Healthcare Content Marketing Ideas for 2022 [Examples]

It’s been a turbulent time for the healthcare sector to say the least.

In the last couple of years marketers have had to shift their strategies to help medical brands stay relevant and authoritative, yet still emotive and personal. For many of them, content marketing has been the answer.

Healthcare content marketing

Whilst access to medical and healthcare information is a great source of empowerment for consumers, it can pose challenges, too. The pandemic prompted a rise in misinformation, leading to confusion and anxiety for many. This opens up opportunities for healthcare brands to create legitimate, useful and meaningful content that can cut through the noise and take advantage of the added attention.

Content marketing is a great fit for healthcare because it lets you deliver targeted brand messaging to build trust and support decision making for prospects and existing patients. 

Ready for the best part? It can all be repurposed across almost your entire digital footprint, in online advertising, social media, PR, email and other channels to drive huge reach and evergreen value.

From articles to newsletters, videos, webinars, quizzes, graphics and more, content is available in a huge number of formats, and with the right mix for your audience, it’s great for driving up attention, views, clicks, responses, and conversions.

Healthcare marketing strategies for 2022

Video marketing

Healthcare video marketing should already be a cornerstone of your strategy. It’s a high engagement, a versatile content delivery strategy which supports a multichannel approach.

Video of procedures and medical information viewed in advance of treatments not only increase the quality of patient care and reduce the amount of travel required, but you can also use them on YouTube and your site to attract search traffic. After all, searching for videos online is a common first step when seeking healthcare education. Including them as a free resource increases your SEO performance and your brand’s authority.

Try case studies that engage and inspire action, internal comms that motivate and instruct, thought leadership from healthcare professionals that build expertise and humanise your company, explainer videos that break down complicated concepts or procedures… There are so many opportunities to use video effectively in healthcare, it’s hard to go wrong.

Personalisation 

In the healthcare sector, a personal touch is especially important, and without getting face-to-face, it can sometimes be difficult or downright impossible to make those connections happen.

At Nibble, we created a bespoke series of personalised videos for one of our healthcare clients to guide patients through their individual journeys. These span across the entire timeline of a patient’s treatment, targeting otherwise difficult and expensive touchpoints to reach. 

These videos formed the core of a patient’s bespoke treatment pack, and included:

• Patient stories for support and community building
• Expert points of view from specialists
• Procedure preparation advice
• Instructional physiotherapy guides
• And post-surgery recovery

These videos have the power to bridge the gaps between resource-intensive face-to-face or live comms with digital, personal, and timely content.

Social proof

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where we conform to the actions of others because we assume that those actions are the correct behaviour.

Basically: we feel better about doing something when we see that other people have done it and responded positively to it.

For healthcare marketing, there are a handful of really effective social proof methods to use.

1. Patient testimonials – Quotes and video storytelling have always worked well here. Consider animation which allows anonymity without the slightly immersion-breaking ‘witness protected for their own safety’ style live action tactic you sometimes see.

2. Expert point of view – Doctors, surgeons or specialists communicating their expertise from a trusted position of authority.

3. Community involvement – Activated via social, email and content, these take the shape of Q&A interviews to answer patient queries, ratings and reviews, or health campaigns (like Movember, Mental Health Awareness Week etc.)

Foster community

Speaking of community, extending care beyond the hospital bed proves that you’re invested in more than just your bottom line. It shows your commitment to improving wellness throughout your community.

Now, there have been entire academic studies on how to build communities in healthcare, so we can only scratch the surface here, but there are some core things you can be doing to build an engaged community involving your brand.

As well as some of the methods above:

1. Blogs and content hubs – Post FAQs, guides, expert advice, patient testimonial material, and group them somewhere on your site. Offer truly helpful, informative, and empathetic content. These sections of your site can become real powerhouses of brand building, lead generation and SEO.

2. Newsletter – A regular newsletter gives the content from your blog a second life. Use them to keep engagement high amongst your subscribers

3. Social media – Give your patients a peek behind those intimidating hospital walls. Highlight patient stories, show staff members going above and beyond, and use these real-time channels as a way to keep people informed and connected. Some keen social listening here can also keep you in the loop when it comes to patient habits, and help you optimise your care and comms to target pain points.

4. Share and connect – Online communities and healthcare are both built on trust. You can build your reputation and credibility by connecting your audience with relevant resources, like whitepapers, research, news stories or local events. Getting involved in conversations by sharing, commenting and curating a set of reputable recommendations grows your network and your reach as well.

Conclusion

Like it or loathe it, healthcare commercialisation is growing. Competition for patients is building, and not just from the new hospital in the next town. With budget clinics on the high street, private, on-demand telehealth companies, and global giants like Amazon Care, expect a bigger challenge when bringing in and retaining patients.

You need to stay relevant, present and local with digital content that does more than just talk about your services. Your prospects want answers to help them decide what they’re dealing with and what to do next, but they also want empathy. So try these healthcare marketing ideas in 2022 and make sure that your patients find you, resonate with you and take the first step in their healthcare journey with you.

Nibble has more healthcare clients than any other sector because we know how to get noticed, engage people and drive action. Give us a call today for a chat about your next video project.