How Good Are Your Content Marketing Analytics, Really?

Healthcare IT is a complex market to infiltrate and to succeed in. As a player in this space, whether you're a general facilitator or a direct contributor, you need to make sure you are putting the right content in front of the right people to drive results.

How often do you consider if your current content strategy is producing the best results possible?

Successful content marketing for Healthcare IT isn't something you set and forget. In order to ensure your marketing efforts are reaching the right audiences and educating leads with impactful information you should investigate your current content marketing analytics and strategy.

Evaluate Your Baseline

Consider: Are you harnessing your data or getting lost in it?

If your marketing efforts are consistently and measurably meeting or exceeding your goals... excellent! Keep doing what you're doing, and document what's working and why.

On the other hand, if your marketing efforts aren't performing the way you want them to, then you need to conduct a critical analysis of your current state to identify the points of failure in either the strategy or the execution. You want to make sure you aren't proliferating the same mistakes in how you structure, execute and evaluate your marketing efforts.

So, start by analyzing your baseline data.

• Who is in your database?
• How long have they been there?
• What content do they interact with — if any?
• What type of companies do they work for and with?
• What percentage of them would you consider ideal buyers?

Starting with the scope of your audience will inform the limits your marketing efforts are coming up against. Remember to assess and remove outliers from your analysis. Clickbait content that is not relevant to your buyers is an example of this. If there is a spike in views on a post that isn't relevant to your buyers and their pain points, then it might be important to root it out of the analysis.

That's not to say that having fun or creating broadly appealing content to stir up buzz and engagement is a negative thing, but rather that success in such content assets is in the engagement itself. For a content strategy that moves buyers forward, you want to focus on data from content designed to drive that movement.

A tepid response to your content is an indication that either your targeting criteria isn't setting you up to resonate, or that your content quality is compromising your effectiveness in engaging your audience. Another red flag is if you need to consistently buy new contact lists because your current database has churned, opted out, or gone cold. In such scenarios, more contacts, or more leads, may actually only mean more fuel added to the fire!

The root of the problem again comes down to your core criteria — you may be targeting the wrong people, it may be the wrong message, or you may not have an effective sales follow up process. Whatever the scenario may be, a lack of engagement and results indicates your formula for success is incomplete or inaccurate. Until you flush out what does work via analytics and measurable successes, your assumptions, and even your perspectives on your content data and analytics will lead you astray.

Aggregating baseline information on open observations with minimal assumptions (documenting what's happening objectively vs. what you want to happen) will inform what works in your strategy, and where it needs to be further refined over time.

Pivot to Improve

Once you've organized your database and identified the bounds of your audience, analyze the topics that are resonating, be it on your website or at events. Look at lead capture information from gated content and what topics your audience is engaging with most. This will give you insight into what topics align with their pain points, their search queries and their motives.

In other words, don't change course until you have enough data and insight on content performance to know if the current course is correct or not. Sometimes, it takes longer than expected for the right strategy to take hold, other times a negative response is so strong you know it's a dead end. Data should tell you, not gut-feel alone.

Revamping your content marketing efforts can manifest in different ways including:

• Tapping into market whitespace (previously unknown segments).
• Exploring new content types (videos, whitepapers, podcasts, etc.).
• Using subject matter experts to increase content relevance and quality.

Your content analytics are most effective when they help you identify your solid places to stand on, and the levers to pull, so reach into the gaps and the opportunities for improvement to start seeing better results from your content strategy.

You need to use content marketing analytics to unlock the right insights for your clients or organization. Be an agent for change and expand the audience you are marketing to and build trust in a wider market with Healthcare IT content that is targeted, specific and that drives conversions.

For more research on Healthcare Information and Technology content marketing best practices, download our latest ebook: 7 Research-Backed Best Practices for Healthcare IT Content Marketing.