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Rule Of 7: Integrated Marketing Programs That Inspire Action

As an agency that works exclusively with healthcare, health IT and life sciences companies, this is a startling stat: U.S. hospitals waste over $12 billion annually as a result of communication inefficiency among care providers. Helping our clients succeed with clear, consistent communication is in our DNA for good reason.

Working with our clients as they seek to communicate clearly with their target audiences across the healthcare industry, the old marketing “Rule of Seven” still applies. Basically, this rule states that it takes an average of seven interactions with your brand before a prospect will take action, which in the B2B world may be to commit to a meeting. That’s why integrated marketing programs designed to communicate across multiple channels are so important in today’s noisy, cluttered media landscape. Here are several considerations to develop effective campaigns that deliver on the Rule of Seven.

Set clear, measurable campaign objectives

Always start with a clear understanding of who you want to target, what action you want them to take, and what information they need to understand how you can meet their immediate need. A common mistake is not segmenting the target audience into personas with specific needs that are met by your solution or service. Rather, it’s most effective to develop a strong value proposition for each persona and deliver your message through focused campaigns.

In addition, identify key performance metrics right up front for every campaign. With an eye to the objectives, how will you measure success – webpage visits, landing page conversions, meetings scheduled? Be sure to set a baseline and target results. As the campaign progresses, use the metrics to guide adjustments to continuously improve performance.

Create compelling content

In today’s content-rich environment, it’s vital to tell a coherent story about how you meet the needs of your target personas across all your channels, from your website to social media to thought leadership to campaign content and sales enablement assets. By first understanding the type and depth of information each persona needs at each step in the buying process, you can identify what content will be most effective for each campaign.  

Offering a mix of content is an important aspect of the Rule of Seven. Different people within your target audience will respond best to different types of content. Some focus on short-form content such as social media posts, infographics and videos. Others prefer long-form content, such as articles, eBooks and white papers. Long-form content can always be repurposed into short-form content, which more effectively uses resources while delivering consistent messaging. Overall, it’s important to deliver a mix that consistently drives them toward the final call to action.

Extend reach across multiple channels

Every integrated marketing campaign should leverage as many channels as possible to meet target audiences where they are – your website, social media, outbound email, digital advertising, search, events and tradeshows. And as highlighted above, use a mix of short-form and long-form, written and video to reach your audience. Pay particular attention to how to make content pop visually for each channel – over 50% of marketers agree that visual content is essential to their marketing strategy, leading to more engagement from audiences.

Align media relations and thought leadership efforts

It’s also important to create crossover between focused campaigns and proactive media relations and thought leadership programs. Published articles make valuable assets to incorporate in campaigns. By creating pitches that address the needs of journalists while connecting with the key messages for your target personas, you leverage another important channel for reaching your audience.

Integrated marketing programs that communicate across multiple channels using compelling content help rise above the noise and connect with your audience in ways that deliver results. With the Rule of Seven in mind, marketers can create meaningful brand interactions that show how your solutions meet the needs of your prospects, making them more apt to take the next step toward purchasing your solution.

Thought Leadership Strategies Are Crucial For Startups And Disruptors

The first-to-market companies who see a problem or need and develop tech to expertly solve it, aren’t always the ones that win in the marketplace. Why? Because they often are so focused on doing the good work that they miss the opportunity to broadcast their success to the world. They fail to achieve recognition and get the credit they are due as first-movers and capture mindshare, while others flood the market with similar technology, bigger budgets and gain market share.

That’s why thought leadership marketing and communications strategies are crucial to startups and first-to-market disruptors to give a startup street cred and drive online awareness in the marketplace.

Thought leadership will continue to be crucial strategy in the B2B tech space. It’s a go-to strategy anytime technology is transforming, modernizing and disrupting. This is happening in a lot of industries right now — especially in healthcare — where the pandemic has ignited long-overdue, massive digital transformation, from the back office to the OR and to connective home care to life sciences. 

