What is Content Marketing?

I’m going to start with the Content Marketing Institute definition:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

The key word here is VALUABLE. One way that content marketing differs from traditional marketing is that companies contribute to the conversation versus making the conversation about themselves.

Here’s an example:

Traditional Marketing Blog Post: This is Why our Electronic Medical Records System is the Best

Content Marketing Blog Post Options:

• These Five Electronic Medical Records Features Will Save Healthcare Providers Time and Reduce Burnout

• How to Leverage EMR Capabilites to Increase Patient Satisfaction

• Pitfalls to Avoid When Integrating Telehealth Software with Your EMR

Can you see the differences here? The traditional marketing approach is just talking about yourself. You need to do that as a company or no one will know what you offer, but you can keep that content on your About Page or Product Page. The content marketing approach is helpful, adds to the global conversation about your industry, and provides value that can be shared.

Types of Content Marketing Collateral:

• Podcasts (You don’t have to have your own! Being a guest is still great.)

• Videos (Youtube, TikTok, Instagram Reels)

• Articles (Blog posts, white papers, market research reports)

• Images (Infographics, designed quotes, graphics and statistics)

Reason 1: It Establishes Your Expertise

Google ran a brilliant campaign about asking questions. They dug into the fact that people go to their search engine because of curiosity and the need for answers. A great content marketing strategy is to anticipate questions and provide thoughtful answers. For example: I ran a search for “What is Content Marketing” and on the first page, the majority of the results were blog posts by content marketing companies, including big hitters HubSpot and MailChimp. If my next question was, what are the best content marketing platforms, I’d be sure to take a look at HubSpot and MailChimp because they come off as experts in the field due to explaining the industry and being on page one of search results.

Beyond responding to searching for specific questions, content marketing is a way for companies to talk about what is happening at a macro level within their industry. Examining trends (Ex: How did telehealth adoption increase in the last three years?), writing about timely issues (Ex: What the overturning of Roe v. Wade means for virtual reproductive health services.), and reporting on lessons learned (Ex: Why wearables aren’t accurately measuring melanated skin and what can be done about it.) are all effective tactics for establishing expertise.

Reason 2: It’s Good for Business

There are countless statistics touting the benefits of content marketing for your business. Demand Metric shared in their infographic that social media sites and blogs account for 23% of time spent online, AND that on average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those that don’t. You need to meet the people where they are!

Keeping the content machine churning is hard work, but it pays dividends (literally) in building brand loyalty, creating awareness of the solutions you provide, and converting customers. Educating and entertaining potential customers builds trust and familiarity with your brand, making the decision to engage more relationship based than transactional. That means that customers will continue to come back because they don’t see your value as one-and-done. I personally love following certain FemTech companies on Instagram because they share women’s health tips and statistics that I can benefit from personally and share with my network that cares about similar issues. Additionally, I’ve definitely done a quick purchase for something I didn’t know I wanted within Instagram based upon a company’s video ads or an influencer sharing a product review.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) also loves content marketing. There is a great Forbes article that goes into the nuts and bolts of how those two work hand in hand. The big takeaway is that “fresh, unique, and creative content gets rapidly indexed and ranks higher than low-value and repetitive content.” Combining relevant information with trending keywords helps push you up in search results and gets you seen.

Reason 3: Write Once, Benefit Exponentially

A solid piece of content can be shared and repurposed over and over. If I write a white paper for a client that is a ‘state of the industry’ piece they can share it many different ways:

• Website: Publish an abstract on the paper and use the full report as a carrot for an email capture to build their list. (Ex: Get the full report! Enter your email address and it will be delivered to your inbox.)

• Social Media: Tweet the Link, tweet quotes from the paper, design quotes for Instagram visual content, share the abstract on LinkedIn with the email capture, or host a live streamed event talking about the white paper findings.

• Conferences: Have print copies available at sponsor tables as marketing collateral that shows your expertise in the space.

• Public Relations: Link within a press release about other company news.

Content marketing needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy. I hope this article educated you about how high value it is for your company AND your customers!

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I love to help healthcare companies with content marketing. Check out a case study of my work with Self Care Catalysts.