Content Marketing For Highly Regulated Industries

Content Marketing For Highly Regulated Industries Say you work for an ad agency and one of your clients is an e-retailer that sells over 30,000 products. It should be a dream come true for a content marketer, right? With 30,000 options, you have a nearly endless supply of features and benefits, challenges and solutions, lifestyles and demographics to target. A Must Read: The Content Marketing Guide For Highly Regulated Industries via @Now, let’s pretend that for all of those 30,000 products, you can’t actually tell anyone what they’re good for. Instead, all you can do is list out the ingredients and cross your fingers that your customers can figure it out for themselves.   This is the reality the nutraceutical industry lives in, the world of content marketing in a highly regulated industry. And they aren’t alone.    There are several industries you may end up working with that face tough challenges when it comes to how they can market their products to consumers: Alcohol Spirits â€Å"Digital marketing communications should be placed only in media where at least 71.6% of the audience is reasonably expected to be of the legal purchase age,† according to discus.org, the national trade association for distilled spirits in the US. So†¦ beware not only what you say, but where you say it. Healthcare providers Prior to â€Å"Bates v. State Bar of Arizona† in 1977, hospitals and healthcare providers essentially didn’t do any marketing at all. Now that they do, they â€Å"risk their reputation, their license and their livelihood if their marketing efforts run afoul of the maze of local, state or federal laws and regulations.† healthcaresuccess.com Pharmaceutical companies There are so many potential pitfalls here that â€Å"Every major company †¦ has either settled recent government cases, under the False Claims Act, †¦ or is currently under investigation for possible health care fraud,† according to the Wikipedia entry on pharmaceutical marketing The marketing rules and guidelines will vary industry to industry. But when you’re limited in what you can say, where you can say it and to whom you can say it, the driving question is the same for all What’s A Product Without Benefits? â€Å"One of the most repeated rules of writing compelling copy is to stress benefits, not features,† writes Brian Clark of Copyblogger. â€Å"In other words, identify the underlying benefit that each feature of a product or service provides to the prospect, because that’s what will prompt the purchase. This is one rule that always applies, except when it doesn’t.† One of the most repeated rules of writing compelling copy is to stress benefits, not features.   This is one rule that always applies,  except when it doesn’t. – Brian Clark of Copyblogger Our friends at the nutracuetical company fall into that â€Å"except when it doesn’t† category. They know the underlying benefit of taking extra vitamin C is reducing the duration of the common cold, but they can’t say that due to the regulations in place for their industry.   Ad agencies that work with pharmaceutical companies face a similar content challenge. They get to promote their products’ benefits, but they’re also required to rattle off all the potential side-effects (which often exceed the list of benefits). It’s that whole truth in advertising thing. If you’re a distiller of fine spirits, the â€Å"What’s a product without benefits?† question directly applies, as the implied benefit of pouring a glass of Scotch is to take the edge off, relax and alter your mood. At their core, these are implied health claims, which are off limits. And in most cases, the standard closing of â€Å"always drink responsibly† seems to directly compete with the fun-loving message from the rest of the ad.   So with all these rules and roadblocks, what should content marketers do in a heavily regulated industry? Well†¦ you must get creative. And study up. 3 Content Marketing Tips For Highly Regulated Industries