Planning Your Public Relations Healthcare Strategy

Reach a Wider Audience with Targeted Public Relations

An effective PR healthcare strategy makes use of both digital marketing campaigns and traditional marketing methods. In order to really set your healthcare brand apart from its competition, you have to stay on top of the latest PR trends. This involves analyzing what works and doing away with what is not adding value to your marketing efforts.

In this article, we will be taking an in-depth look at how you can plan a practical yet successful public relations healthcare strategy.

Exclusive Insight into Industry Strategies and Trends

How To Plan Your PR Healthcare Campaigns

Determine the desired outcome

If you want to effectively measure the effectiveness of your PR efforts, you will have to define the outcomes of all your marketing campaigns. Whether you want more brand awareness, reach a different demographic, or simply increase sales, you can effectively measure your success by setting goals.

The results garnered from traditional marketing channels can be difficult to keep tabs on. However, it is not impossible. For instance, simply asking a potential client how he or she heard of you will give you plenty of insight into the effectiveness of your traditional marketing channels. By doing this, you can actively determine if you are achieving your traditional PR goals.

When it comes to digital marketing, setting and measuring the success of campaigns are much easier. This is largely because most of your digital platforms will automatically provide you with campaign analytics.

If you want to maximize your success, you can set SMART goals for each campaign. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound.

By setting these specific goals, you can constantly check on the progress of your PR healthcare strategy, and tweak certain aspects of your marketing campaigns if needed.

Create engaging content

Content is still king. This is unlikely to change anytime soon, which means your public relations healthcare strategy should center around quality content. What does this mean exactly? It means that your content should be of real value to your audience.

It’s not just about which graphic catches your audience’s eye. You have to really know what your audience wants, and then you have to give it to them. The golden rule is to provide your audience with 80% free, valuable information that will benefit them. You should only be promoting your brand roughly 20% of the time.

Quality content is not a sales pitch. Instead, it gives a voice to your healthcare brand and helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level. If your content is engaging and thought-provoking, it will get more engagement on social media. This means your healthcare posts will get shared more readily with other people, which means you’ll be reaching a wider pool of potential clients.

Choose your PR channels for distribution

One may think that digital PR channels are more effective when it comes to getting your healthcare brand’s name out there but this isn’t necessarily the case. Just because the effectiveness of traditional PR marketing campaigns is harder to track, it doesn’t mean it’s not working.

PR firms that specialize in traditional PR are more likely to have a lot of contacts within the industry. This means that healthcare brands that decide to go the traditional route are more likely to advertise on ideal traditional platforms. If the demographic you are trying to reach is older in age, then traditional media may be the perfect avenue to guarantee more sales.

On the other hand, if you are trying to connect with a much younger audience, then digital PR channels are your best bet. Seeing as digital platforms are the local hangouts of most people under 40, it would make more sense to advertise on Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok.

Another factor to consider is the cost of advertising on each distribution channel. The cost of TV and radio ads can get quite expensive, especially if you want your ad to be featured during prime time. However, these costs can vary from network to network.

Review the performance of your campaign

Each campaign you run, whether traditional or digital, has to give you a proper return on your investment. In order to determine whether your campaigns are working, you will have to measure the success of each campaign.

With digital campaigns, this should be done throughout the lifespan of each ad so you can tweak it if needed. If you use traditional PR platforms, be sure to check if sales increased during the duration of the traditional ad campaign.

Alternatively, you can also ask potential clients where they heard of your healthcare business. This will allow you to see if your traditional marketing efforts are successful or not.

Conclusion

Planning a public relations healthcare strategy is easy if you have a professional PR company that can help you reach your marketing goals. By establishing your PR goals, creating killer content, and choosing the right channels to distribute your marketing message, you will reap the benefits of your hard work in no time.

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Leeza Hoyt

Founder and President at The Hoyt Organization

With over 25 years of experience, Leeza’s campaigns have garnered over 150 awards from top public relations organizations nationwide. Additionally, THO serves as the Los Angeles area partner of the Public Relations Global Network, granting clients access to over 50 global markets. The agency was also named to one of the top 200 firms in the country by Forbes magazine in 2021, and she has been named by Globest.com as a Woman of Influence and a Woman to Watch, among other designations.