Healthcare content marketing is constantly changing, especially with two tumultuous years behind us. Healthcare businesses need to be constantly adapting to the changes that are being brought in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Introduction
Healthcare marketing is a field that is constantly evolving and changing. What had been working two years ago will not necessarily be working for healthcare businesses in 2022. This is even more true due to the changes that the healthcare industry has seen over the past two years of the pandemic and the effects that it has had on American consumers.
While healthcare businesses should try to adapt to the changes that are occurring in the field, it is often better to try and understand what changes may be coming in the near future to work on them ahead of time.
With the start of the new year, many healthcare businesses can set the stage for the marketing strategies for the rest of the year. Following the upcoming trends for 2022, healthcare businesses can get ahead of the rest of the competition.
Table of Contents
Importance of Healthcare Content Marketing
Healthcare content marketing is an important aspect of the wider healthcare marketing mix. Healthcare medical content is now being considered existentially important for healthcare businesses in the modern age. Healthcare businesses have had to increasingly adapt to the changes in the marketing landscape to stay relevant and succeed.
Many healthcare businesses have turned to specially hire service providers like a medical content company to especially focus on the content side of the marketing strategy. It isn’t hard to see why healthcare businesses do this.
Estimates suggest that 8 out 10 US adults look online for medical information and 74 percent of them go through social media, in particular, to do so. This includes more popular social media platforms but also other channels such as blogs and videos.
Healthcare content marketing allows healthcare businesses to be in the same place as these customers and reap the benefits.
5 Trends to Follow
Becoming an early adopter of a trend is often better than scrambling later down the line to adopt these trends into your marketing strategies. The below five trends for healthcare content marketing have been picked by our experts to have the most impact for 2022. By adopting these trends into marketing strategies for their year, healthcare businesses can attract new patients and retain old ones.
One thing that is common about all of the trends is that they are all consumer-focused. This shows yet again that the healthcare industry is shifting rapidly towards becoming focused on the desires and needs of the consumers.
Without further ado, here are the biggest healthcare content marketing trends for 2022
Use of Social Media for social proof
Healthcare businesses are always looking to acquire new patients and retain existing ones. Customer acquisition is one of the biggest costs in terms of healthcare marketing for most healthcare businesses. Healthcare businesses in the past have relied on word of mouth to get new customers.
But with the advent of social media and the internet, customers are now looking at what other customers have to say about a healthcare business before they make their own decision.
Using social media to add social proof like testimonials, reviews, and before and after videos from existing customers about a healthcare business is a great way to increase patient acquisition while also making your business’ value proposition clear to any potential customers.
Optimizing patient experience
Patient experience is a critical factor that healthcare businesses should always be trying to improve. Patient experience is what drives patient satisfaction and then affects the bottom line of the business.
Healthcare content marketing makes it easier for patients to understand their ailments, and procedures, and providing critical information is not only a way to acquire and attract new customers but also a way to improve patient experiences for those that are already there.
As seen through research, patients and customers are often left feeling like they don’t have enough information about critical parts of their care journey while they are undergoing treatment. By focusing on content that provides such content, healthcare businesses are able to make such patient experiences better and retain them to a higher degree.
Increasing patient engagement
On similar lines, patient engagement is quickly emerging as a top priority for healthcare businesses. With the digitization push that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought, more and more healthcare businesses are online. This gives customers much more freedom to choose than they had previously.
By keeping up with patient engagement techniques like Q&As, video interviews, newsletters, and more healthcare businesses can ensure that they keep their business at the forefront of the customer’s mind.
Patient engagement is essential for healthcare businesses to keep customers loyal and retain them easily. Strategies that make use of the particular advantages of each particular social platform’s strength to drive engagement will stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Using omnichannel marketing
While healthcare businesses in the past have gotten away with just using a single channel for healthcare content marketing in the past, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this method is no longer effective.
Healthcare businesses need to focus on multiple channels of content distribution. Websites, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and more create the perfect marketing coverage to retain and attract customers.
Through multiple channels, healthcare businesses can use techniques like:
- Social media posts
- Blogs, articles, whitepapers
- Emailers, newsletters
- Visual media like videos, slideshows, and infographics
- Live events and outreach programs
The use of multiple channels exponentially increases the reach of a healthcare marketing campaign.
Using healthcare videos
Perhaps the most important of these multiple channels is the use of healthcare videos in 2022. Healthcare videos are a great way for healthcare professionals to create valuable and meaningful content for customers. Visual content is often able to catch the attention of customers to an easier degree than written content.
YouTube is one of the biggest platforms and websites in the world with one of the biggest active user bases. The platform’s smart algorithm also means that good content can often be recommended to other viewers who might be interested in the same kind of videos, further increasing the outreach.
Other visual content like slideshows and infographics can also be used in addition to video content for healthcare businesses.
Conclusion
Healthcare businesses need to understand that while all these trends can boost their healthcare content marketing plans considerably, they still need to create good and valuable content that is valuable to the customers.