How’s Your Web-Side Manner?

Make client acquisition a process of discovery, where your new customers feel like they’ve discovered a needle in the haystack. You’ll accomplish this with original and useful content.

How does your health-centered business find new clients online? Traditional marketing doesn’t make the grade anymore, and competition makes it harder to get in front of prospects. The answer is to make it easy for them to find you, instead.

Make client acquisition a process of discovery, where your new customers feel like they’ve discovered a needle in the haystack. You’ll accomplish this with original and useful content. It sets the stage for developing a long-lasting relationship – and it’s based on the true value you offer: a partnership for health and well being.

Lead with the story of your greatest resource

Medical knowledge and technology are your tools. They help to make people healthy, but it’s you and your staff – the humans – who make it possible. Prospects want to know the people behind the science of wellness. Tell these stories.

Create an area of specific content that profiles each member of your staff. These give new customers the opportunity to associate human faces with your organization. You help someone decide to become a customer when you give them the ability to put your organization into their worldview. Images make this information more impactful.

Share regular highlights of staff members. Weave professional accomplishments in with personal insights. Learning that a staff member has just earned a new medical certification and finding out that they’re a huge fan of gardening creates a personal connection. Prospects are searching for these ways to connect.

• Text-based articles are a good start but don’t stop there. Complement this content with videos. This is a powerful way to connect with people.
• Health-related subjects are often complex. There’s plenty of important and detailed information that needs to be shared. You’ll create value when you share this knowledge in a visual way that helps people with non-medical backgrounds gain a deeper understanding. Infographics are excellent ways to present health-oriented content. Info graphics are also easy to share, which means people who come across your content presented in this medium may be more likely to share it with others.
• Concerns about patient privacy and other regulatory obstacles often cause health-centered businesses to avoid social media. The easiest way to stay clear of these concerns is to use social media to gather ideas for future content. In a minute, you’ll read about the three most effective types of content. Post links to this content and ask for feedback. Then browse your social media channels and act on it.
• Speaking of social media, people love using it to find and take quizzes or surveys. Use your channels to promote a survey or quiz. Then, transform the results into an eBook. The quiz or survey is short. The resulting eBook can go into depth and become an important contribution to the content that’s establishing you as a subject matter expert.

Make it about your customers and prospects, not about you

The fallacy that content for inbound marketing should be self-promotion is still – unfortunately – embraced by many companies. All content should end with a strong call to action that points to your company – but the most powerful content takes an objective view.

• Some of this content remains focused on just the problem—meaning that it provides education and insight showing that helps prospects validate their concerns. “Do I understand my health issue? Wow, I’m not alone in my concern about this!”
• Other content offers perspective and the ability to learn more, and it’s presented objectively. “I appreciate getting a deeper understanding of my health concerns, and I really like learning about it from all sides.”
• Other content offers advice on the best solution to a health concern. “I appreciate getting objective advice on what to look for in a health professional who can help me.” This approach is important because you’re establishing yourself as an authority who can be counted on to offer unbiased information.

Notice anything interesting about these types of content? They’re not selling your services. At least not directly. What these three types of content can do – and quite effectively – is help people move through the journey of discovery, insight, and decision-making.

People want to feel like they make these choices themselves. They’ll choose you if the story of your organization and why you do what you do resonates with them. Self-promotional content will likely turn them off.

Health and wellness occur when humans connect. You see this every day in your interactions with patients. Your online presence should be a digital extension of what you do in real life. Creating content that approaches it this way – putting a human face on your organization that’s relatable by other humans – helps you to connect with people who are searching for someone just like you to help them.

Learn even more about how to attract more clients with custom content by downloading our free guide.