“How-to” Guide for Healthcare & Life Science Content Marketing: PART ONE

11th November 2021 - Last modified 2nd November 2023

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic approach of planning, creating, distributing and sharing content to your target audience. But at the core of content marketing is opportunity; ultimately, content marketing is a huge business opportunity and one of the best options in the marketing toolbox to drive results and increase ROI.

Of course, creating a really great piece of content is ALWAYS key but content marketing is not the same as content. Words on a page are a grain of sand in the vast ocean that is content marketing.

Create the content people want, make sure it’s seen in the right places (and at a good frequency!), promote it to your customers and contacts, and build an updated programme of content that speaks to different target audiences on an ongoing basis – interviews, application notes, blogs, white papers, articles, infographics, case studies, videos, animations (the list is endless…). Simple right?!

Get a complete content marketing strategy right and you’ll be soaring to the top, but get it wrong and you might find yourself crying into a sea of unread blog posts and low traffic web pages, white papers and promotional campaigns with low engagement, or even an untouched pile of exhibition handouts.

But where do you begin? Or how can you improve what you’re already doing and perhaps make life a bit easier too? Our new content marketing series can help! With a comprehensive “how-to” guide for healthcare and life science content marketing. In part one, we’ll look in a bit more detail at what content marketing can do for you and your business.

Why should you invest in content marketing?

Quite simply, content marketing is low investment, high return. With stats that speak for themselves, what’s not to like!

What are the benefits of content marketing in life science and healthcare?

Healthcare and life science content marketing is essential in an era of digital growth and so here we’ll concentrate in a bit more detail on digital content (although many of the considerations we cover also apply to other content too!).

In today’s digital world, your content needs to match what your audience wants to read: can you answer those questions they’re searching for? Provide some tips and tricks for a new technique? Summarise some of the latest research on a particular topic? These are just some ideas to help you compete with the seemingly infinite number of articles, blog posts, tutorials and more on the web.

Often content marketing can fall to the bottom of the pile when it comes to marketing budgets, resources and objectives. This is probably because it goes hand-in-hand with search engine optimisation (SEO), which we’ll talk in much more detail about later in the series. The important thing to remember for now is that, while SEO and content marketing activities can differ from other marketing strategies that see instantaneous results, it’s possible to reap the rewards longer term and create high value, stable website traffic and interest. At Alto, we know that slow and steady wins the race and the rewards for investing and waiting can be ten-fold, if not more! So, let’s talk some more about the benefits.

1. Increase brand awareness

Set yourself apart from your competitor! This is an opportunity to tell your audience who you are and why they should choose you over your counterpart. If you don’t do it, your competitors will! In Life Sciences and healthcare this is particularly useful as many scientists looking for a product or service will go straight to a company and website they’re familiar with – and so you really need to make sure people know who you are! Using content strategies that target your social media audience and paid advertising are particularly successful for increasing brand awareness.

2. Educate your audience (in order to enhance sales)

Let’s not forget that crucial part of the customer journey where prospects consider whether or not to purchase a product or invest in a service. This is your opportunity! Indirectly providing information around the product or service and the benefits can expedite your sales and help customers narrow down the sometimes overwhelming number of choices. Without good content to educate them on how you have the knowledge/technology/experience to help, they are more likely to find a competitor that does!

There’s also something to be said for supporting your existing customers with training, tips and methods on an ongoing basis. Good, informative content can really make a difference here, enhancing your relationship and encouraging them to seek you out in the future.

3. Increase organic search traffic

Put simply – more content equals more opportunities for Google (or other search engines) to crawl pages on your site. Not just any old content though; it’s well-planned, good quality content that will take you further when it comes to organic traffic. Organic searches are the most common way that scientists find what they’re looking for – yet, often digital content is not search engine optimised.

4. Increase enquiries (AKA leads) and sales (AKA conversions)

Now, while educating your audience is a great strategy to increase brand awareness and traffic, it also provides one of the biggest opportunities to increase leads and conversions with one simple trick. Anchor text throughout the content, as well as other internal links, can drive huge amounts of traffic to related products and services. Because of course, the overall objective is not just to get visitors to your site, you want them to convert too.

5. Become a thought-leader

With great content comes great opportunity – build trust and let your audience know you are the go-to place for meaningful content. If you can translate industry insight from your internal experts into usable content then you’re on track to becoming a thought-leader in your space. In healthcare and life science content marketing, the impact of thought leadership content that helps solve problems in the laboratory, discusses challenges with new techniques, and shares the latest knowledge and research findings – for example – is especially valuable.

What to consider before, during and after content creation.

Before:

Understand your goals and establish your key performance indicators (KPIs) – this will help you to track and measure how well your piece(s) are doing.

Know your audience – understand what it is you’re helping your customer to achieve. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about pain points and potential solutions.

Stay relevant – keep up to date with current topics, research and technologies and make a list of related keywords to use throughout your piece. This will help ensure your content has the best chance of being seen.

Write the right type of content – figure out the type of content you want to produce: blogs, educational videos, e-books or visual content such as webinars and short films.

Plan, plan and plan again! – Create a content calendar. Generate a list of seed topics based on relevant keywords, select a number of topics and plan to generate a continuous stream of content for your site. After all, science needs to be seen and heard!

During:

Think about the visuals – complementary images and rich content can propel your content marketing! For website users that are short on time or prefer to engage with content visually, rich content like infographics and videos are the perfect solution!

Review, edit and then review and edit a little more – write your content then step away from it for a few hours or even a day. Come back with fresh eyes and rejuvenated typing hands. Do this twice or more and you’re virtually guaranteed error-free, content.

Stay on track – don’t do all of the meaningful research up-front and then forget about your content strategy. Refer back to your original plan at all times.

After:

Get your content out there! – Share your content on social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to keep the ball rolling. You might be surprised at the traction a great blog post can gain just through social media sharing.

Keep track of performance – ensure you’re tracking how well each piece is performing in terms of traffic and views. That way you can be confident that your content is being viewed and can track the customer journey from educational content – such as blogs and articles – to product and service pages. Use this to inform future planning.

Healthcare and life science content marketing can be a time-consuming approach to marketing but one that has the potential for huge ROI if done well from start to finish. If you would like to know more about planning a content campaign, we’re here to help. Read part two of our content marketing series or contact us and find out how we can propel your content marketing into the stratosphere.

References

https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic

https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing

https://uplandsoftware.com/kapost/resources/blog/content-marketing-stats/

https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/401678/file-1079930211-pdf/8546-AI-content-marketing-difference.pdf

https://uplandsoftware.com/kapost/resources/blog/8-more-cold-hard-content-marketing-stats/

https://growthbadger.com/double-survey-technique/