Content marketing is hands down the most cost-effective, long-term way for health companies to build trust, grow authority, and drive conversions.
In a world where customer acquisition costs are soaring and paid advertising becomes increasingly uncertain, investing in quality content helps you reach where your customers are at, stay top-of-mind, and convert them when the time is right.
This guide breaks down why content works, how you should prioritize quality over quantity, and the ROI you can expect when you go all in.
Healthcare Marketing is Harder Than Ever
It’s getting increasingly more expensive to acquire new customers in healthcare. The average customer acquisition cost (CAC) across healthcare keeps growing, and the competition keeps intensifying.
Plus, platform changes are also forcing marketers to rethink their strategies. Advertisers fled Twitter (now X) in 2023, Google U-turned on third-party cookies in 2024, and Meta removed advertisers' ability to exclude audiences in mid-2024 after already removing certain targeting options in 2022. Worse, Meta announced they’re increasing data restrictions explicitly for health websites. This move just went into effect.
I like paid advertising just fine. But it’s never been more challenging for marketers to predict how their marketing efforts will pay off—especially if they rely mostly on one channel.
To me, the best answer to diversifying that overreliance on paid—especially with more uncertainty there than ever—is leveraging marketing to build trust, stay top-of-mind, and convert when the time is right for them. My favorite way to do this? Spoiler alert: It’s content.
In my years of building health companies and working with countless others, quality organic content marketing repeatedly proves it’s the most cost-effective way to start a relationship with and ultimately convert customers.
When done right, this underrated marketing strategy tends to over-deliver—driving engagement, building brand authority, and growing overall awareness. Whenever any health company finally gets true multi-touch attribution live, they realize how almost every conversion comes from interactions with content down the funnel. Plus, the data proves it: Conversion rates are 6X higher for companies that use content marketing versus those that don’t.
If you’re a healthcare marketer (or trying to grow a health company yourself), this explainer identifies all the things you can gain by prioritizing content in your marketing strategy—and how to succeed at it, too.
Your Customers Are Searching—Are You Answering?
Today’s consumers use the Internet more than anywhere to find answers, especially regarding their health. About 7% of Google's daily searches are health-related, churning 70,000 health-related searches every minute.
Millennials are especially using Dr. Google for their health queries, with nearly seven in 10 (69%) saying they search Google for health or medical advice versus going to the doctor—and a quarter (24%) trust Google to accurately diagnose their symptoms.
More and more people (including me!) are also "searching" on GenAI solutions like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. Even Google now offers an "AI Overview" (AIO) on many searches. But despite GenAI’s rise, organic search remains the top traffic source for all sites and can transform a business (if done right). Marketing is ultimately about identifying your target customers and reaching them where they are—on the Internet (and mostly on Google).
Just look at this privately owned local dental practice whose content contributed to their £3.5M in annual revenue and 24x increase in customers. They note how using inbound-driven content brought in qualified customers—sometimes netting 25 leads a day.
Or check out Midi, a digital-first menopause & perimenopause provider. Their traffic grew 400% in 2024, and they reached 5M+ Google impressions (and saw best-in-class conversion to booked appointments) thanks primarily to a high-quality content strategy implemented with Healthyish (my agency).
So why do only 37% of DTC content marketers and 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy? Because it takes nerve to commit to content marketing (and the proverbial balls to do it right instead of just doing what everyone else does).
Yes, paid acquisition is the best lever to turn on or off when you need to hit numbers or cut costs. Yet, its pay-to-play nature makes it a gamble, reducing your differentiation and leaving your business deeply vulnerable to any number of outside forces (the economy, competition, seasonality, unexpected global events, platform changes, TikTok bans—you name it 😬).
While solid in the short term, paid acquisition fails to deliver on long-term value. When it’s off, it’s off off. Content can help you counterbalance the risk—and build trusting, lasting relationships.
Why Content Marketing Is The Best Answer
Now, investing in content is very different from other marketing channels.
For DTC brands, content serves to educate patients about their conditions and available options, empowering them to make informed decisions.
For B2B brands, content is about getting expert and data-driven insights in front of decision-makers, answering their questions with deep evidence about what you do—and why you do it best.
While the audiences differ, both approaches ultimately target individual decision-makers and deliver lasting value in an industry where trust and expertise are everything. And when you constantly provide value through content, that can lead to:
Increased brand affinity and awareness
Improved brand perception & authority
Clearer product value proposition
Deeper engagement (and retention)
More links, more traffic, and more growth
Repurposed content across other channels
Diversified acquisition sources
Capturing latent demand (and not losing interest)
And, above all, drive conversion and improve conversion rates
That’s a lot of bullet points! Customers actively seek reliable, expert-backed answers to personal health concerns, and high-quality content positions health brands as a trusted authority.
