Attract New Patients: 7 Step Content Marketing System

Grow Your Clinic With Content Marketing

We know that many private practice clinic owners have not implemented a content marketing system that allows them to frequently deliver high quality content, and so they often fall short in their ability to attract the right type and volume of new patients.

It’s hard enough trying to create and then implement quality systems around some of the fundamental clinic operations, let alone get time for producing quality marketing.

We’ve previously spoken about the value of having a content marketing system as part of your patient attraction strategy, so now we’re going to outline how to implement the system.

Marketing doesn’t have to be scary, ambiguous or difficult if you take what you learn and put it into some simple, repeatable steps.

I know you didn’t get taught content marketing at University, but you did decided to go into business, so you must get up to speed if you want to Grow Your Clinic.

In this article we are going to outline the content marketing system we have shared with 100’s of private practice owners and delivered (done-for-you) as part of our Business Academy to help you attract more of your ideal patients and fill your appointment books.

7 Step Content Marketing System

You’re going to have to work hard and earn the right to get your audience’s attention, and once you have got it, then you need to deliver value for them!

So let’s jump into how we can create world-class content marketing system.

The absolute value for you in this blog is when you capture what we’ve got here and create a system.

Step 1 of 7: Capture Your Content Marketing Topics

In order for you to create content that is valuable it needs to be relevant.

You need to capture and identify the most important and relevant needs of your clients from channels like these:

Sources For Content Ideas

1. Your New Patient Enquiry System

   1. Every time a new client enquires, record their questions, concerns, objections and use that to help guide your content and also your scripting on the front desk.

2. Your Appointment Conversations

   1. If you have general questions from your patients during their appointments e.g. what are the best shoes to buy… then you need to record those

3. Your Continuing Professional Development Sessions

   1. It’s likely you do training with your team about different conditions, techniques, innovations etc in your profession, so why not collate those topics for content.

4. Reverse Engineer your Ideal Patient

   1. What does your ideal patient want or need to know to improve their life?! That should also guide what you publish on. Brainstorm a list of ideas.

5. Google Keyword planner

   1. Use the Google Key Word Planner to identify the most common search terms, phrases, conditions etc of your prospective clients and publish on that.

6. News Hacking

   1. Use recent news online, media outlets etc that are topic for your industry and publish on your area of expertise.

7. Guest Editors & Contributors

   1. Get other people and businesses who have a connection to your ideal client to do the content for you on your blog
      e.g. Professional referral partners so that you can promote them to your clients, like chiros, physios, massage therapists, osteos, nutritionists, sports coaches
      e.g. Complimentary businesses like travel agent, shoe store, bike shop, athletic shop, outdoors business, health studios like pilates, yoga, health shops etc
      e.g. University students who want observations/work experience/placement/projects – don’t have to be local…thinking freelancer especially honours students etc they want exposure and experience, get them to document their learning with you or at university and use it as content.

8. Online & Email Communications

   1. Look at your FAQ on your social media sites and questions you receive through email and use your replies to form the foundation of what you do.

Content Capturing

Amongst all of the great ideas you identify, you’ll need a structured way to collate your content marketing topics.

We use a simple online spreadsheet (google sheet) so that all team members can access and populate each week.

You’ll find this spreadsheet inside the Business Academy portal if you are a member.

However, to give you and idea, we have multiple tabs (sheets) within the spreadsheet, each dedicated to a specific cluster or theme of content topics.

e.g. Sheet Name / theme = Client Experiences

E.g. Topic within the Client Experience themed sheet = What to expect at your first physiotherapy appointment

You’ll also see a tab (sheet) specifically outlining where to distribute the content once its published. It also highlights how the content could be repurposed or evolve into micro content.

You’ll find it best to have a trigger in place to help automate how and when you update and populate your entire spreadsheet.

Ideally you should update your sheet at least once per week.

Step 2 of 7: Create Your Content Marketing

Once you have some topics to publish on, it’s time to create the content.

You’ll be best served to prioritise the most important and sought after content – you might use a traffic light system to identify what’s next (as seen above).

Feel free to choose the order and progress of the macro and then micro content you publish… here’s a suggested flow.

• Professional Development Notes

  1. then become…

• Patient Resources and Handouts

  1. which become…

• Blog on Your Website

  • then it becomes…

• Video Script / Video delivery framework

  • which becomes…

• Images, meme or Infographics

  • so on and so forth…

If you are short on time or low on people who can help you, it’s best to leverage the work you are already doing, just like the suggested flow above.

