Stay Engaged

Let your audience know your business is still going strong

It’s hard to get anyone’s attention in the best of times. During this pandemic, it may feel impossible. But as healthcare spending picks up, you can’t afford to sit on the sidelines waiting for a better time to engage. This is the right time to offer solutions that can help your healthcare customers improve their efficiencies — and the efficiency of the industry as a whole — in a post-COVID-19 world.

If your clients have temporarily curbed their spending, their purchase decisions may be more considered going forward. Prospects may pay more attention to the quality of your relationships. As you get back in contact, you need to assure your audience that you understand their fears and frustrations and are there for them with the products and services they need when they are ready to invest.

The insights below may help guide your content marketing process.

Be sure of your audience

“Don’t push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are.” – Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP Marketing, HubSpot

Is your audience the same as it was six months ago? Do the services or products you offer still solve the challenges your audience is dealing with now? Given changes in the market, you may have to rethink your audience or the benefits you can offer them. If you’ve developed personas for your content marketing program, review each one to make sure they’re still relevant. If not, create new ones.

Provide empathy and support

There has never been a more important time to demonstrate you care. After a period of uncertainty, everyone is grasping for a sense of safety and control. Use your communications to empower your audience with ideas, information, or products that can help them deal with the pandemic. You can launch an email campaign or post regularly on social media. Offer ideas relevant to your products or services, such as safety tips for different situations and locations, nutrition plans to boost immune systems, or positive news to boost morale. Or develop a white paper that provides policy ideas, coping strategies, or reports based on your own research.

Meet people where they are

If you have an essential product or service that meets current needs, offer it, don’t sell it. Your goal should be to let people know what you have and where they can get it. This is not a great time to convince someone to buy something they don’t understand or know how to use. Provide sales sheets and web pages that explain features in clear terms and answer specific questions. Demonstrate through testimonials or case studies how the product or service is helping businesses like theirs. Use CTAs that ask questions rather than demand actions so you can initiate conversations.

Offer a discount

At a time when so many people are struggling financially, you can build a reputation for caring by offering services or products at a discount. Just make sure to communicate that you’re offering the same high quality at a more affordable cost that reflects current economic conditions.

Entertain

A lot of people are bored or stressed from working at home. If this sounds like your audience, offer links to great videos, a challenging crossword puzzle, or an app you think is incredible. Be remembered as the organization that kept them sane through difficult times.

Educate

Many people have more time to learn new things. If they’ve already binge watched everything of interest on Netflix and Hulu, they may be ready to take on a more complex report, guide, ebook, white paper, or webinar that will help them advance their careers or improve their physical or mental health.

Be consistent

There is no way to predict when we’re going to put Covid-19 behind us. But one thing you can predict is that if you stop marketing consistently, you may be without a business to market.

If you’ve cut your budget or run out of new ideas for content, go back through everything you’ve produced to see what you can repurpose. Revise content for a revised reality: A white paper can become a series of one-sheets, blog posts or emails. A collection of case studies can turn into a long article. A sales sheet can serve as the basis for an instructional ebook.

Keep the content rolling. And if you need help, reach out. If I’m not a good fit for your project, I’ll be happy to refer you to other content marketers who can do the job.

Photo by Anna Shvets

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