By John Lavey, CEO/President

One thing worth evaluating in your marketing is the degree to which you expect content to drive leads, and to what extent you view its role as brand support. While some companies rightfully invest in both, others are more confused in what they expect.

My perspective on content marketing (after close to 30 years in the business) is that we shifted about 15 years ago to a harder emphasis on content as a lead-generating tool. There were a couple of significant reasons

  1. The iPhone, which came out in 2007, changed everything. As adoption of this mobile content consumption device proliferated, we had entered a new era. We all saw the opportunity to push content to someone and then, as a result, see them purchase our products or services. We became interested in immediate gratification.
  2. The 2007–2008 financial crisis made marketing budgets evaporate. When content marketing budgets came back, they were often smaller amounts of investment, and marketers wanted to see successful results. The ability to tie those investments to sales became the coin of the realm
There’s nothing wrong at all with lead-generation content, but we lost the habit of, and emphasis on, creating high-quality content that didn’t have a CTA driving the audience to engage in a sales process. In general, we as healthcare marketers stopped creating content that positions our brand as an authority.

There is still a role in high-quality content to support your brand by delivering proprietary research, unique insights and distilling complexities to help your audience make sense of their challenges.

If you’d like to talk to someone about helping you with that kind of content … (Just kidding, no CTA on this one!)

Image: Getty Images

 



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