Health IT Content Marketing: The Big Miss?

Imagine there was an opportunity to make a difference in healthcare…

What if an approach to reach healthcare decision makers, an approach that is proven to work in other industries, is largely resisted or ignored?

Now, suppose you have an IT solution to make that difference in healthcare…

Would you resist this new, proven approach?

Or resist it?

The Big Miss, the Big Resist, in healthcare is failure to embrace content marketing.

According to this study, healthcare marketers:

Use print ads, newsletters, and annual reports at a higher percentage.
Blog less and use case studies less frequently than other industries.
Are slow to adopt and engage in Social Media.
Outsource far more content than other marketing peers.

Are you resisting content marketing too?

Content Marketing: The Answer to Opening Doors (and Closing Deals) for Health IT?

While healthcare is slow to adopt content marketing, technology companies tend to embrace it. IT firms typically are smaller, more agile, and less bureaucratic than healthcare organizations. They don’t face all of the regulatory challenges that require legal review before hitting the publish button.

How can health IT firms gain traction with healthcare organization using content marketing?

Use these three strategies to frame content marketing efforts.

1. Help the Unaware- Today, B2B prospects conduct over 60% of possible vendor research before any interaction or contact with a sales person. Your content MUST catch future buyers early on in this research phase.

Provide educational content to show you understand their problems. Provide insights on solution options. Help them to understand problems and challenges they face that they don’t even know they have. Content marketing is the way to deliver this educational information. A strategic, well-planned content marketing foundation is the only cost-effective way to educate future buyers in a long-sales cycle product or service.

Provide blog posts, on your website and industry sites. Create short videos and post to YouTube. Interview industry leaders and peers and share on iTunes. Use social media to promote this educational content.

2. Inspire the Interested- At some point, your educational information sparks interest in solving the problem. Prospects want a change. Their idea of a better way overpowers the current reality.

But, they need a nudge. Healthcare, perhaps more than any industry, resists change. You must provide the inspiration to buck the status quo. Your content must show how a new world, a better world is possible with your product or service solution.

Your work in IT is inspirational. Your ability to come at complex systems and process problems within a healthcare organization from previously unconsidered angles and your passion for solving the problem not yet solved are both inspirational. You excel in inspiring the interested.

Content marketing connects your inspiration and passion with the prospect. Storytelling is the best way to capture the imaginations of prospects and inspire them to take the next step. Provide success stories current and past clients.

3. Reassure- Provide proof. Reduce the risk of choosing your health IT solution.

How?

Demonstrate calm and confidence. Lead the client. Explain how you will implement your product or solution in step-by-step detail. Here logic takes over after the emotion of inspiration. You content must address buyers remorse. You offer a defined, written phased implementation, a pilot project, a money-back guarantee to test your health IT product or service. Detailed case studies that demonstrate your implementation and methodologies provide third party credibility.

Content marketing can open doors and close deals for you. Even though your future buyers resist content marketing, don’t miss out taking a strategic content approach that educates, inspires, and reassures.

Don’t Miss Out… Grab the Guide: How to Create “Killer” Marketing Content