The 5 key stages of a healthcare content marketing strategy

Are you looking for ways to build a healthcare content marketing strategy that adapts, targets, and converts effectively? With prospective patients increasingly researching their health concerns and needs online before making appointments, this approach is no longer a benefit, but a necessity.

As a healthcare provider, you must deliver valuable, trustworthy, and well-aligned content that addresses patient needs at every stage of their journey, driving enquiries and admissions. Not only that, but you need the right solutions, like Mediahawk, to ensure precise marketing performance monitoring to optimise campaign performance.

This article outlines the five key stages of a successful healthcare content marketing strategy, so you know how to attract, engage, and convert prospective patients while maintaining compliance with industry regulations.

Why content marketing is critical in healthcare

The healthcare sector in the UK has undergone significant transformation in recent years, and healthcare providers are facing increased competition from other private institutions as well as evolving NHS services.

Prospective patients are taking control of their healthcare needs, whilst also putting a heavy emphasis on trust, expertise, and patient management.

This highlights how essential it is to create an effective healthcare content marketing strategy that aligns with changing prospective patient needs and targets them where it matters.

Healthcare decisions are deeply personal, and quality content establishes your expertise and builds the trust necessary for patients to choose your services. Also, with over 2,500 private hospitals and clinics in the UK (as listed on the CQC website), plus NHS options, standing out requires more than just listing services. You need careful storytelling, education, and connection through targeted content.

Here are the five key stages of a healthcare content marketing strategy you should be utilising to guide prospective patients from initial awareness through to admission and beyond.

Stage 1: Define your audience with patient personas

Creating an effective healthcare content marketing strategy begins with clearly understanding who you’re trying to reach. You need patient personas – detailed profiles representing your ideal patients – to provide the foundation for all your content decisions.

These personas should go beyond basic demographics and capture the unique needs, concerns, and behaviours of different patient segments. Some key things to consider are:

• Demographics: Age, location, income level, family situation
• Health needs: Preventative care, chronic condition management, elective treatments
• Decision drivers: Cost sensitivity, quality of care, specialist expertise
• Information preferences: Video content, eBooks and guides, articles, patient stories
• Digital behaviour: Devices used, web pages visited, social media engagement

The best way to gather concrete data for these personas is with call tracking software, tracking the exact journeys of every prospective patient to uncover all the touchpoints they visit.

The software reveals the top campaigns that draw engagement from prospective patients and influence their decision to book an appointments surrounding enquiries, appointment bookings, and admissions. It uncovers key details such as common patient health needs, decision drivers, information preferences, and digital behaviours, which you can then use to create patient personas.

From here, these detailed personas will guide critical decisions about content tone, complexity, messaging, format, and distribution channels.

Stage 2: Align content across key decision stages in the patient journey

Once you’ve established who your prospective patients are, the next stage in your healthcare content marketing strategy involves mapping their journey from initial symptom and research to treatment.

Patient journey mapping will ensure your content connects with their needs and questions in the right way at every crucial point in their journey and decision process.

Here’s a typical prospective patient healthcare journey and how your content should be targeted for each point:

1. Awareness/symptom stage: Patients are experiencing symptoms or have general health concerns. They’re searching for information about what might be wrong.
   • Content needs: Symptom checkers, condition/general health education
   • Example formats: Blog posts, health quizzes, informational videos
2. Consideration/diagnosis stage: Patients understand their needs and are exploring treatment options.
   • Content needs: Treatment comparisons, expected outcomes, recovery information
   • Example formats: Treatment guides, patient stories, specialist interviews
3. Decision/provider selection stage: Patients are choosing where and from whom to receive care.
   • Content needs: Provider credentials, patient testimonials, unique selling points (USPs), appointment process information
   • Example formats: Service pages, paid advertisement, provider profiles, virtual tours, FAQs about the patient experience
4. Post-treatment/loyalty stage: Patients are recovering or managing ongoing health needs.
   • Content needs: Aftercare guidance, condition management resources, preventative health information
   • Example formats: Email sequences, mobile app content, patient community resources, post-treatment packages

Once you understand the intent behind each of these stages, your content will ensure prospective patients receive the right information at the right time, building trust while guiding them naturally toward booking an appointment or having a consultation.

