Successfully Combining Inbound and Content Marketing Strategies

Using healthcare content marketing with your inbound marketing involves careful consideration of top tactics. Let us help you simplify these two concepts, starting with:

• Describing inbound marketing
• Defining content marketing
• Giving five topics to cover in inbound healthcare marketing

Combine your inbound and content marketing strategies by covering the five topics this article suggests.

Let’s go!

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy that helps market your business to your target audience using valuable content and tailored experiences. You’re using strategic marketing to address their issues, needs, and pain points. Some examples of inbound marketing materials are blogs, infographics, research papers, case studies, e-books, webinars, and podcasts.

Inbound marketing also involves offering products or services your customers actively look for. As such, you boost engagement and conversion. It is more than just digital marketing.

On the other hand, outbound marketing is about reaching out to people in an effort to get them interested in your product or service. Some examples of outbound marketing are sending direct mail, cold-calling, billboards, TV and radio ads, print and online ads, and in-person marketing.

To start your healthcare inbound marketing, identify first the answers to your patients' issues. There are many ways to do this, and one of them is by creating quality content.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that entails the use of blogs, videos, infographics, social media posts, etc., to engage a target audience. It is a form of inbound marketing intended for various purposes. According to a recent survey, 88% of experts use content marketing to promote brand awareness, while 50% use it to improve customer loyalty.

An email about your practice or business is also a form of content. It aims to confirm transactions, disseminate information, and provide marketing communication. Inbound marketing uses content marketing to engage target customers efficiently. Straightforward content addressing the audience’s pain points makes for successful content marketing.

Your content marketing campaigns should give the best answer to your customers' questions. With this in mind, you can effectively apply the strategies detailed below.

5 Topics To Cover in Inbound Healthcare Content Marketing

Content marketing strategies need to work hand in hand with inbound marketing techniques. As long as your content centers on your customer's needs, your inbound marketing campaign has a great chance for success. Here are some of the topics to keep in mind.

     1. Highlight the Cost of Products and Services

One of the concerns patients have nowadays is the rising cost of medical products and services. A patient who badly needs a procedure such as an MRI or dialysis may first want to know the price rather than the benefit.

With content explaining costs, you are helping patients to make practical decisions. They can compare the cost of your MRI service with other providers. They can also compare the distance they have to travel or the availability of equipment before making a decision.

Content that explicitly presents the cost of medical procedures on top of other information empowers your patients. Your audience, who is actively looking for this type of content, will engage and be able to make sound choices.

     2. Focus on Customer or Patient Issues

Most healthcare or medical content is about common patient issues and illnesses, focusing on treatments, products, and procedures available for patients. Your audience needs content that will give them the facts, both good and bad.

Say you’re featuring a drug for nerve pain for patients with spinal stenosis. Be transparent enough to say that while this drug may reduce lower-back pain and improve mobility, it could also cause dizziness and muscle weakness. Authentic and realistic content shows your expertise and your genuineness in assisting your patients in making good health choices.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers and practitioners did not shy away from warning the public about the unavailability of treatment, the prognosis of the disease, and the growing number of infections. As such, they helped the public prepare.

People can make intelligent and practical health and lifestyle decisions based on positive or negative information.

     3. Take Time To Read Relevant Customer Reviews

Customer reviews give you so much valuable information. You get an idea about how your clients perceive your services. Perhaps the most important details you get from reviews are patient issues and pain points that you must address. All these help you identify areas of improvement in your services or business as a whole.

About 67% of consumers leave a review after a positive experience, while 40% do so after a negative one. That means potential customers get a better picture of how you do business and deal with clients. Note that around 77% of consumers read online reviews before deciding where to get their needed products or services.

Customer reviews can boost your inbound marketing strategies. Find ways to improve your service or product and find good content topic ideas from these reviews.

     4. Create Extensive “Best of” Lists

People don't just want information; they want the best they can use, especially concerning their health. They need the best solutions, tips, and techniques, which should be one of your priorities when creating quality content.

Creating the "best of" healthcare content will promote your authority and expertise. You can cover any "best of" topics related to your expertise. For instance, dentists can do a review of teeth whitening products and curate them to produce content on the "best teeth whitening products" they recommend to their clients.

Meanwhile, "best techniques to reduce belly fat" and "top tips to naturally lower blood pressure" are content that cardiologists could include in their content to boost inbound marketing.

     5. Drive More Traffic With Product or Service Comparisons

Consumers take time to compare different products before they make a purchase. They seriously weigh their options when it comes to healthcare. Content that compares products or services helps them make informed decisions. Thus, create and use this type of content in your strategies to draw customers to your site or your clinic.

For instance, content comparing various anti-aging products helps patients from older age groups find the product that best fits their needs. Comparisons could be about the calorie content of foods, different exercise routines for seniors, or the best SPF protection in sunscreens.

Whatever comparison content you wish to publish, always create content from different views and do not promote or favor one product over the other. State facts and use statistics to make unbiased comparisons. Of course, use easy-to-understand language. Choose between text, video, or infographics to compare details. Decide based on your audience's preference.

Summing Up

Use inbound and content marketing techniques together to create a successful marketing campaign. Engage your patients and guide them towards making sound decisions by highlighting the cost of products and services, focusing on customer/patient issues and reviews, and creating product or service comparisons. Finally, content that highlights the “best of” topics helps ensure engagement and conversion.

Digital Authority Partners helps you fully understand and use content and inbound marketing strategies for your healthcare business. Contact us today.