Building Trust in Health: Promoting Healthcare Services Without Compromising Credibility

Have you ever skipped doctor’s appointments because your concerns weren’t being heard? These experiences contribute to patient-provider distrust— a major problem healthcare is facing today. 

This distrust discourages patients from seeking care and makes them less responsive to healthcare marketing. To combat this issue, companies should use nurse writers to educate apprehensive consumers and promote healthcare services without compromising credibility.

In this blog post, we review the basics of healthcare marketing and explore why you should choose nurses to write your healthcare content. We also give tips on how to include them in your marketing strategy. 

What Is Healthcare Marketing?

Healthcare marketing describes strategies to engage consumers with health services and products. This marketing differs from others in many ways, including the following: 

• Marketing Platform: Healthcare marketing heavily relies on the Internet with 44% of marketing costs used to reach tech-savvy consumers on online platforms. 
• Products and Services: This type of marketing advertises products and services that are difficult to understand. Without skilled translation by healthcare experts, consumers would have trouble grasping concepts like the use of a surgical device.
• Beneficiaries: Marketing strategies may not target the person who benefits from a health product or service. For example, a joint prosthetic campaign urges physicians to use the product, but patients ultimately benefit.

Benefits of Healthcare Marketing

Through effective healthcare marketing, companies aim to increase sales of products and services. However, marketing agencies cannot accomplish this goal without quality content.

Quality healthcare content describes engaging writing that explains health topics in plain language for readers. 

Trustworthy writers use expert health knowledge, evidence-based research, and concepts like search engine optimization (SEO) —a term for strategies that increase web page rankings—to create reliable content that consumers can easily find.

Quality healthcare content offers the following benefits to both consumers and companies alike: 

• Building Sustainable Relationships: By providing consumers with useful and reliable content, companies create a loyal audience to boost site traffic and product sales. In this relationship, consumers offer companies website engagement in exchange for learning opportunities.

• Improving Quality of Care: This information increases consumers’ health awareness, allowing them to become more involved in care. Further, it influences them to form “positive mindsets” and alter health behaviors, ultimately improving health outcomes (Cohen et al., 2021). 

Building Consumer Trust with Nurses’ Credibility

Despite healthcare marketing’s potential to improve consumer wellness and business metrics, companies cannot realize these benefits without a receptive audience. 

Misinformation and negative experiences with health providers—especially in minority communities— make marketing healthcare services difficult. However, companies should not let these issues deter them. By educating consumers and valuing their input, businesses can restore this trust to succeed in marketing. 

Who better to achieve this goal than nurses? Seen as the “most trusted profession” by the public, consumers view nurses as credible sources of information for good reason. 

Nurses are skilled in the following:

• Evaluating research for relevance and credibility
• Disregarding misinformation
• Presenting concepts for non-academic people to understand 
• Assessing patients’ holistic needs to ensure treatment success 

In marketing, nurses use these skills to establish trust and promote services in ways other writers cannot. Drawing from previous patient experiences, nurses assess consumers holistically to gain valuable insights into audiences’ needs. Then, they use this info to produce tailored content that forms long-lasting connections with readers. Besides this talent, nurses also pick up on new concepts quickly. This capability allows them to easily integrate additional marketing strategies like SEO into their practice. 

Overall, these qualities make nurses vital to the transformation of healthcare marketing. With leadership and consumer engagement expertise, nurses guide companies to reach previously untapped audiences and increase their return on marketing investment (ROMI). They also empower consumers to ensure the quality of their care and form long-standing relationships with healthcare companies.

How to Hire Nurses for Your Business

After hearing about how nurses can improve marketing, you’re probably asking, “How can I work with a nurse?” Well, look no further than the Internet to find nurses well-versed in health content creation. 

Healthcare marketing agencies like Write RN employ expert nurse writers to produce health content that drives real results on consumer traffic. They also offer content strategy and social media coaching to improve brand awareness. 

With 150+ RN and NP writers, Write RN is well-prepared to serve clients from companies like Pfizer to your small mom-and-pop shop and every size enterprise in between. So, start improving rapport with consumers and elevate your marketing strategy today by hiring a nurse writer. Your audience and business will thank you!

References

Pavlik, V. (2022, December 5). What is SEO? Meaning, examples & how to optimize your site. Semrush Blog. https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-seo/

Porter, M. E., & Lee, T. H. (2013, October). The strategy that will fix healthcare. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/10/the-strategy-that-will-fix-health-care

Purcarea, V. L. (2019). The impact of marketing strategies in healthcare systems. Journal of Medicine and Life, 12(2), 93–96. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6685306/

Read, L., Korenda, L., & Nelson, H. (2021, August 5). Rebuilding trust in healthcare. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/health-care/trust-in-health-care-system.html 

Roth-Cohen, O., Levy, S., & Zigdon, A. (2021). The mediated role of credibility on information sources and patient awareness toward patient rights. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(16), 8628. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8392652/

Semrush Team. (2023, September 25). Business metrics: What they are & 20 you should track. Semrush blog. https://www.semrush.com/blog/business-metrics/?

WebMD Ignite. (2023, February 13). Healthcare marketing FAQ. Retrieved December 8, 2023, from https://webmdignite.com/faq/what-is-healthcare-marketing

Yale School of Nursing. (2022, February 7). Gallup: Nurses are the most trusted profession for the 20th year straight. Retrieved December 9, 2023 from https://nursing.yale.edu/news/gallup-nurses-are-most-trusted-profession-20th-straight-year