How healthcare and SaaS companies can produce conversion-optimized content

Are you happy with the results of your company’s content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2023 research report, only 29% of B2B marketers rate their content marketing as very or extremely successful. The rest feel like their content marketing isn’t working or is only moderately successful.

Moreover, a different survey found that only 32% of B2B marketers are proud of most of their content. These marketers identify a number of barriers to producing good content, including a lack of agreement among stakeholders as to what constitutes quality content. In fact, only 14% of B2B marketers say their organization agrees on what good content is.

This particular barrier doesn’t surprise me because, as a freelancer, I get a peek into the operations of a variety of SaaS and healthtech companies — and very few of them seem to have an accurate idea of what makes content effective. These are the most common problems I see –

• Companies focus on keywords but not on actually producing content that their target audience would want to read.

• Companies have no defined content strategy; they are instead what I call “volume shops” that produce a lot of content, very little of which will actually convert readers into customers.

• Companies treat their content marketing as a free-for-all endeavor in which any and all senior professionals who have something to say get to write their idea as a blog post, no matter whether their idea will work in attracting leads.

Your SaaS or healthtech company can avoid these problems by developing an evidence-based strategy for producing quality, conversion-optimized content (that is, content that drives your readers to take a defined action, such as contacting you or scheduling a demo). Of course, developing a full strategy can take some time.

If you instead want a quick win, you can begin combining two strategies that data show are effective in converting readers into customers.

1. Target your audience’s pain

Many companies make a mistake in targeting keywords, rather than pain. Keywords may get you traffic, but traffic isn’t your goal. Your goal is sales, and to get sales, you need to target what your ideal customers are struggling with.

For example, let’s say you sell software that helps building managers lower their energy costs, and one of the pains/problems your customers have is high energy costs. 

Content that targets this pain would call out your customers, their pain, and make clear that you’re offering a solution. The title of your content might be this: “How facilities managers can lower their energy costs through energy management software.”

Compare that to an article that is merely targeting a keyword, such as “building energy costs”: “Survey shows that over 80% of facility managers struggle with building energy costs.”

This second article may get traffic, but the traffic won’t be from people who are laser focused on lowering their energy costs. The traffic for this survey article will instead be those who are merely curious about a survey; they have no buying intent. In contrast, the article on how facilities manager can lower their energy costs will attract people who are looking to solve that problem.

Another type of post that targets pain would be a post that follows the structure “best software for [accomplishing particular goal].” So, “Best software for managing building energy costs” would be the kind of post that would draw in someone who has the intent to find and purchase such software.

You can likely see, intuitively, why targeting pain points would lead to more conversions, but you don’t have to rely on intuition alone. The data bear out this point; take a look at this analysis, example.

2. Create an asset that includes multiple short videos

Once you’ve chosen a topic for your asset based on your audience’s pain, you should then make sure that the asset you create also includes videos. Videos significantly boost conversion rates as these statistics show.

Many companies resist producing videos because they think video production requires expensive vendors who create sophisticated videos that include custom graphics and music. But not all your videos need to have such high production values. For most content assets, your company can instead use Loom, which is free, to create simple demo videos between 10 and 60 seconds that show different aspects of your software. 

Loom allows you to record what is on your screen as you talk. As a result, all you need to produce a strong Loom video is someone within your company who has a decent speaking voice and can demo your features. You can see how easy it is to create a Loom video in the below short video:

For each feature of your software that you describe with words in a blog post or other piece of content, you should include a corresponding short video that shows the feature. 

For example, this blog post includes a video in the middle that helps the reader picture how Trello’s interface makes it easier to track work assignments.

Short demo videos within your content assets will build enthusiasm for your solutions that will make the sales process easier. In contrast, when you only describe your software feature in words and then make your customers schedule a demo to see more, your customers are likely to be annoyed that they had to agree to a sales call to finally see your software in action. 

Which party would you rather sell to: someone who has seen short demo videos, liked what they saw, and is excited to learn more, or someone who hasn’t seen anything yet and wonders if the call is going to be a waste of their time?

Find a writer who will help you craft a conversion-optimized piece of content

Want to create content that targets your ideal customers’ pain and presents them with short videos that show the features of your solution? 

I help companies do exactly that. In the below short video, I go over each step of my process.

The mistake most companies make in working with a freelance writer

If you’re like most companies, chances are you’re not getting the biggest value your freelance writers have to offer. Here’s the mistake many companies make: they use their freelance writers just for the writing. 

Don’t get me wrong: clear, compelling prose matters, of course, but it’s not the most important thing I do for my clients. The most valuable thing I and other freelance writers do for clients is help them brainstorm, choose, and shape their strongest possible content ideas. 

Instead of involving the writer in the idea-generation stage, many companies come up with their own ideas, which doesn’t always produce the strongest possible content. While companies can certainly generate strong content ideas on their own, in my experience working with many companies, they generate better ideas when they consult with an outside writer who can see their ideas and products with greater objectivity. An outside writer can also help a company more effectively frame their ideas to make them more attractive to readers. 

