All this change means that the way we used to approach healthcare PR and marketing activities also has to change. Single communication channels such as advertising or press coverage are no longer viable. Instead companies need to look at using multi channels to engage with their customers. For SME healthcare companies this may seem a cost too far, especially for those who are still being lead to believe that one piece of great media coverage or a couple of adverts will solve all their marketing worries. The mistake a lot of SME businesses make is that they take a tactical reactive approach to marketing and PR, jumping from one thing to another which out realising the value of what could be achieved

So how can an SME healthcare business understand which channels of communication may work best for their business? The key to this is to know your market, know your potential customers and know where your business is going.

Any marketing activity should aim to help your company achieve its business objectives so this is the first question you need to ask yourself. It is also worth remembering that marketing covers the product, the price, place where the product or service is available, as well as promotion.

Next you need to think about who you need to talk to (target audience) to achieve these objectives. Once you know this then is it about what do you need to say to them (key messages)? Once you have this information it is easy to define your strategy and the channels of communication you will need to use (tactics). Of course no good marketing or PR plan would be complete without a timeline and understanding the return on investment made.

Seven Highly Effective Marketing Questions
1. How is marketing going to help you achieve your business objectives?
2. Who do you need to target to achieve your marketing objectives?
3. What do you want to say to them?
4. How are you going to approach them?
5. What are you going to do?
6. When are you going to do this?
7. How successful were you?

Repetition
Creating awareness is an essential part of any marketing communication strategy but a person has to be exposed to your messages at least 7 times in a short timeframe before they start to take notice. Anything below this is seen as wasteful. In the early stages of marketing communications rather than just focusing on the single piece of media coverage it is important to think about the number of different communication channels you need to use to expose your target audience to your company or product messages and how you integrate these channels to ensure repeated exposure.

Relevance
Of course it does not matter how many times you expose a person to a message if the content if not relevant to them they are not going to be interested. Think how interested you are in holiday adverts when you are not thinking about travelling but how appealing they become when you long to get away. Relevance can mean a lot of things such as targeting the right people, with the right messages at the right time but this can be extremely complex and difficult to work out it may be simpler to look at who is interested in your product or disease area, in what format do you deliver your content to them bearing in mind 65% of people are visual learners and what communication channel to you use to deliver that content – offline, online, mobile?

Relationships
Relationship marketing recognises the long term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond advertising and sales promotional messages. Whilst corporate hospitality has long disappeared from the healthcare industry and invitations to attend national or international meeting are beginning to lose favour, the growth of the importance of social media and mobile technology to businesses enables healthcare companies to interact with their customers on a daily basis. However, like any relationship it is about the time and effort you put in to building and maintaining that relationship.

Recommendation
In the world of healthcare this is also known as key opinion leader (KOLs) development where global and national influences in their field use their influence to support the availability or use of your products. Gaining this level of support is not easy and good KOLs will not endorse brands, as they have to maintain their impartiality to retain their influence. The key is to identify key influencers early in the product development and work with them through the developmental stages so you start to develop trust and loyalty. KOLs will also have more visibility than your product in the early stages so that can be another reason why working with them can be hugely beneficial. KOLs are usually happy to get involved in product trials, writing publications, highlight unmet clinical needs, participate in advisory panels or speak at educational events.

Reputation
Gaining and maintaining a good reputation is essential to the success of any company or product. Reputation often drives customer loyalty and trust. Apple and Google are two of the most trusted global brands because on the whole their products work extremely effective and they are always improving on what they do. Whilst the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry has had it knocks in recent years it is a reasonably trusted industry. Transparency has had a lot to do with this especially with the publication of negative clinical trial results. Companies working in the healthcare industry have to look at both their corporate and product reputation.

Any life science or healthcare company with products they wish to sell to a healthcare service provider such as the NHS should ideally work with a specialist healthcare PR agency.

As well as having all the basic PR skills, these agencies have staff with life science backgrounds, who are also highly experienced PR, health policy and medical education practitioners. They will also understand the complexities of how to get products into the NHS and how to best overcome some of the barriers such as NICE and the GP Commissioning process. This means that they are able to work in partnership with their clients and offer sound advice based on years of built up knowledge and expertise.

The link below show a diagram that gives an example of the when different types of PR needed throughout the lifecycle of a product.

Product Life Cycle PR

PR is however much more than a Press Release or an opportunity to have one or two article appear in a few selective newspapers. As well as raising awareness for your products or services a good PR programme can also significantly improve the recognition of the work you are doing so your are able to develop relationships with the key market influencers who in turn will support you so your are able to grow your company’s and products reputation in your chosen market.

All of these are important factors for life science companies to take into consideration when entering highly competitive UK and global healthcare markets.

This series of blogs is aimed to help Start Up or SME life science companies with limited marketing and PR knowledge understand the basics of core healthcare PR strategies which need to be undertaken if they wish to successfully sell their products to an healthcare service provider either here in the UK or globally.

The series will cover:
• The different types of PR
• Key opinion leader development
• A dose of digital
• The importance of advocacy groups
• Why health economics messaging is key
• The market access funnel

Product PR often gets a bad name especially when the creativity outweighs some of the serious issues such as cost, clinical outcomes and market demand need to be addressed. But in our evidence-based NHS decision making market whether to make a product available outside of NICE/SME guidance is often driven by the determination and inspiration of one or two people who are able to cut through the usual cost barrier, challenge the “well we cannot fund everything arguments” and focus on the best possible care for their patients. Market access challenges do not necessarily mean the end of creativity, seeing beyond the barriers to create campaigns that will encourage those challenging your access to market to take notice are as equally as important as a well thought out health economic dossier.

It may take years to retrain the parents but at least super nanny is always there to help out.