Step 3 of 7: Optimise Your Content

For written content going on the Blog of your website, you should use a plugin like Yoast to help offer optimisation suggestions.

Yoast is a very simple traffic light system which provides live feedback on the readability and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) score of your post.

In combination with a plugin like Yoast, we also suggest that you use your own checklist of what you need to get right to optimise your content.

Remember, you want to consistently deliver high quality content, that means you must have a system and checklist to maintain the standard.

You might be able to use a simple spreadsheet (google sheet) just like we provide our Business Academy Members with.

Each new Tab/Sheet is dedicated to a specific section of a blog.

Every new line item in each of the sheet is dedicated to a specific component that needs to be included and optimised within the blog.

One each line item is included and optimised it gets marked as ‘Yes’ and the default Red Cell with the word No, then Changes to Green. So, it’s a simple visual reference.

Step 4 of 7: Distribute Your Content Marketing

In a previous article where we talked about Filling Your Appointment Books using Internal Strategies, I shared this question, which is also applicable now;

“Where can you get access to your ideal client in their greatest concentration, where they are in a state ready, willing and able ‘buy’ from you, with the least risk, lowest aggravation and best return on investment of your time, effort and money”. 

You’ll want to take this into consideration when distributing your content. You need to go where the eyes and ears of your ideal clients are.

As Gary Vee Says, “go where the attention is.”

You’ll want to identify where each piece of content can be shared or distributed once it is published e.g:

• Facebook Page & Groups

• Instagram Channel & Stories

• Linkedin

• Pinterest

• Your Email Database

• Print, News, Magazines or Local Media

It’s likely you’ll have a number of channels (perhaps some different ones from above also) that you’ll include in the distribution section of your content marketing system.

Step 5 of 7: Tracking Your Content Marketing System

I mentioned before that you can create pieces of micro (smaller) content from your primary or macro (bigger, more detailed) content.

What this allows you to do is repurpose, leverage and perpetuate the work you did to share you wisdom and insights in the primary macro content.

If you want this to happen then you are going to need to track what content has been published and where it has been published.

Again, we use the same spreadsheet (just use a different Tab/Sheet called ‘Distribution’) as the one before (see below)

For instance, you might have the following ‘chunking down’ and distribution of your Macro to Micro content as the example below:

• Blog on Your Website

  • Gets shared on Facebook Page & Groups, plus LinkedIn etc
  • then it becomes…

• Script for YouTube Video

  • which becomes…

• Facebook Live Video Framework

  • then it becomes…

• Instagram Image Post & Story

  • which becomes…

• Pinterest Infographic

  • So on and so forth

You’ll need to colour code the individual cells in the sheet to easily show how that one primary piece of content was repurposed and distributed across multiple platforms.

Step 6 of 7: Analyse Your Results

Once you have distributed your content, you then need to check on how it is performing.

There will be page or post analytics on each of the online platforms that you share you content to.

For instance there is Google Analytics (example below) for your website, Facebook Page Manager Insights, YouTube Channel Reports etc

Step 7 of 7: Take Massive Renewed Action

From here, you simply need to see what’s been popular and then find a way to expand on that topic by going deeper or wider in that area.

You’ll also get some valuable insights from the feedback in the comments and engagement online.

Make sure you capture this feedback and add it back into your content creation spreadsheet so that you can expand more at a later date.

The famous saying, “Give the people what they want” is so true when it comes to reviewing how your content is performing and taking Massive Renewed Action to provide even more value for your community.

Remember to always think and create for what your ideal client wants, needs and desires!

Conclusion

If you want to attract more of your ideal clients to grow your clinic, you must be good at marketing.

Content Marketing requires absolute commitment because it demands time and effort, you’re playing the long game, however, it’s well worth it.

Im going to assume you’re not planning to be in business for 5 minutes, so we must also think about the long term strategies as well as the short term strategies we use to grow your clinic.

You need to have a mixture of marketing strategies being used at once, you don’t want to put all of the eggs in one basket!

Using a content marketing system will allow you to provide great value to your community on a consistent basis over a long period of time.

You’ll position yourself as the GO TO health professional.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be difficult or ambiguous if you are documenting the steps and have the systems, tracking and accountability in place.

If you want to access all of these done for you content marketing systems, then reach out to use because our Business Academy might just be what you need to take your clinic to the next level.

Until Next Time;
Live with Passion & Serve with Care