In working with a range of healthcare tech companies from startups to publicly traded entities, our recommended thought leadership campaigns include strategies to drive credibility and massive awareness with targeted audiences and the general public. Campaigns typically include strategic news/content, analyst relations, collaborations, awards, high-profile speaking engagements and, of course, focused efforts to secure earned media coverage for client thought leaders and subject matter experts through interviews, podcasts, webinars, and contributed byline articles.

Many of our clients have seen a white space opportunity — such as a chronic challenge in healthcare — and have solved it with tech. That’s leadership! Creating thought leaders within the client organizations who can share their expertise, amplify and broadcast their solution stories, and even help other peers by sharing their learning, is powerful.

Here are some thought leadership strategy tips to consider:

Analyst Relations

We all know these firms by name – Gartner, IDC, Forrester, CBInsights, Frost & Sullivan, KLAS, and Constellation Research, among many others. They provide consultative services and publish helpful reports that are distributed to their paid client base to help organizations understand the latest technology solutions, where and why to apply these solutions, who the tech vendors are, how they stack up and who to consider in a technology purchase decision. The job of industry analyst is challenging – they have to stay on top of all the many players in several niche areas, even as new players pop up every nanosecond.

  • Tip #1: analysts and their teams take introductory briefing calls to get to know new vendors, which is a smart first step to being included in an upcoming report – earned analyst relations (AR) exposure. 
  • Tip #2: understand your prospects and which firms they rely on the most as analyst firms can play niche roles.  For example, KLAS is among the top trusted resource in healthcare!

Collaborations

As consumers, we see these regularly in the mass market. Right now the hottest collaborations include Cheetos and Kentucky Fried Chicken…Sharpie and Nike…Lego and the streaming series Stranger Things. The formula behind this idea is 1 plus 1 equal more than the sum of the parts, and that brands and businesses can borrow the credibility and equity of each other, shape an exciting and creative story, capture media attention and drive awareness and buzz.

That principle holds true in B2B marketing and communications too. Beyond the obvious – a vendor and a client coming together to tell their success story — we’ve seen creative forces come together for webinars, high-profile speaking engagements and social media and PR campaigns. One of the best examples was in 2011 when Ford and Toyota – two thought leaders in the newly disruptive automotive tech space – teamed up to innovate on hybrid cars.  In healthcare, two thought leaders in a specific movement, say value-based care and AI tech — that aren’t in direct competition for the same geography or niche application space, could join forces to help drive the change. Again, 1+1=3!

  • Tip #1: be creative and look for alignment to execute a mutually beneficial, cohesive collaboration and together tell a powerful industry-changing story.
  • Tip #2: if you come together for a webinar or speaking engagement, don’t stop there! Be sure to repurpose that high-value content, maximizing it across as many paid, earned, social, and owned (PESO) channels as possible. So drawing from the webinar content, consider doing a co-bylined blog post or contributed article, an exclusive co-interview with a media outlet, and social posts tagging each other.

Recognition

Submit your thought leadership work for awards which are not only feel-good recognition for the team, but also lend credibility and generate earned coverage and online buzz. Awards from prestigious organizations like Inc., Fortune, CNN, Forbes and Fast Company and industry-specific awards from the likes of Modern Healthcare or Fierce Healthcare offer high-profile cache and elevate a company’s brand.

  • Tip #1: tell a story in your award application in a way that people will enjoy reading. Recently creating application content, I ran into a question – describe your company to a Martian – which I thought was a stellar approach to demystify the company’s technology story. It forced us to tell the story in new ways and that content made its way back into other channels like the website, sales collateral and more.
  • Tip #2: showcase real-world impact, especially with data, stats and metrics, to round out your application story.

As long as technology continues to advance – AI, ML, VR, G5/6G and more – and startups keep disrupting industries, thought leadership strategies will be an integral part of any successful PR program. From what we can tell, that’s not easing up any time soon.

Adaptability Is Key To Surviving In The Changing Media Landscape

Blink and the media landscape changes: a magazine goes out of business, one company acquires another, a podcast launches.

Blink again and something else has changed.