The next time you hire a freelance writer, make sure to schedule regular meetings to brainstorm and decide upon content ideas. 

If you’d like to learn more about how I work with companies to help them conceive their strongest possible ideas, please contact me.

The key to attracting readers to your content and getting them to click through

Even if your SaaS or health-tech company has a deep bench of marketing staff and content marketing managers, there is one area where I find even the most sophisticated marketing teams still struggle: coming up with strong ideas for content that will actually attract readers.

In some cases, the actual content idea a company generates is flawed, while other times the marketing staff frames the idea in a way that is not attractive to readers.

Whatever the case is, as an outsider and reader advocate, I have a perspective that enables me to generate strong ideas and frame them so that readers will actually read your content.

The principle I apply in doing so is quite simple: your ideas and your framing of them must offer something of value to a specific audience.

This may seem like obvious advice, but I find that the above approach isn’t how many companies come up with content ideas. Instead, they often start in one of these ways:

• We want to say . . .

• We need to get the message out that . . .

• Let’s position ourselves as thought leaders in this space by saying . . .

These approaches don’t put the reader first; they’re about what you want and not what the reader actually cares about, which is his or her problems.

Turning a bad content idea into a great one

As an example, imagine a health-tech company that wants to write about health equity and how their technology helps address it. The company frames their content headline this way:

• The Pursuit of Health Equity: How Technology Addresses Barriers to Care.

I’m sure you can see what’s wrong with this headline: it’s not talking to anyone. It’s not offering a specific reader something of value. It’s instead a bunch of abstract ideas, and it seems to be offering academic information, rather than help.

The reader doesn’t want mere information — they want information that will either solve their specific problems or enable them to achieve certain goals.

Now, it may be that the above hypothetical piece would contain information that the reader could apply to their situation. But we don’t want our readers having to make inferences or do the mental work of applying our ideas to their situations. We should be doing that work for them.

So, how might the above headline be re-written to attract a specific reader and offer that reader something of value? Here’s one possible way to re-write it:

• The Simple Approach Hospitals Can Take to Improve Access to Care

This headline is a step in the right direction, but we can still do better. Often, we strengthen a headline by making the value of the offer more specific.

For example, if the below is true, it would make the headline even more compelling to a reader:

• How Hospitals Can Reduce Costs, Increase Health Equity, and Improve Outcomes With One Simple Change

Some reader offers are stronger than others

In designing your content idea/offer to the reader, you should consider that strong offers are simple and easy to implement while bad offers involve a lot of steps and aggravation. For example, while the below headline is making an offer to the reader, it’s not a great offer:

• Seven Best Practices You Can Implement to Improve Health Equity at your Hospital

This headline is offering value, but what it’s describing sounds like it would be a pain. Which would you rather do to achieve a desired outcome? A seven-step process? Or one simple change?

Of course, as you work to craft better offers to readers, you’ll want to craft the strongest possible offer without misrepresenting your solution.

Need help coming up with and framing strong content ideas?

Feel free to contact me here if you’d like to learn more about my process for helping clients develop and frame a slate of compelling content ideas.

Key elements of a better approach to content marketing

You can do better.

When I survey the landscape of content marketing, I see a lot of dull content, conformity, and an absence of evidence for the current approach.

Admit it: you’re just doing what everyone else does when it comes to your approach to content marketing. You don’t really know whether it’s effective. You’re chasing keywords and SEO, mimicking the “challenge-solution-results” format of everyone else’s case studies, and basically following the standard content marketing playbook.

The problem with this conformity is that there’s no evidence this approach is the best way to do things. How do I know this? Well, according to a 2022 survey of B2B content marketers by the Content Marketing Institute, only 36% of you have a very good or excellent ability to demonstrate content marketing ROI.

If you’re not able to measure ROI, you have no evidence for whether what you’re doing is working. You’re just crowd following.

As you might guess then, the first step in building a better approach to content marketing is this:

Measure your ROI

An analytics platform that tells you page views isn’t enough. Page views don’t necessarily equal sales.

With all the potential channels your customers travel through and all the touchpoints they have with your content before they decide to contact you, you need a multi-touch revenue attribution model, like this one from Dreamdata. Something that can track the buyer journey, even if takes multiple years and multiple phone calls and demos.

As this article explains, this software will help you identify your most effective content and how much revenue it’s driving.

Take a look at what their platform can show you:

A screenshot of Dreamdata’s platform showing revenue information

Platforms like Dreamdata may be expensive, but they can help you prove the value of your efforts, which can help you advocate for a bigger budget.

Create content that delivers an experience

Once you can track how new content drives revenue, you can begin to experiment with your content. Rather than simply writing the same way every other B2B company does, you can write interactive, engaging pieces that show rather than tell.

Demo your SaaS platform in your content

If you’re a SaaS company, chances are you spend a lot of time in your current content telling your readers about your platform’s features and benefits. And if your prospect wants to actually see those features and benefits in action, they have to sign up for a demo or book a call.

