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Seven years ago, Hackensack Meridian Health was on content autopilot.
It's a story familiar to many marketers.
Some published a print magazine with the brand. Others sent newsletters with syndicated content that used medical sources not affiliated with New Jersey's largest health system. They had different names and aesthetics. There was no brand voice.
And they wanted to develop an online content hub – something I was tasked with doing when I took on the role in 2018.
Since then, Hackensack Meridian Health has consolidated its content under the HealthU brand, which includes a digital content hub, a quarterly print magazine and newsletter, social media and a podcast launched several years ago. The program was named Best Healthcare Content Marketing Program at the 2023 Content Marketing Awards.
I recently shared the behind-the-scenes story in the CMI webinar “Grow Up!” How to increase the maturity of your content and demonstrate ROI (registration required). Michelle Jackson, vice president of content strategy at GLC, our agency partner, joined me.
Here's a look at the factors that helped the content team develop the language and content strategy for Hackensack Meridian Health.
4 Elements of a Successful Content Marketing Program
As we transformed Hackensack Meridian Health from a content creation program to a fully implemented strategic content marketing effort, we incorporated four critical elements:
These elements allowed us to move from orderers (including, for example, in the newsletter) to strategic operators, ensuring that the content published has a strong connection to the brand's marketing priorities and helps drive people to our establishments .
Plan the content first and then select the channel and format
Our content strategy includes a content first, channel second approach. We stopped planning magazines, blogs, etc. Now let’s do content planning.
This is how it works. The Content Team:
- Identifies a search trend, such as interest in marathons.
- Plan the content – in this case an article about tips for marathon beginners.
- Identifies the corresponding channels.
- Interviews a subject matter expert (a doctor in our system).
- Creates an article for the content hub and produces a podcast episode from that information.
- Transforms the content into other assets (e.g. a social media graphic).
Sometimes we think a theme would work well just for social media or just in the content hub. We often use the audience's response to the digital content as a yardstick for the print magazine.
Let's say an article about how much weight someone needs to lose for weight loss surgery gets a big response online. We will integrate it into the print magazine and include a weight loss health risk assessment QR code that will take the reader back to our digital content.
However, HealthU's content goes beyond these channels. Other marketing teams in the organization can use it in their campaigns, whether it's a sponsored content opportunity in a local digital publication or an airborne banner with a CTA for HealthU sun protection tips over a crowded New Jersey beach (yes, that happened ). )
Work across teams for the success of your content strategy
Listening and collaboration are the essential ingredients for content program success.
With 36,000 employees across 18 hospitals and 500 patient care locations, you can expect many competing priorities. The content team supports the entire organization at Hackensack Meridian Health's network office.
We meet regularly with marketers who support individual locations and service lines. We meet with them monthly to discuss their primary, secondary and tertiary priorities for the next three months. They don’t come with content requests; They have strategic priorities and we determine how we can help them achieve those goals.
We also meet every two weeks to discuss the expected and necessary activities in the coming weeks in more detail. Are new doctors being hired? Do new programs need an increase in volume? Will there be new technologies that we could support?
In these meetings we really listen to understand what they are saying. We then take this information, research the relevant ideas, and develop appropriate angles and distribution channels to support these priorities.
For example, sleep medicine is a focus in our pediatrics. With this knowledge, we researched trending topics around sleep to understand what people wanted to know. We wanted the content to answer their questions, not just talk about what we think is important. There was a high volume of searches for using sleep gummies to promote better sleep in children, so we looked into the topic.
Offer a pitch form
But content ideas aren’t just limited to these meetings. We created a pitch form for members of the marketing communications team. They share the details of their idea, sources, and even media consent forms and photos when available.
Every pitch is reviewed. If we do not plan to pursue an idea, an automatically generated email will be sent containing a note as to why the topic was rejected. For example, a pitch was submitted to support a highly technical component of clinical research. We responded with the comment: “The topic doesn't fit into HealthU's consumer-friendly content strategy, but here are some other communication channels within the department that might help you achieve your goals.”
The pitch forms also help the content team identify recurring themes – internal current trends – that can inform future content planning. (To understand external trends, we use tools such as Google Trends and Answer The Public, which now include data from Bing and YouTube search engines in addition to Google.)
To manage all this content, requests, and production, we moved from huge spreadsheets to Airtable. It was a game-changer for us as we were able to track all ideas and content in a single database and automate steps such as individual responses to pitches. The digital dashboard is also accessible to all members of the marketing communications team, allowing them to update their stakeholders on content status at any time.
Show the impact
The fourth element of our successful content marketing program is about results. Ultimately, our ultimate goal is to encourage people to use Hackensack Meridian Health's services and see doctors in our network.
When planning the content, we also plan how to measure success. All results are summarized in a single, pre-built report. The department heads receive this report monthly. (We report to the C-Suite quarterly.)
In order to be able to assess the impact of the content, we have secured our own call center number. Every CTA contains the same phone number. This line receives approximately 3,000 calls each year.
We publish branded short URLs and QR codes in the magazine. We also conducted a reader survey and found that a third took action in response to HealthU content – make an appointment, use a service, sign up for a course, subscribe to the newsletter, etc.
The metrics also inform content strategy changes. Over a year ago, digital metrics suggested that our in-depth patient stories and team member spotlights weren't performing as well as other educational content. We have de-prioritized patient stories and given higher priority and visibility to educational pieces on trending topics and human interest stories that our physicians promote.
After these content changes, calls increased by 97%, referrals to physicians increased by 169%, and referrals for services increased by 61%.
Growing beyond a tactical approach
Seven years after tactical development, we still publish a magazine and newsletter. But now they are integrated parts of HealthU's strategy and embody the same voice and mission as Hackensack Meridian Health's digital content hub, podcast and other content.
We are a small team that also manages social media and web content – five full-time employees at Hackensack Meridian Health and GLC as our agency partner. But by collaborating with the other marketing communications teams and truly listening and responding to their priorities, HealthU delivers big results for the brand.
Please note: All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by the author. If you would like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.
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MORE EXAMPLES OF THE FINALISTS OF THE CONTENT MARKETING AWARD 2023
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
