Healthcare Content Marketing for Hospitals

You may have heard us say it before: we don’t care that you care. When you look at your local competitors (and, really, any hospital system nationwide), you’ll see everyone is saying the same thing. Quality care. Excellent care. Compassionate care. Of course, as a care provider, you’re going to say you care. But how can you show you really mean it?

That’s what consumers are looking for today—providers that show they care rather than just saying it. And sure, there are a lot of ways to do this through community events, sponsorships, donated services, etc. But there’s one thing that’s more sustainable, cost-effective, and far-reaching: digital content.

Providing healthcare consumers with useful, valuable information in the form of online content is a smart way to show your organization cares while supporting your marketing efforts in the process. Recently, we worked with our client AdventHealth (formerly Shawnee Mission Health) to develop and implement a content strategy that would expand their website MyHealthKC.com (originally conceived as a patient-provider matching tool) by offering informational content.

We chose to focus on three types of content for the relaunch of the website:

1. RECIPES

The recipes we curate contain healthy ingredients vetted by AdventHealth’s own nutritionists. We’re able to make connections to the systems’ sponsorship of the Overland Park Farmers’ Market by promoting the value of fresh, local ingredients where possible. Our audience can look to the MyHealthKC website to discover healthy recipes recommended by nutritionists from a local hospital system. That’s something they won’t be able to find anywhere else.

We also utilized AdventHealth’s relationships with a few renowned chefs in the community to develop a plan to regularly share premier recipes with our target audience. Since these chefs head up some of the area’s finest restaurants, our audience will understand the value of the recipes and know they’re getting great ideas for healthy meals local chefs regularly prepare. This local connection also helps support AdventHealth’s desire to strengthen their ties to the Kansas City community.

2. BLOGS

One of the biggest challenges with maintaining a blog is knowing what to write about. With the abundance of content available online, healthcare marketers have to fight for consumers’ attention. Publishing content just for the sake of it won’t work. It has to be the right content and feel worthwhile to read.

We accounted for this by identifying user personas up front and researching their healthcare propensities and attitudes. From this, we were able to identify areas and topics of interest to them. The blog content on MyHealthKC is centered on achieving a happy and healthy lifestyle in Kansas City. Some of the blog content is even authored by doctors at AdventHealth to connect the audience to local doctors as well as lend authority to the website’s resources.

3. GUIDES

The MyHealthKC guides are what we call “hero content”—truly valuable pieces of information intended to impress the audience and earn shares, links, and overall brand awareness. Each MyHealthKC guide takes significant research to produce and also typically involves partnering with subject matter experts. Generally speaking, hero content should either be unique or 10X better than similar, readily available pieces.

Working with AdventHealth, we were able to create a guide to the Overland Park Farmers’ Market. During our research, our team discovered that information about the market was lacking online. We visited the market, talked to vendors, and took lots of notes. In the end, we were able to create a piece that is not only valuable to the local community, but also helped AdventHealth support and promote their sponsorship of the Overland Park Farmers’ Market.

We also launched with a free seven-day cleanse geared toward our audiences’ busy lifestyles, as well as an infant development activity guide for new parents in Kansas City. Since AdventHealth has the leading birth center in the area, it made sense for them to support their current and prospective birth center patients with a useful reference piece for their baby’s first year of life.

CONTENT YOU CAN CARE ABOUT

With the launch of this new phase of MyHealthKC.com, our client is providing added value to their current and prospective patients while also supporting their online marketing channels. The key to planning and creating valuable content is to understand your audience and what they care about. When you invest in content that anticipates and fulfills your audience’s needs, consumer loyalty and trust are almost certain to follow.

Need help with your healthcare content strategy? Let’s talk.