How Halloween and Fall Themes Can Give Healthcare Providers a Content Marketing Boost
With so many challenges hitting the headlines each day, healthcare providers may find that patients and prospects would appreciate some valuable content that isn’t so gloom and doom.
In that light, Halloween and the warm images of Fall offer the perfect opportunity to give your content marketing a boost by applying an uplifting touch—especially if you keep a few basics in mind.
Remember what content marketing is—and isn’t.
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “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.”
Citing the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Marketing Association (AMA) notes that “content marketing involves various methods to tell the brand story. More and more marketers are evolving their advertising to content marketing/storytelling to create more stickiness and emotional bonding with the consumer.”
In those descriptions, notice what content marketing is not: It’s not a hard sell that touts your wares or demonstrates how your offerings are superior to those of your competitors.
Instead, the focus is on providing the “valuable, relevant, and consistent content” that your patients and prospects want and need—and that will hopefully attract them to your doors.
Help your readers feel grounded.
Recent research published in the Journal of Marketing indicates that “Consumers are increasingly seeking products that are local, made by individually identified people, traditional, or remind them of their childhood and family growing up.”
The study authors defined this dynamic as “a feeling of emotional rootedness,” and propose that our increasingly virtual world that’s moving at high speed is “leaving many consumers feeling like trees with weak roots at risk of being torn from the earth.”
In that light, they underscore the importance of offerings that “help consumers connect to place, people, and past.”
In a world filled with so much change, Halloween and Fall traditions played out in local offerings and events can be a great way to tap into these dynamics by helping patients and prospects savor fond memories of similar seasons in the past.
If your practice or organization is participating in community events—or if you have an event of your own—be sure to use language and descriptions in your invitation that can help those you’re inviting feel grounded and view you as a compassionate and trusted member of the community.
Be purposeful about showing off your expertise.
Content marketing is a great way for healthcare providers to show off their expertise—and backlinks are key in helping you spread the word.
Backlinko defines backlinks like this: “Backlinks (also known as ‘inbound links’, ‘incoming links’ or ‘one way links’) are links from one website to a page on another website.”
Backlinks are important because they help to boost your rankings in Google search, since these “votes” from others indicate that your content is “valuable, credible and useful.”
According to research conducted by Backlinko and Buzzsumo, there are certain types of content that are especially effective in creating backlinks, which they rank as:
- Why Post
- What Post
- Infographic
- Video
- General Post
- How-to Post
- List Post
Although any of these types of posts would be appropriate, “Why” and “What” posts are great options for healthcare providers, since you have valuable expertise to offer those looking for “why” and “what” answers to their health questions and concerns.
For instance, to get an extra boost from Halloween, consider all the why-and-what health and safety topics you could write about related to your specialty and the unique populations you serve.
Get the help you need.
Creating and maintaining an effective content marketing strategy can be a challenge for any business, let alone busy healthcare providers.
So if you’re overwhelmed by the thought of keeping your content marketing engine humming, know you’re not alone. Many organizations count on content marketing experts for additional support.
Experts like AMG Healthcare Marketing.
If you’d like to learn how content marketing can help your organization, contact us today.
