SEO skills, but scrimp on employing excellent content creators. That is a wrong strategy and one to avoid.

Identify good writers for content creation, designers for dazzling graphics and employ creative video experts for producing great videos. The second best is not enough when it comes to competitive online content marketing. Hire only the best, which can mean spending extra money, for the best outcomes and push the boundaries when it comes to investing in content.

The Final Word

Result-oriented medical practice content marketing requires going the extra mile. Every risk presents an opportunity. It is a super competitive digital world, so seek opportunities actively. It is vital to step out of the comfort zone and carry on, but try to go beyond the ordinary. This can help to build an optimal medical content marketing strategy that will produce rich dividends over time.

About the Author:Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of doctors. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, www.ekwa.com helps doctors who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.