As a specialty doctor like a plastic surgeon, dermatologist, dentist, or any other, you need Content Marketing to educate your patients, share your knowledge & expertise, increase visibility and establish authority in the digital space. All this helps to build a long-term relationship and trust with your patients.
In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about content marketing for your medical practice.
“Content Is King” – Bill Gates quoted in 1996 & since then content has evolved a lot. And not only content but consumers and their needs have also changed a lot.
Consumers are actively present on various platforms and every piece of content that we generate is directed towards the end-user or consumer.
So basically, the consumer is the king now & the content has become a kingdom.
Even though the consumer has now become the new king, the importance, value, and need of the content, be it in any form, hasn’t decreased. The king or the consumer, especially in today’s digital world, is relentlessly consuming the content in different formats and is primarily dependent on it just as the king is dependent and supported by his kingdom.
Hence, the content is the new kingdom made up of different forms of content.
What are the different forms of content?
The forms of content include service or treatment pages, blogs, Google ads, FB ads, social media posts, landing pages, and many more.
The forms of content vary in different aspects such as writing style, tone, length, word choices, etc. But the one thing common is research. Whenever you write a new piece of content, research about it and its various aspects, and collect all the important information from credible sources.
Service or Treatment Pages
Service pages should be the primary focus as they provide necessary information to the consumer, bring traffic to the website, and play an important role in connecting with the end-user.
Service pages provide factual information about the procedures in a very technical language, have different sections in them to give the right information about all the aspects of the service, and incorporate keywords with high search volumes to increase the traffic on the website.
Blogs
The writing style for service pages is more on the formal side where detailed information is provided. Whereas a blog is not technical like service pages. A blog can be used to address the problems faced by the end-user/consumer and explain the procedure briefly. You can highlight the benefits and needs of a procedure to make the content more engaging.
Google Ads and Facebook Ads
You can run online ads for different purposes like promoting offers, new treatments, webinars, particular treatments/procedures that are beneficial to the consumers during certain times of the year. For example, if you’re a plastic surgeon, dermatologist, or medspa, you can promote beauty treatments during the wedding season.
Unlike blogs or service pages that are lengthy and descriptive, the copy of your online ad should provide crisp and clear content creatively within certain character limits. For example, for Google ads, the characters limit for the ad title is 30 and 90 characters for the description. The ad copy needs to be creative enough to attract and engage consumers and make them click on the ads.
Social Media Posts
Social media copies need to be creative and engaging as well. Facebook & Instagram are two popular platforms where the users are highly active. While writing social media copies you need to keep in mind the design aspect of the overall social media post as well.
When it comes to Facebook, you can write lengthy captions or even incorporate links so that the user can take an action and visit the respective pages.
On the other hand, Instagram is a photo-centric platform. Too much text on images will not get engagement or attention. Therefore, you need to create posts with engaging headlines, descriptions, and relevant hashtags.
Personalized content performs better when it comes to social media posts. It will help you to create brand awareness and engage with your target audience.
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions (for Web Pages)
These play an important role in improving the SEO score of the website. Similar to Google ads and FB ads, you need to write these meta titles and descriptions within a specific character limit.
The titles and descriptions of ads primarily focus on end results. However, while writing titles and meta descriptions for web pages, you need to use keywords to match the search queries of the end-user to rank the respective pages and optimize the content.
Top 5 Pages
The top 5 pages are the most important pages for any website. These pages include – About Us or Why Choose Us, the Doctor’s page, Service pages, the Locations or Contact us page, and the Testimonials page.
Homepage: The homepage includes the hero section and overview of everything related to the clinic/hospital, doctor, and services. The hero section is of utmost importance as it is the first thing one can see on the website. The hero section needs to be visually attractive, have CTAs to let the visitor explore the website, and have content to engage the visitor.
The About Us or Why Choose Us page: talks about the clinic/ hospital to highlight your specialty and the services you provide.
The Doctor’s page: highlights the qualifications, special interests, experience, achievements of the doctor.
The Testimonials page: presents a collection of reviews and patient feedback from Google, Practo, Facebook, and other such platforms.
Along with the Homepage, other pages like About Us, Meet the Doctor, Testimonials, Contact Us play an important role in building engagement and trust with your website visitors.
Landing Pages
Landing Pages are directly related to your ads. The landing page includes necessary information and Call-to-action (CTA) buttons. The main purpose of Landing Pages is to drive the traffic from the ads, provide focused information to the visitors to engage them and to funnel them to CTAs, and make them click on it (take action) to fulfill the purpose of the ad.
Email Marketing
Content for emails is highly customized in nature. The challenge here is, to provide a subject line that is clickable at the first go. It should be concise and descriptive. Through email, you can provide consumable content related to special offers & discounts, the latest updates, or even a newsletter. This will help to generate leads as well as nurture the existing email list. Also, emails help in building a relationship with the end-user as you are timely providing valuable content to them. And that is why email marketing lists are one of the essential marketing assets any medical practice should have.
Style Guide
What is a style guide?
A style guide is a set of content rules that keeps everyone’s tone of voice on the same page. It covers aspects such as grammar, language, formatting, and tone – all the things needed to compose and present content.
Why use a style guide?
A style guide establishes standard style requirements to improve communication by ensuring consistency both within a webpage and across your website. The use of style guides also extends to social media copies, ad copies, and email communication.
Content Blocks
Content blocks are the various sections that make up your web page. These sections answer patient queries and are structured in a way that creates a proper flow of ideas. Content blocks help in keeping the content precise so patients understand the treatment easily.
Content blocks make your website a reliable source of information. This helps in driving organic traffic to your website and boosts your ranking on search engines.
Conclusion
Content Marketing is a key ingredient when it comes to marketing your medical practice. With the right content, you can educate your patients, and build trust with them.