Health care and medical PR trends and opportunities

Learn how PR can write a prescription for your success

Running a health care or medical company is no easy task. Anything considered to be best practices or strategic thinking today can literally change completely tomorrow. Then there are also the regulatory issues and emerging science that you need to communicate. Trying to keep up with it all by yourself while still growing your business can be a prescription for trouble.

This is where the right PR agency can come in handy. With help from PR, you can stay on top of health care and medical trends and be poised to take advantage of opportunities to attract more clients and increase your profitability.

Media outreach

Some mistakenly believe that they don’t need earned media coverage to attract more clients and drive business. However, research has shown that consumers give more consideration to actual news coverage (not infomercials or native advertising) than to any other form of message delivery.

A news story can be the equivalent of a third-party endorsement for your company; in other words, someone with nothing to gain is telling everyone that your company is great. Now that you’re competing with medical scams and misinformation from overseas, the kind of support and approval you receive from media is more important than ever.

PR firms are in constant contact with media and know the best ways to tell your story. They also know the best places, such as whether your news is best suited for a medical journal, online publication or traditional outlet. Therefore, when you have information to pitch, your PR firm is already primed to present it in the best possible light.

Thought-leadership

The sheer quantity of medical and health care companies competing for consumer attention can be overwhelming. You have to find ways to make your company’s voice heard above all the other noise. One way to do that is through thought-leadership initiatives.

Customers pay attention to the companies that work to add value to their lives. This could include providing useful information, helping them solve a problem or demonstrating that you care about the causes they find important.

Tools such as blogging, social media platforms and corporate social responsibility efforts can go a long way toward establishing your company as a leader in your industry. However, they can be a waste of time if you don’t use them correctly. A PR agency can show you how to use them the right way for increased visibility and market share.

Online reputation management

As clients travel through the buyer’s journey, they collect information, form opinions and then make their purchasing decisions. Most of this research is done online independently, without ever speaking to one of your salespeople.

Today, all it takes is one disgruntled customer or former employee with time on his hands to post disparaging comments on a few sites and completely wreck the reputation you’ve taken so long to build. If prospects see this negative information, they will likely simply choose your competition instead.

There are methods to controlling your online image, and a PR firm can help. Using tactics such as encouraging reviews from satisfied customers and putting out the right amount of positive information, a PR firm can help you maintain your good reputation or work to rebuild one that’s already damaged.

PR assistance is vital

The issues of branding and focus for the medical and health care industries are changing rapidly and the stakes have never been higher. Your company must keep up.

With a proven track record of results for clients in the health care and medical industries, Axia Public Relations is uniquely poised to help you connect with and engage today’s consumer. We use social media, multimedia and media measurement combined with creative campaigns to help you reach key stakeholders and take your company to new heights. Contact us today or register for our 60-Second Impact for more information.

Lisa-G-bw-new-3 Lisa Goldsberry is a writer for Axia Public Relations with more than 15 years of public relations experience. She specializes in business, higher education and technology PR. Connect with Axia Public Relations on Twitter @axiapr.