3 Ways to Make Your Healthcare Content More Actionable
You’re already developing engaging content. But how do you convince readers to use services and become patients?
As a healthcare marketer, you have a unique and critical opportunity to influence your followers to make healthier decisions based on your organization’s wellness expertise. Actionable content provides value, establishes trust and encourages potential patients to take action. Here are three ways to create it.
1. Develop compelling calls-to-action.
Perhaps our first tip sounds obvious, but you might be surprised at how challenging it can be to craft a worthy CTA that results in real action. To inspire action, convey the benefits of taking action to your reader in a concise way. For example, flu season is the perfect time to direct patients to walk-in clinics. In an article about this year’s flu, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s My Southern Health gives readers two standout CTAs — an online flu tool to determine whether a health care visit is necessary, and a clickable “find a location” button for walk-in clinics.
2. Clarify your audience personas.
Want results? You have to understand your audience. Although you may have a good sense of your broader audience demographic, personas can help you hone in on specific types of people within it. Consider their age, location, income, education level, conditions, etc. Then, ask yourself, how does this persona access content? Does he or she get healthcare information during work hours or at home? How much content might this persona want to receive, and how frequently? What influences his healthcare content searches and consumption? From there, you’ll be able to map a clearer path for your content.
3. Offer examples that complement your advice.
This is particularly true when developing how-to articles that guide your readers on making healthy decisions. Work screenshots, videos, illustrations or other images into your blog posts, or list the best resources for achieving various health goals within your organization or community. For example (see what we did there?), if offering advice on how to manage chronic depression, you might also include links, phone numbers or other directives to connect the reader with someone on your mental wellness team.