Contently Case Stories is a series highlighting some of Contently’s most successful clients.
Building an audience takes time. It takes talent. It takes strategy. Budget, of course. And a little luck too. There’s a science to putting all of the pieces together. If a brand overlooks even one of those factors, it may never achieve the results it wants.
In today’s digital media landscape, content distribution is often the factor brands overlook the most. They spare no expense on hiring talented writers, editors, photographers, and designers to craft a great piece of content. But when the story is complete, brands don’t always treat distribution with the same sense of urgency.
It’s easy to assume your audience will find an article because it’s well written or watch a video because it’s entertaining. But as more content floods the internet, that calculus has changed.
For Cardinal Health, a global healthcare services and products company that ranks among the top 25 of the Fortune 500, rethinking its content distribution model helped elevate its content marketing program to the next level. Cardinal Health already had great content. The brand just had to figure out how to make sure the right people found it.
Fixing the Funnel
Cardinal Health’s digital publication, Essential Insights, speaks to a specialized audience of health system professionals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, retail pharmacists, and physician offices. Stories deal with weighty topics like shaping the future of healthcare and improving patient care. Not only is growing an audience crucial to Cardinal Health’s business, it also has the potential to educate the people in charge of America’s healthcare system.
In early 2017, Cardinal Health’s Essential Insights team had a standard publishing process. They would commission an article, post it on the online publication, and share it on the brand’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles.
“We put that structure in place a few months before we partnered with Contently,” said Stephanie Pavol, corporate communications manager for Cardinal Health. “We were just doing organic distribution before. So we might be lucky if we had five hundred views on an article.”
The results weren’t bad for a niche audience. But after a few months, the team noticed that while the content was getting better, the…
