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Getting The Most Out Of A Client Intake Call

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Healthcare marketing and public relations agencies work closely with clients on crafting effective messages designed to gain the attention of (and prompt action from) their potential customers, investors, media outlets, awards organizations, conference organizers, and other target audiences.

Clients and agencies routinely rely on email and collaborative platforms such as Slack and Teams to communicate about messaging ideas and strategies. Still, there’s no substitute for live, verbal  conversations. And while meeting in person is always best, the pandemic made Zoom calls a simple and convenient way of life in the professional world. Other than not knowing how tall everyone is on Zoom, it’s just like being in a room together!

When it comes to creating strategic, high-value content assets for clients – such as “thought leadership” bylines, case studies, and white papers – it is essential that agencies and clients arrange what we refer to as an “intake call” to discuss the asset’s target audience, goals of the content, main message, and major takeaways.

Intake calls are both a resource and an opportunity; thus, failure to take full advantage of these sessions can undermine the client’s goals and the ability of the agency to create compelling content. Unfortunately, far too many intake calls are unproductive and fail to provide the agency’s account directors and writers with enough direction to ensure quality content assets. Inevitably, the writing suffers, leading to more time wasted on editing and rewriting that could have been avoided.

Among the many reasons why intake calls go off the rails:

There’s no predetermined topic. I’ve been on my share of calls where the topic of the content asset had not yet been specified. As a result, much time is consumed just kicking around ideas. Once an idea is chosen, the call participants then have to hammer out a message and supporting themes. Without preparation, this process can be highly inefficient, which means the agency team may not get all the information they need from the call within the allotted time.

The “subject matter expert” (SME) is unprepared. Client SMEs are very knowledgeable about their areas of expertise. They’re also quite busy, particularly if the SME is a CEO. Thus, even if a topic has been preselected or an outline produced as a guide for the call discussion, the SME may not have had time to do any prep work. This also can lead to an inefficient and unsuccessful intake call.

The SME lives in the weeds. Some client SMEs can clearly and fluently communicate their company’s technology, market strategy, and product use cases. Other SMEs are CTOs. Just kidding! Seriously, though, SMEs who immerse themselves in technological details can struggle to concisely explain to a non-tech audience how their companies’ platform or tools can help customers.

Too many people on the call. Though this doesn’t happen much with start-ups, I’ve written custom content for large technology vendors as a freelancer and have been on calls with eight, 10, or more client-side participants. I’m not naming names, but one company rhymes with Oracle. These “cast of thousands” mega-calls can be incredibly frustrating and unproductive.

Intake call best practices

So what can marketing/PR agency pros do to ensure they and their clients get the most value they can out of intake calls?

Prepare a list of questions to guide the discussion. Giving the conversation a framework and some direction can make an intake call more efficient and productive. What’s the technology or healthcare challenge? What’s at stake for patients, clinicians, payers, etc.? What are the possible solutions? 

Get down to business. I like to chat, and I like learning about people I’m working with. (Is that so wrong?) But when you only have 30 minutes to capture a client’s thoughts about a complex healthcare challenge, it’s best to smoothly move past initial pleasantries and get the show on the road.

Make the client verbalize the value of the asset. Even if you know the topic of the content asset, even if you have a tentative title, and even if you have bunch of on-point questions, it’s always a good idea to ask the client to explain 1) the target audience 2) what the goal of the asset is, and 3) how they would describe the asset to a colleague (“This byline is about…”). The more clarity an agency’s writer and account director have, the more likely they will produce an asset that meets or exceeds the client’s expectations.

Conclusion

Both healthcare technology startups and their marketing/PR agencies are far too busy to waste time on unproductive content asset intake calls. While it’s hard to control how ready clients are for intake calls, agency account and content directors can optimize the value of these Zoom meetings by being prepared, guiding client participants through the conversation, and seeking clear language about the topic and goals of a content asset.

Learn To Speak The Language Of Your Client’s (Many) Target Audiences

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Healthcare PR and marketing agency pros work with multiple clients at a time. That’s a lot of technologies, services, business strategies, marketing messages, workflows, timelines, and personalities to understand and manage.  

