How the BERT update impacts medical marketing

By now we're used to it, but that doesn't make it any less nerve-racking when it happens.

We're talking about Google updates. They improve search for users, but how will they impact marketers and their content?

Google's BERT update is once again leaving inbound experts of all stripes scratching their heads and trying to figure out what this means for their SEO and lead generation efforts, trying to discern how this will impact organic traffic.

Let's update our understanding and think about what medical marketers need to do going forward.

How will the BERT update impact medical marketing?

What is BERT?

BERT is an acronym that stands for bidirectional encoder representations and transformers. It's a natural language processing deep learning model.

In lay terms, that means BERT makes it easier for Google to pick up on nuances in language and to better discern the intent behind users' queries and search terms. Google can now use prepositions and other words that provide context around keywords to help figure out what the user is trying to discover and steer them toward more relevant content. This includes distinguishing among homonyms, too.

Overall, the BERT update is changing search engine results pages (SERPs) and altering which featured snippets appear in response to what queries.

Experts say the current update affects about one in ten searches, which might not seem like a whole lot right now, but it's a strong signal about where Google is going.

The cat-and-mouse SEO days are long gone. Simple fixes that emphasize keyword density and article length over quality of content are not going to keep up with BERT or subsequent updates.

The bad news is that there isn't one simple answer here. The good news is that quality content still matters, perhaps even more than it used to.

How will the BERT update effect direct-to-consumer marketing?

BERT and future updates around natural language processing are a signal to medical marketers that they need to get into the minds of their target audience. For direct-to-consumer marketing in particular, that means knowing who your products help, understanding their needs and providing high-quality, in-depth answers to their questions.

Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers have a great deal of medical expertise on hand, and individuals who suffer from the condition that your product helps solve will likely have other concerns, too.

How can you tap into the subject matter expertise at your organization to provide thoughtful, well-researched answers to questions that your customers have for related conditions?

How will the BERT update effect direct-to-physician marketing?

Take note of how physicians talk, relate and search. When you're focused on generating high-quality content that appeals to physicians, you need to talk like they do.

Unlike generating content that's geared toward consumers, you'll want to shift away from answering symptom-related questions to creating information that answers diagnostic concerns.

As is often the case, this means highlighting long-tail search terms. Only a handful of physicians will be searching for information related to the kinds of questions your internal subject matter experts can answer, but if you directly respond to their needs with factual, well-researched information, you'll still capture that traffic.

In order to succeed with direct-to-physician content marketing, you should have buy-in at your organization and get your copy reviewed by somebody inside who has experience on the other end of these searches. You'll need to stop thinking about what terms you want to rank for and start thinking about how you can answer physicians' questions instead of talking around their concerns.

Of course, inbound strategies are only one component of a comprehensive medical marketing strategy. Contact Elsevier today to find out how we can help you with your outbound advertising strategies.