Developing a Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy that Works

Many healthcare companies understand content marketing’s potential: more leads, opportunities to educate and empower patients, and business growth. But experiencing those benefits takes more than a few blogs and social media posts made by ChatGPT. It requires a thoughtful healthcare content marketing strategy—and great execution, but that’s a topic for another day.

To create an effective strategy, you have to start with the basics. Ahead, learn from my own content marketing experience and other healthcare content marketing experts about what those basics are and how to master them.

Conduct audience analysis

“The first thing you should consider when building out a healthcare content marketing strategy is your audience,” says Mary Tindall, founder of B2B healthcare content marketing agency Calliope Communication.

She recommends asking yourself and your team:

• Who do you serve?
• What problems are they looking to solve?
• What questions do they have?
• How can you help them?

“Answering these questions will ensure that your content meets your audience where they are and creates a relationship between them and your brand,” she concludes.

After analyzing your audience, write some clear guidelines around how to communicate with them and what are the best communication channels. Often, this approach works best because you’re meeting your audience where they hang out online and with language that resonates, not through the channels a marketing guru says you “should” use or with a brand voice that falls flat.

Determine your content genres

Content can take many forms: whitepapers, case studies, emails, blogs, social media posts, video scripts, webinars…the list goes on and on. Before you jot down ideas for every single genre or try to repurpose content like crazy, pause and ask yourself if that’s the best move for your brand.

If you have a large team and budget, the answer may be to take on ALL the marketing channels. Nike, for example, can conquer a plethora of content genres because they are Nike. A health tech startup operating on a tight budget? Probably not.

Instead of conquering every genre, clarify the ones that make the most sense for your audience and the problem you help them solve. Nadine Heir, founder of Write Wiser, offers an example of two common genre types in the fitness industry: content featuring actionable instructions and content boosting self-esteem.

“For the former, you may want to focus on step-by-step guidelines for people to get fit, choosing a specific level of complexity and comfort in the gym,” she says, “On the other hand, if your prospects are more likely looking to meet health goals while feeling good about themselves, speak to how the hormones and rest-aids of exercise will improve their mental health and wellbeing.”

The former fits more in the educational marketing genre while the latter is rooted in emotions, a concept Heir refers to as how-to-feel content, not how-to-do content.

Consider SEO

So you’ve defined your audience and the best content types. Surely it’s time to create a content calendar and start assigning out projects, right? Actually, there’s one more step before we put your new strategy to action.

That amazing content needs to show up in search results.

Build it and they will come may be a cliche, but that doesn't mean it’s good advice for content marketing (or most things, for that matter). Instead, your content strategy should take into account terms and keywords people already search for. Plus, that content strategy should have guidelines about how to optimize your writing and social media so it shows up in the right searches. This practice is called search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is a beast in and of itself, and is just one part of the bigger content strategy. To dive into SEO for healthcare specifically, check out this healthcare SEO guide.

Incorporate medical expertise

“Accuracy and specificity of content are essential elements of medical writing,” says Lisa Samalonis, a medical writer and editor. “Medical topics and concepts are often challenging and nuanced for writers who are not physicians or allied health professionals.”

As a result, she recommends incorporating medical experts into your content strategy. They can help inform a brand’s voice and how to approach different conditions and treatments.

An easy way to incorporate experts into your content strategy is to have content creators interview medical experts for long-form content. A prime example of how to do this well is this article on the low FODMAP diet written for Oshi Health. Those quotes can then be repurposed into quotes for social media and other content genres.

Your health brand has great medical experts—showcase that expertise via your content marketing.

Define Content Frequency

Another small, but important, aspect of your content strategy is how often you post. Sure, you could try to post a daily blog and eight social media posts a week, but that’s likely to lead to mediocre content and burnout.

Instead, consider how often you can post QUALITY content. In 2024, anyone can create meh content, thanks to AI tools, but that content won’t rank high or resonate with readers.

Instead, approach your overarching strategy and each piece of content with one question in mind: how can we create the best content out there on this topic?

Remember: creating excellent content takes time. Be realistic, but firm, in how much content you want to create and what team members will be involved in that creation process.

Solidify your strategy

Once you’ve identified the essential components of a content strategy (right audience, right content genres, SEO considerations, the process to incorporate health experts, and content frequency), it’s time to write it all down.

And I’m going to repeat it one more time, because it’s important: write down your content strategy.

Ideally, this should be documented in a living document that can change as your business evolves or as your content marketing bandwidth increases or decreases. It should also be written in a way that makes it easy to share with team members (in content or other areas of the business) or with freelance health writers.