In the nearly 20 years since I founded Amendola Communications, the media landscape for healthcare and healthcare technology has changed dramatically. Publications that I assumed would last forever are long gone while others have sprouted in their place. The dominant medium has shifted from print to digital and the lead time for news has shrunk from days and weeks to, well, almost nothing.  

The number of journalists covering healthcare is also greatly reduced. The big publications once had mastheads with multiple editors and reporters; now, most have only a few and they’re juggling podcasting and social media duties along with reporting and writing.

I hate to see any media outlet vanish. That’s partly for selfish reasons; fewer outlets means fewer places we can pitch. But it’s also because I love journalism and I love helping clients get their news out.

But nostalgia is an indulgence, not a business model.

That’s why, amidst all the change, Amendola Communications remains focused on the constants: the need for companies to spread the word about their products and services and the interest in them among the industry. While there might be fewer media outlets now, there is more healthcare news and content than ever before and it’s just as important to get it seen.

So we’ve adapted our approach. Rather than primarily pitching media interviews, we now do a lot more content development where we conceive a story idea, pitch it to a media outlet, and then have one of our writers create a draft that is vendor-neutral and publishable.

Another example of adaptability is how we’ve had to change our approach to media interviews at key trade shows, such as HIMSS, HLTH and others. Instead of only relying on in-person interviews at the shows, we have been super-aggressive in securing more podcast and video interview opportunities for our clients as well as focusing on pre-and-post show news coverage.

We also now operate in a world where clients are less dependent on third-party outlets. Companies have acquired the ability to speak directly to customers through their own blogs, emails, websites, social media, webinars, podcasts and, in some cases, publications. Indeed, consumers now expect a more direct link with and greater insight into the companies they work with and those businesses can no longer depend on third-party media to provide that.

This good news is that this allows businesses to be more creative, comprehensive and in control of how their images are presented and how their stories are told. A big part of what we do now at Amendola is creating content for our customers and advising them on the best format for that information.

In an ever-changing environment, the greatest necessity for ourselves and our clients is adaptability in how we craft and deliver our messages.

Amendola Nabs Hermes Creative Award for HSBlox Thought Leadership Campaign

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ., May 18, 2022 — The Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals has named Amendola, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and health IT public relations and marketing agency, as a Gold Winner in the 2022 Hermes Creative Awards competition. Amendola earned the award in the Strategic Campaigns category for a thought leadership program the agency executed on behalf of value-based care (VBC) administration pioneer HSBlox.

In a VBC system, providers such as hospitals and doctors are paid by health insurers based on patient outcomes rather than the current ​“fee-for-service” model. Ultimately, payers reward medical providers for helping patients become healthier. 

The award-winning thought leadership campaign, which ran from February 2021 through February 2022, focused on raising awareness of data and payment exchange challenges—and solutions—associated with VBC models. Specifically, the program illustrated how HSBlox technology enables timely payment of services to social services agencies.

Amendola built a weekly cadence of media campaigns that included proactive, issues-based media pitching, company news and general thought leadership.​ Amendola successfully crafted new, creative story angles for media around emerging VBC models and secured briefings with top analyst firms covering payer markets.​

The campaign yielded impressive results, including 17 briefings with eight analyst firms, 19 pieces of vendor-neutral content placed in high-value media outlets and five podcast appearances.

“The value-based care landscape is a crowded, competitive market that makes it difficult for any one player to stand out,” agency CEO Jodi Amendola explained. “To set HSBlox apart, we targeted analysts and publications focused on value-based care and health equity and positioned HSBlox as an innovator and valued resource.”

HSBlox solutions assist healthcare stakeholders at the intersection of value-based care and precision health with a secure, information-rich approach to event-based, patient-centric digital healthcare processes—empowering whole health in traditional care settings, the home and in the community.

“Our team’s work armed HSBlox’s sales leaders with high-value content to help move prospects through the sales funnel by underscoring the value of their digital infrastructure for success in a value-based care environment,” Amendola said.

AMCP’s Hermes Creative Awards is an international competition for creative professionals involved in the concept, writing and design of traditional and emerging media. AMCP consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations and digital media professionals.

