Content is one of the most important pieces of your clinical trial’s overall marketing strategy. The creation and sharing of content are essential for the visibility, professionalism, and trustworthiness of your trial. With varying levels of health literacy among patients and a bombardment of information online, it is crucial for you to promote yourself in a way that is engaging, informative, approachable, and authoritative.
Google Trends is a valuable starting point to guide your content creation journey. This tool tracks the top searches and page clicks across the internet. With the information available right at your fingertips, you can tailor your content to fit what your prospective patients may be talking about, worried about, and interested in at any given moment. With these insights to shape your focus, the content that you put out should engage your audience in a way that shows that you are knowledgeable, trustworthy and accessible. Here are some content ideas to get you started:
Blog Topics
Google Trends is an excellent starting point to get the creative juices flowing before you dive into your content creation. Browse blog topics and categories to brainstorm how these can be turned into content opportunities for your own marketing strategy. Trending topics may not always entirely relate directly to your study but can still provide inspiration for adjacent topics for your own blog posts (and you may be covering something that nobody else has!).
Video
The utilization of video in digital content strategy has grown exponentially over recent years. In a 2018 Hubspot survey, 54 percent of people asked said they wanted to see more videos from the brands and businesses they follow. The people have spoken! Adding video to your clinical trial marketing content rotation can be a great way to increase engagement with your audience. Visit Google Trends to see examples and get some guidance. How long are most videos? What is the tone? What is the content being covered (and what is missing)? You have a story to tell, a voice to be heard, and an audience out there that wants to hear it.
Social Media
When creating your content calendar for social media, do not fear the blank spaces. View the days on which content is lacking as windows of opportunity. Check in with Google Trends and see what the most popular topics are at the moment. You can then craft your content for the day based on the trends that make sense and you can make work for you. Don’t forget to use those hashtags and make sure that you are connected to the conversation!
As you use Google Trends to create your of-the-moment content, try to also think ahead for the future. Try taking a trending topic of the moment and spinning it into an additional piece of content that is “evergreen” (content that will age well and stay relevant). You can do this by avoiding specific dates, news references, and getting bogged down in extreme detail. If your clinical trial gets extended and runs again, you can content ready to go that does not feel stale or outdated. Take advantage of your time on the site to set yourself up for future content success!