Is Your Content Really Yours?
For healthcare businesses, especially smaller organizations with limited budgets, investing a lot of money in healthcare marketing is a luxury — often one that few can afford.
But every business no matter what its size or budget needs marketing in some capacity, right? What are these smaller or budget-constrained businesses to do?
Often, quite understandably, they will go with the cheapest options available, including things like templated website builders or purchasing off-the-shelf content.
As a self-funded, wholly bootstrapped agency that only very recently graduated from startup status, please know this: We get it.
Running a successful business is hard. Furthermore, running a successful business is incredibly expensive. When revenue is tight, you have to act creatively with the resources you can afford.
And while it might seem like a no-brainer to some that you should reconsider working with an agency that doesn’t provide custom websites or content, the reality is that many healthcare business owners aren’t aware that this is even an issue and don’t know to inquire about content and asset ownership until it’s too late.
Why Is Content Ownership An Issue? A Few Important Reasons.
You might get stuck
Unless you want to spend a lot of money and time rebuilding your website, content and other assets from scratch, your hands are pretty much tied to whomever you’re renting your content from.
Imagine that your website performance takes a nosedive or that your agency relationship isn’t fitting your needs anymore. In a world where you owned your content, you’d unravel the partnership and move on to greener pastures.
But in those situations where you’re renting your healthcare marketing assets, you really can’t take them with you, and all too often this forces businesses to stick with a solution that’s really become a problem — all while missing out on valuable traffic and leads.
Search engines might penalize you for using duplicate content
Google has been slowly making changes to its algorithm that rewards unique, helpful content and penalizes content that adds nothing new to the ecosystem of that specific topic.
As you can imagine, this can have a negative impact on your business if you’re renting off-the-shelf content from this type of agency.
The issue is that many of these agencies write a single piece of content and then post it on dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of websites with zero customization.
And it should come as no surprise that Google ain’t no dummy! They know when they’re dealing with duplicate content. They always know when they’re dealing with duplicate content. And even if the content is good (because many of these agencies really do good work!), it will not rank as highly as it could if it were custom written and posted in one place.
Not only are you investing in content and other healthcare marketing assets that don’t ultimately belong to you, you’re investing in assets that contain built-in hindrances to your potential overall success.
So, what can a business like yours do to get great content that you own and use it to get great results for your business?
Partner With A Great Healthcare Marketing Agency
Doing your due diligence when it comes to finding the right agency for your business is a must.
We always recommend that you invest in an agency who will build a custom website for your organization and create custom content for you that you 100% own and can take with you should you ever decide to sever that relationship for whatever reason.
Investing in relevant, useful custom content does a few things for your business’s brand:
- It reinforces your distinct voice and differentiates your business from the competition
- It speaks to the unique needs of your unique patient community
- It positions your business as an industry thought leader
- It gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site
- It gives you a better chance of high organic ranking
- It can help grow your business and help you achieve your financial goals
While finding an agency that creates and publishes custom content and other healthcare marketing assets is important, so is finding one that is transparent about what said content is doing for your business.
Look for an agency that is transparent with their website and content reporting. They should, at a minimum, be telling you what your content is doing to grow the business, but they should also provide ongoing insights on what you can do long-term to be more successful with your content strategy.
You deserve to know what’s working, what’s not working, and what you can do about it in order to improve performance and bring in more client opportunities.
Is Formada The Right Healthcare Marketing Agency For You?
Full transparency: We create custom websites. Custom content strategies, too. In fact, everything that we do is custom, because we believe that you’ll get the best results from your marketing when your campaigns and assets are created specifically for you.
And while there are many agencies out there that specialize in many of the same services we provide, we believe that no one delivers quite in the way that we do.
We’re a business that is dedicated to your business’s growth — to your unique idea of success.
That’s why off-the-shelf solutions, in our humble opinion, simply cannot create the same results that custom ones can.
We want to get to know every one of our clients so well that we feel like an extension of your team. This helps us create custom strategies that speak directly to your (and your customer’s) needs. You’ll get reporting that tells you what your investments are doing to push your business forward and actionable insights for additional opportunities for growth.
And one more thing before I wrap up: We don’t want to trap our clients in a relationship that is no longer working for them. We have zero desire to hold your content or your assets hostage.
Our goal is to make our relationship a successful one, one that lasts for the long haul, but we’re mature enough to understand that sometimes things simply change. Ready to learn more?