About Amendola

Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead gen programs to move healthcare, health IT and life sciences decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Media contact:

Marcia Rhodes

MRhodes@acmarketingpr.com

COVID’s Impact On B2B Marketing And PR: Insights From Our Clients

COVID-19’s impact on remote work, supply chains, and staffing has been well documented, but one area that hasn’t received much attention is the effect the pandemic has had on the marketing and public relations (PR) efforts of businesses. Insights gained from a survey of our clients’ 2022 B2B marketing and PR priorities show the pandemic is influencing several aspects of the marketing mix – from budgeting and brand awareness to lead generation and nurturing.

Building brand awareness is a primary challenge

We asked our clients to select their top three marketing and PR challenges from a list of nine commonly cited struggles. “Increasing brand awareness” topped the list, being selected as a top-three challenge by 67% of our customer base.

A contributing factor to this challenge may be ineffective use of marketing mediums. For example, the pandemic has caused many businesses to turn to social media for brand awareness, replacing more traditional branding outlets such as events and mass media. While this can be an effective strategy, it can also be risky. Leveraging social media for sociability’s sake won’t help build your brand. In addition to being engaging and compelling, social activity should closely align with your messaging and business objectives to reinforce brand consistency and drive results.

Thought leadership drives action

When asked what marketing and PR efforts would impact their success most in 2022, 53% of our clients responded with “participation in thought leadership opportunities,” topping other initiatives such as digital marketing (20%) and strategic planning (27%).

Research validates the importance of thought leadership to business success. According to data from Edelman, 55% of C-suite executives offered to provide their contact information to an organization after viewing thought leadership from the company, and 42 percent reached out to the organization to follow up on the material. In addition, nearly two-thirds of executives invited organizations to participate in a request for proposal after seeing its thought leadership.

With COVID, thought leadership is particularly sought after in healthcare. Businesses serving this space have an opportunity to gain mindshare and attract prospective customers by weighing in on pressing healthcare challenges and demonstrating how their solutions and services can address these issues. More on this topic can be found in our earlier blog, Why Thought Leadership Matters in Healthcare.

Leads stall at conversion phase

According to our clients, closing leads is their biggest marketing-related sales challenge. A convincing 53% of our clients said the bottom of the sales funnel (the Conversion & Purchasing phase) is where engagements frequently fizzle out.

A primary reason for this issue is an unbalanced mix of marketing messages and content. For example, many marketing efforts focus too heavily on the Awareness phase of the buyer’s journey (e.g. introducing specific pain points or problems, making prospects aware of potential solutions and associated benefits, etc.). Few businesses spend equal time and effort crafting strategies, messaging, and content for the downstream Evaluation and Conversion phases, resulting in leads stuck at the top of the sales funnel. More attention should be given to later phases of the buyer’s journey. Self-evaluation checklists, ROI calculators, and customer references/testimonials are examples of marketing pieces that can move buyers beyond Awareness and toward Conversion.

Lead generation takes priority

Even though brand awareness was identified as the most significant marketing/PR challenge, lead generation is the top marketing priority for 73% of our clients in 2022. COVID has placed new pressures on business sales efforts, causing many organizations to demand more leads to nurture in order to meet sales quotas.

B2B brands often treat brand-building and demand generation as two separate objectives with different budgets, but it is more effective to have one integrated approach through the whole marketing funnel. Considering branding and lead generation together leads to more consistent messaging and conversion success.

Events still viable marketing medium

When it comes to B2B marketing and PR outlets, COVID has likely had the biggest impact on events and trade shows, causing many to go virtual and others to be cancelled outright. You would think this disruption would sour business enthusiasm for industry events, but our clients indicate the opposite is true. In fact, 53% of our customers say they plan to budget more for events this year than they did before the pandemic.

In-person networking events have been sorely missed by healthcare vendors, who are eager to invest in and attend these conferences again in 2022. Prior to the pandemic, 24% of B2B marketing budgets were allocated to meetings, conferences, trade shows, and events, and there’s a good reason why. Meeting face-to-face sparks genuine, enduring connections. Events are where businesses often turn prospects into customers and customers into relationships and revenue.