Stage 3: Create trustworthy and compliant content

Content in the healthcare sector faces unique challenges: it must be scientifically accurate, clearly communicated, and compliant with industry regulations.

Building trust with your healthcare content marketing strategy requires balancing medical expertise with accessibility. You want to deliver professional and specialist messaging without losing the empathetic and caring essence that often drives the prospective patient decision process.

Some of the ways you can ensure accuracy and compliance are:

• Expert verification: Have qualified healthcare professionals review all health-related content for accuracy
• Regulatory awareness: Follow ASA guidelines for healthcare marketing and NHS England guidance for public health information
• Clear disclaimers: Include appropriate medical disclaimers, particularly around treatment outcomes
• Evidence-based claims: Support claims with credible research and proper citations
• Regular updates: Establish processes to review and update medical content as guidelines and research changes

But this is only the first step. To truly build trust and solidify confidence in your prospective patients, you need to deliver the content in an accessible and persuasive manner.

For instance, plain-English principles should be applied, as prospects will engage better with clear, jargon-free language that helps them understand what their needs are and how you can help.

We recommend reviewing every aspect of your healthcare content marketing strategy with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Citing credentials of content authors, linking to authoritative sources, and showcasing patient testimonials will all contribute to establishing your content as trustworthy.

Stage 4: Distribute content across the right channels

Creating content is one thing, but even the most valuable content can’t fulfil its purpose if it doesn’t reach your target audience. You need effective distribution for your healthcare content, ensuring your messaging spans across the right channels where your potential patients are already looking for information.

Here are some key healthcare content distribution channels:

• Organic search (SEO)
  • Focus on symptom and condition-related keywords with high search volume
  • Create content addressing common patient queries
  • Optimise for localised search terms – e.g., ‘physiotherapy near me’
• Email marketing
  • Segment lists by prospective patient needs and journey stage
  • Deliver personalised health information and appointment reminders
  • Share relevant content based on what you know about your audience
• Social media
  • Emphasise professional credibility and B2B healthcare content on LinkedIn
  • Leverage Facebook for communities and education
  • Consider Instagram for wellness content and patient stories
• Paid channels
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns targeting specific symptoms or treatments
  • Retargeting ads to influence prospects in the decision stage with relevant messaging
  • Native advertising on various health platforms

The most successful healthcare providers maintain consistency across these channels. To do this, you need to monitor campaign performance across different channels. Features like Parameter Connect provide insights that help guide how you adjust activities to make messaging more impactful – i.e., drive more enquiries and appointment bookings.

Stage 5: Measure and optimise content performance

The final stage in your healthcare content marketing strategy is measurement and optimisation. Creating a successful strategy is an ongoing effort, and you need to monitor performance, gather insights, and continuously improve your approach.

Without proper measurement, you can’t determine what content truly drives patient acquisition and retention, and you’ll miss opportunities to understand and reach your prospects more effectively.

Marketing analytics is vital here. You’ll be able to track key performance metrics such as:

• The number of calls generated by each campaign
• The average time to call for every channel
• Content downloads
• Appointment bookings
• Consultation requests

What’s more, call tracking will take these insights even further, offering a more in-depth look at how your online and offline activities are impacting your enquiries. You’ll be able to see every user interaction before, during, and after a phone call, giving you the full picture of how your cross-channel marketing is driving enquiries and admissions.

Also, Speech Analytics software will help you assign value to every enquiry, by analysing key phrases and terms in phone call conversations. This will reveal things such as a prospect’s intent to book and their specific medical needs, whilst also indicating the most effective channels for generating high quality enquiries.

Call tracking software is the key to a holistic view of your entire healthcare content marketing strategy, where you can measure, adjust, and optimise every campaign and channel as necessary.

Final thoughts

A successful healthcare content marketing strategy isn’t built overnight. It’s developed through a methodical approach that puts patients at the centre of every decision. With the right solutions, like call tracking, you’ll ensure content is landing in the right way across the five key stages:

1. Defining patient personas
2. Mapping the patient journey
3. Creating trustworthy content
4. Distributing content strategically
5. Measuring performance