The more you publish great content, the more you effectively create an annuity—a baseline of conversions and traffic accumulating over time. Search traffic to evergreen health content typically doesn't go away if done right (and if updated every 6-12 months, as needed). That means acquiring more customers without even trying (or much spending)!
Plus, (yes, there's more) content can generate 10–20 additional assets, like stats or infographics for newsletters and social media, maximizing impact—with minimal extra effort. Repurposing FTW.
How To Succeed With Content Marketing
The good news is that tons of healthcare marketers see the value in content, with 50% reporting seeing content as the top opportunity for growth.
The bad news is that it leads many health brands to realize they need a blog… so they hire someone meh or some middling agency to generate a bunch of BS. They publish loosely keyword-driven, basic length, and just mid content that's never going to be better than what's already out there—and publish tons of it. 🤦 This strategy rarely, if ever, works.
In my experience, content online today only succeeds if it's quality. Otherwise, it'll never outrank the competition, be engaged with, or lead to increased trust. People will bounce. And it won’t satisfy Mr. Google, which explicitly applies stricter standards to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content.
In fact, if there’s any space where quality, expert-approved, best-in-class content is critical—it’s health. Google says content is successful when it most demonstrates E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). That’s why successful health content tends to have experienced writers citing scientific studies and have expert/medical approvals.
Plus, thanks to GenAI, there’s now an even bigger emphasis on writing and publishing high-quality, authoritative content. It’s impossible to compete otherwise.
So, what works at a time when the stakes are high and most answers are weak? The content I’ve seen work like gangbusters for health companies is something I call the “best answer on the Internet” for your very specific audience or customer.
Publishing The Best Answer on the Internet
Best answer-style content is science-backed, expert-approved, and visually engaging—and it will help you build authority. These are often called “Explainers.” (Like this one!) Your audience loves this content (and so do search engines).
Of course, many health companies have gotten wind of this approach. So, to skate to where the puck is going (and not just try to keep up and fall behind), each article should be:
More comprehensive and exhaustive in terms of coverage. This typically means:
Articles are longer (but not for the sake of length)
Articles cover all the aspects that matter (much often not uncovered by SEO, but instead through experience)
Every fact cited by a scientific study
Every article is approved by at least one and ideally 2+ experts
More interesting and engaging to read. This can include:
Strong voice and tone
Shareable & compelling graphics
Expert & influential voice quotes
Patient/customer stories
Hyper relevant external social media posts
Optimized article layout (whitespace, bullet points, callouts, etc.) .
More unique and differentiated—think something only your brand and company can do that only you can and play to your strengths. This can include:
Relevant testimonials & reviews from your patients/customers (videos, ideally!)
Relevant modules that drive value to readers– think calculators, quizzes, etc.
Your brand voice, tone, and personality
Your company’s experts are featured as the medical/expert approvers
Your company’s video/social media content embedded
Articles that hit all three boxes are something I call “tentpoles.” Check those boxes, and you’ll see more and more traction–traffic, links, engagement, and conversion.
Of course, there are many other article types beyond Explainer tentpoles. There are ego-bait articles to generate more links, listicles to generate engagement, step-by-step guides, plans and programs, etc. For now, we’ll continue to focus on Explainers since they should be the bulk of any modern health content marketing strategy.
The Cost Of Quality Content
Another benefit to content is that, quite frankly, it's cheap. At least relatively, content marketing campaigns are 62% less expensive to launch and maintain than other campaigns. You'll spend much less on content than you would on paid acquisition—and profit from annuity—if you do it right!
How much content will cost you depends on where you source it. You typically have two options:
Build an internal team of full-time and/or contract folks.
Work with a specialized health content agency (like Healthyish Content, my agency).
Either way, the team typically includes:
Editorial Lead: This is the most critical role to have–and the first to move in-house if that’s your plan. The Editorial Lead is usually someone with deep health content experience and expertise whose primary function is managing the process of publishing from planning to execution.
SEO Support: Your SEO support is critical in deciding which topics to cover (including keyword research), generating SEO-driven outlines and article briefs, and tracking and reporting on performance. Their work helps keep your content competitive and drives sustainable traffic growth.
Writers: There are a lot of freelance writers out there, but finding great ones is very tough. You want a writer who can blend rigorous research and expert-approved information while presenting it all in an engaging, reader-friendly way. You also want them to know how to align with your brand voice and collaborate well with designers, editors, and, well, you!
Designer(s): Finally, no great content is complete without visuals. The designer translates content into shareable, attention-grabbing designs that elevate the user experience and complement the written content while also meeting strategic goals, like improving SEO and making informative content visually compelling across platforms.