It’s clear that COVID-19 has impacted traditional B2B marketing and PR approaches, particularly in the healthcare space. Adjusting to these changes requires a proactive strategy, a wider network of marketing content and channels, and an experienced partner to help you navigate unfamiliar terrain.

Why Thought Leadership Matters In Healthcare

To be successful in business, you have to come up with a viable idea, develop it, bring it to market, and sell it to customers. That may be an oversimplified version of the formula but the basic principles are there: craft a product or service and then spend most of your time selling it far and wide.

As with so many things in healthcare, this process is more complicated than usual. Caring for patients is always the top priority but then there are also so many different stakeholders and revenue streams that muddle how a company should explore expansion.

Ultimately, healthcare executives are the guiding force that can bring an organization to the next level by embodying the mission statement, promoting value to the market, and winning over skeptics.

But in an era where the playing field is so flat, where new markets emerge only to experience a sudden rush of competitive saturation, companies have to stand out. The most obvious answer to an executive might be to rely on standard business strategies to address these challenges.

However, I would argue that the best way to differentiate yourself as a company and secure necessary industry credibility is to operate above the fray.Optics matter, so leaders must recognize that opportunities to interface with the media and stakeholders as a vendor-neutral voice of reason are an effective, proven way to better serve the business.

Casting yourself as an industry authority or subject matter expert pays dividends down the line because outsiders can look at you and realize you have more to say than simply reciting the same sales pitch over and over.

In the years I spent as a healthcare reporter, some of my most valuable contacts in the industry were accomplished executives that could speak to specific events or general trends in a vendor-neutral way.

Neither me nor my audience needed to know about how their RCM company was the best at streamlining the financial experience for patients or how their virtual care service was going to be the Holy Grail of care access. Quality journalists aren’t there to hand out superlatives or write puff pieces about executives and the companies that they run; rehashing a press release isn’t why reporters do what they do.

However, soliciting the opinions of healthcare’s movers and shakers never goes out of style. For example, if there’s a significant policy announcement affecting payers and I can get an insurance executive on the phone to talk about ramifications without reminding me that they were the first to offer certain benefits to members, then that’s a source I can reliably turn to again down the line.

Subtlety, rather than outright salesmanship, is the best way to position your organization for maximum opportunity.

Getting your name in print, on industry panels, or invited to deliver keynotes should always be the goal because then you build a natural rapport with the audiences you’re most seeking to connect with. Everybody wants what they say to have merit and thought leadership is the ideal exercise to make that happen.

Perhaps most importantly to note, you and your company don’t have to be the star of the story; you just have to be in the story.

Since the initial outbreak of COVID-19, healthcare innovation has enjoyed prime media coverage, the likes of which hadn’t been seen before. Whether it was telehealth, remote patient monitoring, or vaccine research, there were thousands of stories printed about fast-moving developments in an industry that has historically been averse to change.

In each of the stories that ran on television, in print media, or on podcasts, there were ample opportunities for leaders to chime in about the future of healthcare. Many participated, but I implore those who didn’t to reconsider their approach to promoting their brand.

If there’s an outlet or reporter asking to associate your name with a trending story or a noteworthy event, even one that likely will not give you the sole spotlight, you’re better off accepting that invitation because now you’re linked to it.

I know there’s a strong inclination to use any and every media appearance to preach the company’s gospel, but there’s an even stronger value in looking at the world from a 30,000-foot view. If you can step outside yourself and speak to topics that are not simply related to your company’s latest announcement, you will gain invaluable industry credibility and media contacts that will return to you without hesitation.

Thought leadership is not just a pie-in-the-sky buzzword for the most outgoing executives in healthcare, it’s a useful strategy to expand brand awareness that every leader and their communications teams should be pursuing if they haven’t done so already.

2021 State Of The Press Release: The TL;DR Version

There are a few yearly traditions Americans rally behind and await with eager longing and hushed anticipation – birthdays, holidays and the publishing of Cision’s “State of the Press Release” report.

