Content Strategy for a Healthcare Advertising Agency

/ B2B Marketing Strategy, Content Strategy, Content Writing, Social Media Strategy / By

Content Strategy for a Healthcare Advertising Agency

SPM Marketing Logo

SPM Marketing & Communications is a full-service advertising agency that specializes in the healthcare industry. Even with a great reputation from 30+ years in the business, SPM always looks for new ways to increase brand awareness and grow their client base. That’s why we built a comprehensive content marketing strategy to establish SPM as a thought leader in the healthcare marketing industry. This strategy included written content (e.g., blogs, whitepapers), social media, email marketing, PR, print, direct mail, and more.

Project Overview

Dates: 2014-2017
Strategy, Content Writer, Project Manager: Bre Bush
Designer: Internal

To focus efforts, we identified four core tenets of the SPM brand that drove the type of content we published:

  • Smart & Insightful (40%): Strategic marketing, research-driven insights, consumer insights
  • Creatively Driven (40%): Case studies, work examples, unique creative solutions
  • Approachable (10%): Collaborative, friendly/real, brand personality
  • Successful (10%): Awards, trade shows, client testimonials, results

The Solution:

  • Use content to reinforce our core brand tenets
  • Structure a calendar and plan for creating, organizing, and delivering content
  • Generate engagement by distributing across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.
  • Monitor, audit, and assess the effectiveness of digital and social media efforts; recommend optimization strategies across all channels
  • Optimize blog and website content for search and adhere to latest SEO best practices

Key Accomplishments:

  • Launched Twitter account
  • Researched and launched a new CRM system to support lead generation and management, including developing an email and marketing automation plan
  • Managed complete redesign of SPM website, including building the site in WordPress from scratch
  • Wrote entries that won numerous awards, including three “Best Places to Work” awards, 20+ creative awards, and the prestigious “Agency of the Year” award from Modern Healthcare

Creative Samples:

Core to SPM’s content marketing strategy is the company blog, The Vine, of which I was a frequent ghost writer, as well as thought leadership whitepapers called “Red Papers” (because SPM’s brand symbol is the tomato, hence the red!). This required me to constantly pivot voice—I’ve needed to be a strategist, creative, media expert, digital marketing specialist, and more—while keeping the SPM brand identity intact.

Here are some articles that I wrote for the SPM blog:

Here are a few samples of Red Papers:

Demystifying Healthcare Marketing ROI
SPM conducted a yearlong study to shed light on the impact of marketing communications in healthcare. I was responsible for packaging the results in a simple, easy-to-understand whitepaper. I started with statistical data and econometric models and ended up with what you see below.

A summary is available in this blog post.

The full report can be read here.

Turning Hospital CEOS into Brand Stewards
Written for the hospital and health system CEO audience, this whitepaper details why it’s important for CEOs to monitor, nurture, and champion their hospital/health system brand, especially in the face of rapid industry change.

For a quick summary, check out this blog post.

If you’d like to read the entire piece, you may do so here.

Results:

Website Traffic

  • 34% YOY increase in total website traffic
  • 59% YOY increase in total traffic to blog
  • 40% YOY increase in traffic to blog from social media platforms

Social Media Metrics

  • 61% increase in Facebook likes
  • 133% increase in LinkedIn followers
  • Built Twitter audience to 666 followers
  • 4,513 engagements (likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc.) in 2016

PR: 5+ articles contributed or interview appearances in industry publications

Skills Used: WordPress, Hatchbuck CRM, Google Analytics, Social Media Platform Insights, Buffer