It’s easy for us to feel overwhelmed because healthcare technology clients by definition are working on cutting-edge technologies that can be challenging to comprehend, never mind explain to an audience. Conversing regularly with healthcare startup founders about the clinical-grade, model-informed, reverse-engineered algorithm they developed to transform healthcare as we know it – when they weren’t working their side gig as a highly regarded neurosurgeon – is a humbling experience. My encyclopedic knowledge of BoJack Horseman episodes barely measures up.

But here’s where things get even more complicated: Not only does each client have all that stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph, they also are trying to reach multiple audiences.

That matters, because to craft an effective message you need to both identify and understand the target audience. The first question I ask clients when we’re on a call with a subject matter expert to get information for a writing assignment – a byline, a press release, a white paper – is, “Who’s the target audience?” Even if I already know, I’ll ask anyway just to make sure we’re all on the same page and to get more details. Plus it’s a great icebreaker!

Know what each audience cares about

At the most basic level, every healthcare technology company has three distinct audiences: customers (both potential and existing), investors, and the media. Let’s start with the less complicated audiences: investors and the media.

Investors view healthcare technology as, well, an investment. So while they may thoroughly believe in the technology and what it will do for patients, providers, payers or some other stakeholder, their primary interest is whether their investment pays off. Investors want to hear about the market opportunity, growth strategy, financial and growth metrics, the expertise and experience of the management team, and how the company intends to become profitable.

A media audience is looking for an interesting story. That might be the background of your client’s founders, the scope of the challenge your client is trying to address, and how many lives the client’s product or service will change. Even media outlets that drill down into the details of healthcare technology, business, and policy want to cast the content they publish in human terms.

You can best understand what type of content specific media outlets are interested in publishing by actually reading what they publish. (Pro tip!) If your client is all about the revenue cycle, you’re not likely to draw interest from a website that covers medical devices.

Customers are more complicated because many healthcare companies may be trying to reach several subsets of customers. For example, one of Amendola’s clients I write for markets its platform to hospitals, health information exchanges, labs and clinics, and health plans. Each of those target audiences has its own priorities and needs. As a marketing/PR agency, it is our job to effectively address the specific pain points of each target audience.

Listen, research, and listen some more

So how can we best understand each of the client’s target audiences? One way is to talk with someone at the client who interacts regularly with customers and prospective customers.  

For example, if the target audience is customers and potential customers, I would want to hear from sales executives. They are the people who listen to customers describe their business goals and challenges, explain what problems they need to overcome, and articulate what they need (or don’t need) from the type of solution the client is selling. Once you can identify the problems a customer wants solved, you have the raw ingredients for crafting a targeted, compelling message using the customer’s language.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s hard for a PR/marketing agency team to get time with a client’s sales exec because they’re busy selling (hopefully!). It’s much more common for agencies to work with the client’s technologists, who typically are among the founders. While their ability to explain the company’s technology within the context of various use cases is indispensable, it’s the sales team that understands challenges from the customer’s perspective. They have an outside-in perspective, rather than the inside-out view of many technologists.

A less direct way to learn about a target audience is through online research. That includes using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to find information. (Just make sure it’s not hallucinated info.) Learning the lay of the land within a client’s competitive sphere provides more perspective to help inform the content you create. Large consulting agencies such as McKinsey and Accenture have ambitious healthcare practices that offer comprehensive market analyses.

Developing customer personas also can help marketing/PR agencies hone their messages by providing a crystal-clear picture of a target audience. What are the backgrounds, values, preferences, and pain points of the chief technology officers targeted by your client? They undoubtedly would be different to those of the chief financial officer or chief medical officer. Interviews, surveys, and feedback can be used to refine those personas.

Conclusion

No healthcare client has a single target audience. All of them at some point will need to communicate the appropriate messages to investors, the media, and various customer groups. Marketing/PR professionals must be fluent in all these languages to ensure they are helping clients achieve their goals.

Why Thought Leadership Matters In Healthcare

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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.