5 Common Goals and Tactics for a Healthcare Public Relations Plan

Healthcare is a unique and dynamic industry, generally lagging behind other industries in adopting technologies, but with the purpose of reducing healthcare costs, improving patient outcomes, and most importantly saving lives.

Most marketing goals for any healthcare services or solutions company should include increasing awareness of the company, product, solution or service; positioning key executives as thought leaders; promoting SMEs; driving traffic to your website; and supporting sales leads.

Any public relations plan in the healthcare industry requires messaging driven by these goals. Here are five basic tactics for a healthcare public relations plan.

Let’s begin with positioning and key messages. The basis of this is understanding who your audience is. Are you marketing to health systems, providers, payers? Who is your key buyer – clinician, IT, CFO or CEO? Knowing the answers to these questions will drive how you position your solution and your key messaging.

Make sure you have a strategy and solid plan in place. Think about tradeshows and conferences that your company is planning to attend throughout the year. Do you expect any new product announcements? Are there certain themes that you want to address throughout the year? You can utilize this information to develop a solid communications plan and content calendar; which leads to the next tactic.

A good solid cadence of thoughtful communications including press releases, thought leadership bylined articles, case studies, and social media posts, are important to any PR plan. Your PR representative can advise you on the need for press releases. Sometimes you have solid news to announce that requires a press release and other times you have something that you want to share not necessarily for press coverage, but to help drive website SEO and provide collateral for the sales team. Knowing that will determine the amount of media relations support you need.

Thoughtful content such as bylines/thought leadership articles and customer case studies are some of the best ways to communicate your key messages and achieve your marketing goals. The editorial staff at many trade publications have shrunk in recent years. In addition, they now have e-newsletters and online content needs on top of any print issues they are still publishing. They need good content, but it has to be focused on industry trends/issues, forward-looking, thought-provoking content. It cannot be promotional in nature or it won’t get published.

Proactive media relations will always be a staple of an effective publications campaign. Your PR representatives need to read what your key media contacts are writing about your industry segment. We have to offer valuable insight to these editors and reporters to build relationships and get interviews for your SMEs.

Other effective tactics in any PR campaign can include proactive analyst relations, social media outreach, and event planning and support. Having a solid strategy in place as a framework for building success and integrating all of these tactics with your marketing team will bring even more results. If you want to discuss how we can help you with your integrated marketing and PR plan, feel free to reach out. We’d love to chat about it.