Creating healthcare content is complex and time-consuming. Between selecting the right channels, navigating regulatory requirements, and coordinating with busy subject matter experts, content projects demand significant effort to produce. With so much work involved just to get materials across the finish line, it’s no surprise that many organizations fall into a “set it and forget it” mindset after hitting publish.
But for healthcare brands looking to maximize the impact of their messaging, there’s a smarter path forward. A well-executed content audit can uncover missed opportunities, surface outdated information, and ensure all materials align with your broader strategy—making it one of the most valuable (and underused) tools in your marketing toolkit.
What’s a healthcare content audit?
In a nutshell, a healthcare content audit is a qualitative review of your brand messaging and materials. The goal is to ensure that your content is accurate, up to date, accessible, and consistent with your brand voice and strategic objectives across all channels and touchpoints, including:
- Website
- Blog
- Social
- Email campaigns
- Printed collateral
- Internal communications
While this process can be time-consuming, especially for content-heavy organizations or lean marketing teams, it’s an essential step to ensuring you get the most out of every piece of content while supporting your broader goals.
When—and why—you should audit your healthcare content
There are plenty of reasons to consider doing a thorough healthcare content review for your brand. Maybe it’s been a while since your website was updated, and key user needs have evolved. Perhaps big changes are brewing for your company—like an acquisition or rebranding. Whatever the reason, an audit can reveal gaps, redundancies, and inconsistencies that may be weakening your messaging or creating confusion for your audience. This includes obvious issues like:
- Broken links
- Outdated statistics
- Missing calls to action
- Speaking to the wrong audience
- Content that no longer reflects your services
- Inconsistent tone or positioning
Beyond accuracy, you want your content to anticipate the needs of your audience and drive results from search, which increasingly includes AI services. Whether your goal is to break into a new market or better serve an existing client base, content is critical in making those connections.
Where to get started
So, how does this process begin? The best practice is to take inventory of what material you have across print and digital. Depending on the size of your organization, it’s wise to think outside of marketing-produced content and consider sales (e.g., boilerplate messaging for RFPs) and internal communications. Once it’s cataloged (a spreadsheet with URLs can be useful for this), you can start to identify gaps. Then, you’ll want to highlight any disparities—from the seemingly small (do you write “healthcare” as one word, or are you a strict AP-style shop that uses “health care”) to larger hurdles like insufficient information about a key capability.
Expand your knowledge base
Next comes the most important step in the entire process—getting the knowledge you need to make sure to fill in gaps and ensure your updated content is on point. This starts by interviewing the subject matter experts at your disposal. You’ll use these interviews to identify the most recent product, industry and customer insights and isolate key messages and value points for both prospects and customers. It’s also helpful to scope out key competitors and the healthcare content strategies industry leaders are employing. To take it a step further, solicit feedback from your customers about what they want to easily access on your website, in sales materials or other channels. All these insights can be used to update your content to ensure it addresses market dynamics and needs.
Build it into your routine
A content audit shouldn’t be treated as a one-time project. To keep your materials relevant and effective, it needs to be reviewed on a regular basis. That might mean doing a full audit annually or spot-checking high-priority assets more frequently, especially when your offerings or messaging are shifting.
For example, if your organization is rolling out a new service or expanding offerings after an M&A, make sure your website content reflects that shift. Does it use plain language? Is it easy to navigate? Are calls to action clear and accessible? Likewise, if your business strategy has evolved, your blog, collateral and email campaigns should evolve with it.
It’s also a good time to revisit your SEO strategy. Make sure your content reflects the terms your audience actually uses—and keep an eye on how AI and other tools are changing the way people search for healthcare information. The bottom line: great content doesn’t stay great forever. Regular updates keep it fresh and ensure you’re delivering value to your audience.
As you can probably tell, this process is both time- and resource-intensive. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone—or even do it yourself. If your brand needs a healthcare content audit, consider partnering with a leading marketing firm like Activate Health. Working with our experts will allow you to focus on your team’s immediate priorities while resting assured that your materials are consistent, compelling, and strategically sound. To learn more about how we can help, contact us today.