Should you be doing content marketing? An honest review

Are you considering introducing content marketing into your overall marketing strategy, but aren’t sure if it’s worth it? Are you looking to learn the truth about its pros and cons?

What is content marketing?

As the name suggests, content marketing is all about creating content for your audience. This might include blogs, articles, videos, podcasts and more, but none of it is supposed to be directly promotional of your products or offerings.

The benefits of content marketing

This section of the article will help you decide if you should be doing content marketing, by running through its strengths.

• Improved search engine rankings

  Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a crucial aspect of content marketing. By incorporating relevant keywords and optimising content for search engines, you can improve your website’s visibility in search results. Higher rankings mean increased organic traffic, resulting in more opportunities to convert visitors into customers on your website.

• Enhanced brand visibility and awareness

  The rule of 7 states that your customers need to see your brand at least 7 times before they commit to a purchase, but in this digital age where channels are saturated with branded content, that number is likely to be closer to 25 times.

  Content marketing allows you to consistently get in front of your audience to increase your visibility, which in turn decreases your customer’s journey because they are more frequently exposed to your brand.

• Increased audience engagement

  One of the primary goals of content marketing is to engage and connect with your target audience. By creating valuable and informative content, you can establish a relationship of trust with your customers. Engaging content encourages readers to share it with others, expanding the reach of the brand and potentially attracting new customers.

• Thought leadership

  Content marketing enables medical device companies to establish themselves as thought leaders within their industry. By sharing insights, research, and expertise through content, you can position yourself as a trusted authority. This helps build credibility, enhances brand reputation, and fosters trust among healthcare professionals and potential customers.

• Product differentiation

  The medical device industry is highly competitive, and content marketing provides an opportunity for you to differentiate from your competitors. By highlighting unique features, innovations, and patient outcomes through content, you can showcase the value and superiority of your devices. This can influence purchasing decisions and create a competitive advantage.

  Furthermore, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors by honestly and openly addressing the questions and your concerns of your audience. This means addresses the topics that others don’t, such as pricing and good fit questions, to earn their trust. You can learn more about this idea by visiting our content marketing overview.

• Training and education

  Medical device companies can utilise content marketing to provide training and educational resources to healthcare professionals. This can include instructional videos, product manuals, webinars, and interactive platforms. By offering valuable training materials, you can enhance customer satisfaction, increase product adoption, and improve overall customer experience.

  Additionally, great content can act as a 24-hour customer service representative for you. Content never sleeps, so if what you’re producing answers the questions that your customers have, they’ll be able to access the information they need on your site, whenever they need it – even if you’re not available online at that moment in time.

Cons of content marketing

While content marketing does have a lot of strengths, some drawbacks can make it a problematic marketing strategy.

This section of the article will run through the main drawbacks of content marketing that might not make it suitable for every company.

Time-intensive process

Developing and executing an effective content marketing strategy requires time and effort. You need to research and understand your target audience, create customer-centric content, and consistently publish it across multiple channels. This can be a resource-intensive process, especially for smaller businesses with limited manpower.

• Results take time

  Content marketing is a long-term strategy that requires patience. Unlike some paid advertising methods that provide instant results, content marketing takes time to build momentum. It may take months or even years to see significant growth and tangible returns on investment. Your company should be prepared to invest in content marketing for the long haul.

  On the other hand, when you do start to see the results that make your competitors jealous, you will already be too far ahead for them to catch up.

• Need for continuous content creation

  To maintain audience engagement and keep up with competitors, you need to consistently produce fresh, valuable content. This can be challenging, especially for companies with limited resources or a lack of in-house expertise. Sustaining a consistent content creation schedule requires planning, creativity, and a dedicated in-house team.

Content quality and relevance

In the saturated digital landscape, creating content that stands out from the competition can be a challenge. Maintaining high-quality standards and relevance is crucial for content marketing success. Producing subpar or irrelevant content (also known as fluff) can harm your brand’s reputation and fail to engage your target audience.

• Measuring return on investment (ROI)

  Measuring the ROI of content marketing can be complex. While it’s relatively easy to track metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement, and email subscriptions, connecting those metrics to tangible business outcomes like sales and revenue can be more challenging.

  It’s not impossible though. Tools such as HubSpot can help you to track your customers’ journey to give you a better understanding of how they’re interacting with content. It also allows you to analyse revenue attribution, so you can report on how much money your articles are making you. Although great, you have to pay for these features of HubSpot.

Is it worth it?

Content marketing has so much to offer but you need to remember that it requires lots of commitment. When done right, content marketing has the power to elevate your SEO, inform your audience and strengthen your brand overall to David and Goliath realms, getting you way ahead of your competitors.

You can draw customers to you rather than you going to them which can save you and your company so much time. But it’s not a strategy to take on lightly as it is a longer-term project requiring focus, consistency and commitment.

If you want to get started with your content journey, check out these other articles:

Repurposing content: How to create more by doing less

How to come up with fresh, new content ideas

The complete guide to Medical Device SEO

Content with Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want a high-quality content to support your larger multichannel marketing strategy? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

We’re more expensive than non-specialised agencies and freelance teams because we only work in the Medical Device space so we have specialist knowledge and experience that other agencies may not be able to offer you.

If you want high-quality, compliant campaigns that help achieve your business goals, we’d love to hear from you. Simply leave us your contact details below and we’ll get back to you very soon for a no-obligation chat.