But guess what? People don’t like to shop that way. Do you want the sales person bothering you when you’re trying out a couch in the showroom? Or looking at a car? No, you want to be left alone (at least to start), so that you can think by yourself and test things out. Then, once you think you like something, then you want to talk to sales.

SaaS customers are no different. They too want to be left alone too when they first try your solution out. They don’t want you looking over their shoulder or breathing down their metaphorical necks while they’re trying to explore your platform and see how it operates.

So, how you can let them test things out in your content, away from your interruptions?

While you may not want to go as far as letting them log into the site to play with dummy data, you can record short videos that show how particular features work within the platform. This at least allows the customer to see the platform in action.

Done-for-you service providers: tell customer stories that deliver vicarious experiences

If what you provide to your customer is not a platform but a done-for-you service, you can let your prospects experience working with you by instead relaying a story about another customer’s experience.

That customer story would also include photos and videos to illustrate key aspects of that customer’s experience.

The vicarious experience your prospects have by reading this story will help them decide whether you’re the right fit.

Make your content interactive and personalized

Photos and videos are a definite step in the right direction, but they still make for a passive reading experience. You could also create interactive assets that provide different information based on the reader’s responses to questions.

Perhaps, for example, you’re a SaaS company whose platform enables chatbots to operate on your customers’ website, and you have multiple types of customers, such as healthcare companies and financial institutions. You want your content to tell you healthcare prospects that you’re chatbots are HIPAA compliant, while you want to tell your banking prospects about some advantage of your chatbots that is especially relevant to banks.

If that’s the case, check out Ion Interactive’s ability to create choose-your-own-content ebooks that display different content based on your readers’ inputs to questions:

Don’t want to spend your marketing money on expensive marketing software?

If you don’t want to spend money on expensive tools like Ion Interactive or even on multi-touch attribution software, there is a fallback position. There is a special effect you can deploy for free.

It’s better writing. That’s right. If your content can’t be interactive and if you want to simply put something out there without measuring its relative contribution to ROI, you can still beat out the competition by producing content that makes for a more engaging read.

To do that, you need to give your freelancers latitude to structure your ideas into something compelling.

I can certainly help you do just that.

Feel free to fill out the below form and let me know what you’re after, whether it’s better writing, interactive content, clarity on your content’s ROI, or some combination of these things.

There are only two types of content — and you’re missing out on one of them

I bet you produce all kinds of content — blog posts, ebooks, case studies, and white papers. But rather than categorizing content in these ways, I find it’s more helpful to recognize that there are only two types of content:

• Content that delivers an argument

• Content that delivers an experience

Your problem is that you’re almost certainly only producing content that delivers an argument, even though your argument content comes in many forms (blog articles, case studies, etc.).

I know this because nearly all of the content I see on company websites delivers carefully reasoned, point-by-point arguments. Articles like “How to future-proof your data privacy policy” or “How to improve your healthcare outcomes collection” are making arguments on exactly how to accomplish specific goals, just as an article on “Why content marketing Is important” is making an argument about why you need to do content marketing.

Most so-called customer stories (aka case studies) are in fact arguments as well, although implicit ones. These case studies present a before-and-after portrait of a company and in effect make this argument: if you want results like these, you should work with us too.

Likewise, ebooks such as “Five trends to watch out for in data analytics in 2022” are really just arguing that you better pay attention to certain things if you want to succeed.

The problem with content that delivers an argument is that it provokes push-back. If you make an argument, your prospect’s analytical mind is engaged, and they start looking for weaknesses in your position. Do you really want your prospects in that state of mind?

Of course not. You want to disarm them. Get them to drop their defenses. And content that delivers an experience does that best. With this kind of content, the reader is not outside of the content, judging it; instead, they live the experience the content delivers. How do you create this kind of content?

It’s simple: you need to tell a story — one that involves specific people tackling specific challenges to achieve a specific happy ending. Moreover, you have to tell the story well. Starting with background information on a company “T-Mobile is a national telecommunications company with . . .” is not the way to open a story. Do you know any novel or movie that begins in such a dull way?

Every sentence needs to earn the reader’s interest in the next. When you start with such a boring sentence, you create the risk that the reader will click off the page.

Instead, imagine a story that began like this: “By the time local authorities began their search for the missing seven-year-old boy, he had already spent six hours lost in the freezing cold of the forest. With each passing minute, the boy’s chances of surviving went down. That’s why Utah State Forest Ranger Emily Davis knew that an ordinary search party would be an inadequate response. So, she . . .”

I bet this kind of opening not only engaged your emotions but left you wanting to know this information with the next sentence: so what did Emily do?

When you tell a story well, you enable your prospects to vicariously experience the protagonist’s challenges as well as how your solution helped them overcome those obstacles.

Content that delivers an experience helps your prospects actually feel what it’s like to work with you — and that is going to be far more powerful than even the strongest arguments.

Want a better idea of what experience content looks like? Take a look at this post to see how to craft a vicarious experience for your readers.