Not only do these people need to be great, but they also need to be familiar enough with the healthcare space to be able to dive in and understand your specialty or niche. They don’t have to be experts yet! But they do need to get there—and get there fast.
Expect budgets to vary based on the size and stage of your company. I publish an invite-only monthly Healthyish Opportunities newsletter that reaches 100s of the top health content and marketing talent (apply here if interested in joining), and, in my experience, you should expect to pay somewhere between $1-5K per article (depending on how long, how many graphics and expert approvals, and how good the team is).
If you’re looking to, say, publish 5 truly best-in-class articles per month, that’ll likely cost you $15-20K/mo. If you’re looking to publish 5 good enough articles (not recommended), that’ll likely cost you $5-10K/mo. Yes, you can publish shit content for cheaper—of course—or even essentially free with gen AI (again, not recommended).
Typically, the more articles you publish, the less each article will be (assuming you’re working with the same folks who are willing to charge less for volume and consistency). Agencies will always be a little more expensive (they’re managing the resources, not you!)—especially premium ones. My experience is that prioritizing quantity never works. 5 quality articles per month can deliver on every goal. Quality > quantity. Always.
What Quality Content Looks Like In The Wild
Let’s look at some examples of quality content in the wild and what makes it great. (Disclaimer: Each article was created by my agency, Healthyish Content).
What works:
Quote from an influential voice
Shareable, visually engaging infographics
YouTube video featuring the Chief Clinical Officer
Easy-to-read layout with bullet points and indents
Carousel featuring patient testimonials
Embedded TikToks from influential creators
What works:
Expert-approved by one of the most famous surgeons in the space (plus Commons physician with clear CTAs to book an appointment)
On-brand visuals & infographics
7 actionable questions to ask your physician (a “listicle” in the article!)
Actual patient testimonial video
What works:
Quotes from leading professor on food insecurity
Valuable perspectives & advanced tips from the company's SNAP expert
Detailed history of the program
Step-by-step application guide
What works:
Branded header image & visuals
Medical review by two medical experts
Bristol Stool Scale infographic
Actionable list of questions to ask at the first appointment
Detailed FAQ
Metrics To Measure Your Content’s Success
Okay, so you’ve written and published best-in-class tentpole content. Now, tracking your key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you know what’s working—and what’s not.
For on-page metrics that matter (using Google Analytics or HIPAA-compliant internal dashboards in Looker, Mixpanel, etc.), I track:
Conversion rate: The percentage of users who take desired actions (scheduling an appointment, booking a sales call, etc.) after consuming content. 0.1-0.5% is fine, but I’ve seen averages of 1-2% and articles with 4-5% even.
Time on page: How long users engage with your content. This is my favorite proxy for quality. Typically, a 1+ minute average is best-in-class, though I’ve seen 2-4 minutes depending on the content type.
Scroll depth: How much of your content a user views. This is my backup if time on page is hard to measure. Obviously you want the average to be 50%+.
Total traffic from Google/Search: The number of views your content pages are getting.
Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.
For off-page metrics that matter, I track (mostly using Ahrefs or Semrush and Google Search Console):
Total clicks (in Google)
Total impressions (in Google)
Domain authority
New & total backlinks (especially from 50+ authority domains)
New & total keyword rankings (especially in Top 3, 4-10, and 11-20)
Keyword position changes (especially over the past 14 days)
It’s also important to track (and occasionally audit) the technical SEO of your site, which can include broken links, redirecting lower quality links, and generally fixing/optimizing the site for Google. (We do this at Healthyish Content, too—SEO is critical to any content marketing plan.)
Start Investing In Content Today
Converting health patients and customers has never been easy, but quality content is an effective way to make it easier.
Long-term, it does take resources, time, patience, and some chutzpah to pay off in organic content. Usually, it takes 3-6 months to see the needle really move. (And 1+ years to blow up.)
But I've never seen doing it right fail. Especially recently (with Google, again, working hard to battle mid/low-quality AI-generated or AI-supported content), it’s never been faster for “Best Answer on the Internet”-quality content to click… sometimes even before generating links!
Assuming some baseline domain authority and great product-market fit, you should be able to compete on nearly every keyword as long as you do it right.
At the end of the day, consumers are still using search engines 20% more year-over-year. So invest in content marketing and make your content worth searching for.
Summary
Content marketing drives results—conversion rates are 6X higher for companies using content versus those that don’t—because you’re reaching customers where they’re at.
Google loves E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) and health content especially has to meet that high bar to win.
When done right, great evergreen health content keeps working for you, driving traffic, leads, and trust for years to come.
You only win when you invest in expert-approved, engaging, and differentiated content that’s clearly the “best answer on the Internet.”
Track the right metrics (conversion rate, time on page, keyword rankings) to prove it’s working—and to keep getting better.
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