You hear lots of buzz today about content marketing.
For good reasons…
With access to information online, the buying process has changed.
Buyers are now empowered to conduct the research of the problems they face, understand the potential solutions, and sort through vendor options to provide the solutions without engaging a salesperson. As much as 75% of the buying process is completed before contacting a salesperson.
With this reality of how products and services are purchased, it’s crucial to use content to enter the conversation and capture the interest of prospects early in the Buying Journey.
How long will it take for a content marketing approach to work?
It depends upon the complexity of your product or service, the competition you face, and Buying Process of your prospects.
Enterprise Health IT products and services are complex. They impact nearly all areas of a healthcare organization. How the technology works and how it will be implemented requires answering lots of questions. Competition is stiff with both established players and a host of start ups in the hunt to gain clients. The internal Buying Process in healthcare organizations involves multiple decision makers, users, and stakeholders.
Understand up-front that content marketing is a process. It takes time to produce results. It requires a strategic approach to make sure all parts of the approach are working together.
Elements of the Content Marketing Process
Content Marketing must do three things to deliver results for your Health IT firm.
It must:
1. Build Awareness and Capture Attention- Your content must break through the noise and gain the attention of your targeted prospects. Search Engine Optimized content, such as blog posts, videos, and podcast allow prospects to find you in the early research phases. But, gaining search ranking requires producing fresh, relevant content on a consistent basis. This takes time.
Pay Per Click advertising or generating guest posts on relevant high traffic sites offers the opportunity to speed up the process.
2, Educate and Engage- Once you gain awareness and capture the attention of your targeted prospects, you must provide content that addresses their concerns. Your content educates them about the problems they face. Blog posts, white papers, e-courses, and webinars are used to engage and motivate propsects to take the next step in exploring potential solution options.
3. Build Trust- Your content positions you as the option of choice. Content that demonstrates a deep understanding of the prospects problems adds credibility. Producing content consistently shows reliability. Talking about solution options and answering prospects questions openly positions your firm as the authority in your market.
Using content to create awareness, educate and engage, and build trust is not a quick fix. It requires a commitment to investing in a marketing asset.
To learn more about how Content Marketing can make the difference for your Health IT firm, grab the FREE GUIDE: How to Create “Killer” Marketing Content.
photo credit: purplemattfish via photopin cc
