For HealthTech Marketing, You Need the Right Content Creators

Healthtech marketers: Think of the last RFP that crossed your desk. 

There was the question about whether your tech integrates with the hospital EMR (no doubt a complete deal-breaker for the IT department). Then there was the question about how your tech will improve quality at the hospital — likely a crucial answer to get right for clinical leadership. And there was the section about how your healthtech product or service will help the health system further its charitable mission. 

At which point you look up from the RFP and remember: Marketing in healthcare can often feel like it has a lot to do with checking other people’s boxes.

The Unique Challenge Facing Healthcare Marketers

The worst part of this RFP example is that it’s analogous to all content marketing efforts for marketing leaders in the healthcare industry. Every piece of content has to somehow address those competing interests and various audiences. 

Each department — compliance, recruiting, billing, legal, finance, administration, risk, and so on — has its own agenda. And you’re trying to speak to everyone’s separate pain points with all of your content. To translate seemingly disparate needs into one healthcare bucket that, with any luck, becomes your content strategy. 

It can feel dizzying. 

Why You Need Healthcare Experts on Your Marketing Team

Clearly, healthcare is complex. Between siloed departments and the inherent complications that arise in the industry’s variety of work — we’re talking about everything from recruiting physicians to entire departments devoted to risk mitigation — that complexity isn’t going away. Not to mention their departments are embedded within huge institutions subject to unparalleled regulation. 

All of this means that if you’re seeking an external partner to support your content-driven marketing initiatives, or even hiring for your own team, you need healthcare marketing specialists. 

After all, you know best how difficult it is to wrap your head around the world of healthcare — outsourcing to generalist content marketing strategists frankly won’t cut it.

Background Knowledge That Gives You Precious Time Back

Choosing a content partner who specializes in your industry ultimately means time savings for your team.

A generalist content strategist could be an exceptional writer, no doubt. But if you have to spend weeks getting them up to speed on basic healthcare industry lingo, you’re wasting time that could’ve been spent on actual content creation. Put simply, you’re needlessly starting from scratch.

Take telehealth, for example. If your writer doesn’t already understand what impact length of stay has on a hospital, or why an ER physician may want to call a specialist, and in which circumstances, your clinical leaders are going to spend a lot more time with that writer.

Contrast that with a content team that already understands telehealth — including all the various departments who will use it and who will care about how it works.

Clearly, the expert-led interview in this second scenario will yield a higher quality, more salient final product for you to leverage. What’s more, your clinical leader won’t be as frustrated with the interview experience in this latter scenario because she’ll feel her time was well spent. She didn’t have to explain what she views as straightforward background information to a healthcare novice. 

Mutual Understanding of Your Nuanced Audience 

When you work with a content marketing team that specializes in healthcare, you won’t need to justify why you wanted to create certain content in a certain way. That’s because the right team already empathizes with your plight to please every stakeholder within a healthcare giant.

Even better, the right team will create a strategy that systematically addresses the unique needs of your varying audiences while still unifying your message into a coherent whole.

Healthcare-centric content creators know that the challenge of marketing to separate stakeholders within one company can also be an opportunity. It’s your chance to fully commit to one topic in-depth and speak directly to one department with expert precision and understanding.

Yes, there’s certainly a time for big-picture stories that apply to entire health systems. But appealing specifically to Mark in IT with his own healthtech white paper is perhaps an underused tactic, and could be a powerful differentiator for your company. 

The bottom line? Generalist content strategists simply won’t know how to navigate that thicket of competing interests making up your audience. Consequently, they won’t be able to offer these kinds of more refined ideas and solutions to your content problems. 

Need More Support?

Respect is due to healthcare marketers — it’s not an easy job.

If you need a content strategy partner immersed in the healthcare industry to lend a hand, we can help. All of our content creators are plucked from healthcare jobs and have deep, meaningful knowledge of the industry. 

It’s time to give your content marketing strategy the expert treatment it warrants.