When Amanda Todorovich, content marketing director at Cleveland Clinic, spoke at Content Marketing World 2017, she shared some truths about her award-winning organization that resonate—no matter the industry you work in.
1. Your customers are your universe.
This is the center of Todorovich’s message and the core of what we do at Manifest. We get to know our diverse audiences and use those insights to create emotional, long-lasting connections for our clients.
Once you know your audience, Todorovich says to keep them at the forefront of everything you do. This means defining a strategy and sticking to it—saying “no” when you’re pressed to go off course.
2. You cannot create demand.
People are either sick or they’re well, Todorovich said of healthcare marketing’s top challenge. Physicians have a patient to refer or they don’t.
Knowing this, a healthcare marketer’s job is to provide consistent, credible information: building your brand, keeping your organization top of mind for the times when it is needed, and giving consumers the tools they need to stay healthy.
3. The SME time crunch is real.
If you’ve ever worked with a health system, you know that healthcare providers—physicians, scientists, nurses, dietitians, social workers, physical therapists, etc.—are very busy providing healthcare. Marketing tactics must adjust to this constraint, not the other way around. (And it’s OK. Everyone has to do it.)
4. Uniqueness is the key.
At Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, “every single thing we do is our own,” Todorovich said.
This should be true for all health systems—and brands. Your unique strength is your unique strength, so you can’t aggregate content. This dilutes your message and over time can corrode consumer trust, which is the foundation of health information.
5. Stay nimble on social.
See above, re: physician time crunch. Time constraints and the nature of the content mean it is mostly evergreen. But there’s always an opportunity to make what’s evergreen timely.
When news breaks, deploying new teaser copy, a new lede and new social images turns previously published evergreen content into relevant information again. This not only serves your audience, but it also helps extend the shelf life of content, improving the ROI per piece.
(Just ensure that each distribution channel for this content has its own audience and voice in mind.)
6. Sharing stories has an impact.
When working with a professional audience (in this case, physicians and scientists), remember that professionals are people, too. And people like stories.
Case in point: Todorovich’s team shares small stories and wins—the things that get the marketing team excited—with Cleveland Clinic’s leadership. Storytelling to stakeholders has proved more effective than delivering in-depth monthly reports. (After all, healthcare is all about people.)
Balancing stories and data has been key for Manifest’s healthcare clients, too.
7. Data should drive.
Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials operates like a newsroom, with content creators reviewing the data daily. Through testing, the team has homed in on what works and what doesn’t—with data to back every move. We couldn’t agree with this perspective more.