The 2021 version of this annual 20-something-page paean to the press release – brought to you by the people who profit the most from press releases, it bears keeping in mind – recently arrived on our virtual doorstep. As is the hallowed tradition in these parts, we read the report and summarize it below to save you the anguish, remorse and indignity.

The report is the result of Cision’s examination of more than 100,000 press releases from the prior year, coupled with a survey of PR pros about their press release practices. For those of you who find the full report too long and do not want to read it (TL;DR), here are five key take-aways to consider:

  1. In terms of volume, the industry has returned to a pre-COVID-19 level of “normal”: Seventy-four percent of respondents said that their press outreach was either on par or more frequent than before COVID or not impacted by the pandemic at all.
  2. Thought leadership releases represent an opportunity for some companies (and a business development opportunity for Cision): As virtually anyone familiar with the concept of a press release knows, the primary reason (83%) companies distribute them is to share business news. Cision notes that just 47% of companies use press releases to share thought leadership content, such as research, data, tips and best practices. Other leading reasons for issuing press releases include: product launches (40%); diversity, equity and inclusion (25%); and corporate social responsibility (19%).
  3. For headlines, less is more: Certainly, headlines are critical to a release’s messaging, and Cision recommends keeping them fewer than 70 characters. Email applications and Google’s search engine will cut off any text over that amount, according to Cision.
  4. Mind your action verbs: The verb “announce” is popular in headlines but doesn’t generate a commensurate amount of page views. “Launch” is also widely used but performs proportionately better with its usage. Also consider “show,” “roll out,” “reveal,” and “allow.”
  5. Check it twice: Not surprisingly when dealing in the written word, Cision found thousands of errors in “final” releases sent by clients. The most common types of errors include: hyperlink errors, misspellings, incorrect dateline dates, grammar mistakes and day/date discrepancies.

What will 2022 hold in store for the state of the press release? The sheer possibilities almost exceed the human capacity for thought (or at least mine) but be sure to return here next year to learn all about it. Until then, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, Cision.

PR Works Better When You Make It Personal

As many readers of the Amendola blog are probably aware, I lost my mother, who was my inspiration and guiding light, to COVID-19 the night before Thanksgiving last year. It was difficult for my family as well as me, especially because I believe it was unnecessary.

She should have been there to celebrate the holidays with us and would have been in my opinion had it not been for some missteps in her care.

As part of my process of dealing with this unexpected loss, I wrote a story about her that appeared in the Arizona Republic. If you’d like to know more about the details, along with my thoughts about what you should do to advocate for your loved ones should they be in the same unfortunate circumstances, it’s all contained in that article.

It’s what happened next, however, that I want to address today.

Shortly after that article appeared (and was re-posted on Facebook), I began to receive the most touching and beautiful comments, messages, and emails. And I’m still receiving them.

Some were from friends, of course, expressing their sympathy for my loss. Many, however, were from strangers who had gone through a similar experience and found a sense of kinship in sharing their grief as I had shared mine.

It was a stark reminder of a basic principle we, as marketing and PR professionals, should keep in mind: PR in general, and thought leadership in particular, works better when you make it personal. A topic, incidentally, I also explored in my latest Forbes Agency Council article.

The most effective thought leadership comes when the person behind it is passionate about the subject matter. Yes, you can write in a detached away about something technical, conveying information and/or data that is worth sharing. But while it informs, it usually doesn’t move people to action.

For that you need a human element. And nothing is more human than sharing something personal.

It can be a story from your childhood, your teen years, or your time as an adult. It can be about something funny that happened to you, or something sad, or something that contains a mix of emotions you can’t even sort out yourself.

Or it can be about a person who means a lot to you. Like my mom did to me.

The important thing is that it is a little glimpse behind the façade we all tend to put up in our business encounters to cover our true selves. In other words, it’s real.

Organizations often talk about creating an emotional connection to their brand during branding meetings. But then they’ll do everything they can to hide anything that seems remotely raw or real.

To me, that approach makes no sense. Sure, you don’t want to air all of the organization’s dirty laundry in your marketing and PR efforts. But what’s wrong with showing your human side?

The point is a person or a company can be open and honest about their feelings and reactions to events without falling into the rabbit hole of controversy. The key is to focus on the parts that are universal to the human experience.

