Content Strategy Foundations: Medical Tourism

The question around content strategy for healthcare businesses is no longer “Should we have one?”, but “How do we do it?”

Keep in mind…there is no point in having an online presence in this industry if you don’t treat your information seriously. That means organizing it across multiple platforms in ways that walk your customers into a more intimate knowledge of who you are, and how you can solve their problems. It means bringing them information around specific topics that interest them, and help them achieve their goals.

While most industries can rely on light-hearted campaigns and viral marketing, the nature of healthcare makes things tricky — the topics around healthcare are inherently more serious, and, let’s be honest, dry.

Building an engaging content presence takes time, but laying the proper foundation (your MVP-Minimum Viable Presence) is key in using the Internet as anything more than just a showcase for a few pretty paragraphs about what you do.

This series is set up to help you achieve that. In this post, we’re going to cover the basic elements of a productive content strategy for a medical tourism company

Medical Tourism

This is one of my favorite sub-niches in healthcare content because there’s so much you can do with it. Let’s start with the basic components in establishing a core content strategy…

• Identifying The Problem You Solve: Decide what problem you solve…not your USP, not what you specialize in, but the problem you solve for your clients and customers. It’s essential you frame your thinking like this from the beginning so that you are consistently oriented from the customer point of view.

• Finding Your “Twist”: This is where things get fun (and it’s where your USP comes in). You can take this in 1,000 different directions, but the whole point is making your company stand out from competitors in the minds of customers. I’ve used content hubs based on an imagined customer narratives, outright rejection of what “everybody else” was doing, even my own personal story, to create a distinct customer experience. For medical tourism, it might be something like highlighting the other perks of your locations, or a family-centered focus if that fits your target customer. People need a reason to pay attention to you over everyone else, and this is where you give them that.

• Researching: This can sound intimidating, but in all honestly, don’t spend a lot of time on this…yet. A few quick searches for where people you want to serve spend their time will get you the answers you’re looking for. Are you targeting cancer patients? Check out some Facebook groups and subscribe to some newsletters. See what they comment on and share. Read their problems and see where your solution aligns. Once you have a couple of theories, you can start solving the problems.

• Creating A Structure: The great thing about content in the age of the Internet is that it can be repurposed…so something like an email course about how to use your site to lay out a treatment plan at a medical tourism destination can be repurposed into an ebook, blog post, even a podcast series that features clinicians and former, enthusiastic customers. The most important thing though, is that you maintain a few basic components:

• A Hub That Converts through a contact form, checkout button, phone number, etc.)
• Problem-Solving Materials that point directly to the hub and are well-written, focused, and easy to consume. They may be housed on your site, distributed via email, or on another site.
• Social That Drives through tweets, Pinterest images, even FB group activity — you’re moving engagement with the problem-solving materials.

The Minimum Viable Presence For A Medical Tourism Brand

Let’s say you’ve got a beautiful site up (or are working on one) and you’re busy talking about your team and all the cool, advanced solutions you offer patients access to.

That’s great, but that’s not what gets people to move. What gets you the results you want from your online presence is a content strategy based on being known, liked, and trusted — the three legs of the content strategy table. Here are some ideas for setting them up, and layering them over the components discussed earlier in the medical tourism space.

Addressing The Problem You Solve

This is where you’re building your hub by using your problem-solving materials. If you have existing case studies, white papers, or research, you can likely just simplify the language, clean up the structure, and put them into attractive PDFs or slide decks. Don’t forget to be conscious of natural SEO.

Once you’ve got your problem-solving materials created, show them off. Make sure they include prompts to call, email, or submit information (like to join an email list…very important). Since we’re talking healthcare, stay away from anything too “sales-y”, but don’t be afraid of asking people to move.

Don’t hide your solutions behind chatter about who you are. People care about that, but generally only after they know you can solve their problems. Don’t make them work. Highlight PDFs, ebooks, testimonials, and case studies. Make sure they’re visibly called out on the front page of your site.

Take Planet Hospital for example. While I feel their site is a little too busy/distracting, they get right to the point and show patients that they can expect to get an ACL and torn meniscus repaired for under $4K. If a patient’s problem is cost (which it frequently is if they’re considering medical care abroad), they instantly know that it’s possible Planet Hospital can solve their problems.

Don’t Forget Your Credentials

While problem-solving should shine, we are talking healthcare, so you have to build trust.

Your first credentialing component should be your clinicians and facilities. Interview your doctors so customers can begin to feel like they’re working with intelligent, educated professionals who care and are engaged in addressing their issues. Feature their voice recordings or interview summaries in clear links under their profiles.

Your second is your former customers. Find enthusiastic, satisfied customers whose lives you’ve changed and get them to talk a bit about what you’ve done for them. They might not be professionals, but testimonial-credentials can frequently outweigh a prestigious degree when it comes to establishing trust.

Go Social

This is where you want to incentivize people to come visit your hub, or in other words, establish knowledge and awareness. I’m a BIG fan of schedulers like Hootsuite and Buffer for distributing core content, but I also schedule regular time to check mentions, likes, private messages, and other “small” engagements that can lead to insight into patient needs, feedback, and even inspiration for more trust-building materials for your hub.

Genuine social isn’t only about tweets though. Start talking to bloggers and editors. Big ones, small ones, just go where your customers might be. While it might be worth your time to build an audience from scratch, chances are there are multiple existing publications that need posts written (you’ve got great professionals on your team…use them…even if it means making their writing more user-friendly after the fact).

Don’t be afraid to approach an editor or blog manager about the lack of a particular subject on their site or publication. I’ve found that if you do it respectfully, they’re more than happy to jump at a chance at free, well-written, well-researched content. (Just remember to make that email headline something that gets them to open. Check out this quick ebook on writing headlines to get started.)

You may have noticed that there’s one table leg missing. That’s likeability. It’s probably the simplest element of content strategy, but can be the hardest to establish. Without it, you have content that is correct and organized, but that doesn’t connect with your customers in real ways. With it, in the form of a connected and competent voice…an integrated and mindful perspective…you’ll have an online presence that works as hard for you as any sales team.

Got questions on how to apply these concepts to your medical tourism company? Contact us, and we can spend a few minutes talking out some ideas.