We all experience joy and caring. We all experience excitement and wonderment at one time or another. We all experience grief and loss.

That doesn’t mean we experience it in the same way. But we do share those experiences to some degree.

The more willing organizations are to take a stand and tell stories about themselves, their employees, their customers, and everyone else who is connected to them, the more “real” they will become in the minds of their key audiences. And the more successful they will be in creating a brand image that is unique and memorable.

I know it’s not always easy to tell these stories. We can all feel a little exposed when we offer these types of details about ourselves.

When I wrote about my mom it was like going through it all over again.

Yet as I see the reactions continue to come in I know I made connections with people I’ve never met, and probably never will properly meet. Isn’t that what marketing and PR are really all about?

5 Helpful PR Tips for Rebranding

Many healthcare technology companies are choosing to rebrand because of the impact that the novel coronavirus has had on the healthcare ecosphere. Capabilities or focus points which may not have been on the forefront before this year-long industry earthquake are now front and center. Clear company identities and market differentiators have never been more important.

When rebranding, there are 5 strategic public relations best practices that you will want to make sure you are clear on before finalizing your overall rebranding marketing efforts and plans.

Messaging. The most common misunderstanding I have come up against when working on rebranding a company from a public relations perspective is that many communicators – even long time marketing seniors – are entirely unaware that there is a difference between marketing messaging (often, product messaging) and public relations messaging. They are sisters, not twins, folks!

Some questions that I often ask to get to the bottom of the public relations messaging rebranding efforts include: What is it that you want to convey from a thought leadership level to the public? How does this back up your business goals and objectives and overarching communications goals and objectives?

Typically, when these questions are answered, it can be a fairly simple process to start development on a “moving” public relations messaging document that will grow and evolve as the company grows and evolves.

Audience. Do not forget to think about the people who will be impacted by your rebranding. It is important to get the message into the right hands and ears.

Who are your customers? Who are your customers’ customers? What matters to them? How are they acquiring information? Social media? A certain publication?

Being clear on the answer to these questions can help promote a strategic public relations strategy when rebranding. Showing in-depth knowledge of your customers and customers’ customers pain points on a public scale can be impactful for building the overall credibility of your rebranded company in the public’s eye.

Thought Leadership. What can you speak to other than your business offerings that props up the depth and breadth of your company’s position in the market?

In this vein, I often recommend that clients take time to work together to articulate which areas of the market their products impact indirectly that can be a strategic topic of reference for the company to react to on a public scale. It really helps to get specific here.

Listing thought leadership topics and corresponding messages that support your company’s overarching messages can be invaluable to being ready and able to pursue high impact reputation building messages in front of the public’s eye. Be willing to tell the story of “why” the rebranding was important given the current state of the industry.

100% Buy-in across company segments. You need to make sure every sector of the company is very clear on the new messaging and branding statements. It is vitally important to get buy-in from each segment on every word and punctuation mark.

Once you do, offering each segment of a company a document or visual on how the new branding impacts how they talk about the company or how they will do their job moving forward can be helpful in getting everyone on the same page.

Buy-in needs to happen on every level from the CEO to the janitor. Each employee needs to be clear on what the company does and the best way to explain that to whoever they need to explain it to.

Pipeline tactic development: Once you have rebranded, you also need to take good look at current tactics and pipelines to determine if they are supporting the new look and/or descriptors that you have chosen for your company.

Old communication, marketing, public relations tactics may have worked for your old way of thinking about what you did, but there may be pivots you need to take to support the updated messaging and overall look of the company. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about rebranding where major sales documents were not updated, yet still used, mostly due to confusion on the branding, how it effects the company, and why it matters.

Each sector of the company needs to look at the way they are doing their jobs in light of the rebranding efforts and determine if old ways of thinking need some updating.

Keep these recommendations in mind when developing your public relations strategy during a company rebranding effort. All healthcare technology companies should take a good look at their company identity in this season.

Whether or not your company is taking on a full-on rebranding effort, it’s helpful to keep these best practices in mind.