The healthcare industry continues to grow and develop. Technology continues to evolve at an almost astonishing rate, creating room for new companies and new health tools to emerge.Every year more and more new businesses fill the space: in 2021, healthtech startups will collectively improve An impressive $29.1 billion.
new Healthcare Startups Arrive every day, this is one of the most important steps Expand your startup Your company is being promoted. While health tech startups will naturally focus their sales pitches on what makes their products and services unique, it’s equally important that they establish themselves as thought leaders and stand out in the public eye.
Many marketing tools can help companies achieve this, but one of the most effective and dynamic tools is PR. Whether you’re hiring an agency or working in-house, PR can help position your company not just as a technology leader, but as a trusted voice for the future of the field. That is, when your PR is done right.
data-driven pitching
One of the best ways to boost your company’s profile is to have influential journalists write about you and your company. But first you need to know which publications and which journalists will be interested in your story.
In PR, the most powerful stories are those that reach the right audience at the right time. To do this, you have to find the right reporter at the right publication. You are undoubtedly familiar with the power of data. Data makes the world go round, and that’s true in both PR and healthcare.
You can sell to journalists intuitively, but you will be more successful with a data-driven approach. For example, if your healthtech startup revolves around medical transcription services for healthcare providers, you may want to gather as much data as possible around publications that write medical records. Who is writing these stories? Why do these people write for publications? What have these writers covered in the past on this topic, and how do you use your industry perspective to join the conversation?
Armed with this data, you can easily write personalized emails that target the right reporters. This will maximize your chances of getting their attention.
Winning Media in Healthcare
when getting a mention New York Times or Forbes It’s certainly anyone’s ability, but there are real benefits to industry-focused publications targeting top media outlets. On the one hand, you’ll have a better understanding of the typical readers of publications aimed at your industry. New York Times Covering such a broad and diverse audience, your story is bound to find some interested readers, but it will also reach more uninterested readers.
Niche healthcare industry publications with well-defined audiences can lead to higher ROI for your PR efforts. Since publications in the healthcare industry are more focused, more personalized outreach can be crafted to grab the attention of journalists, or even publish your own article with a byline at the top.
Lastly, industry publications are often more trusted in the areas you want to reach. A huge advantage of earned media over paid advertising is that endorsements from unbiased, reputable sources are more effective at increasing customer trust, which is critical for health tech startups. It’s also a lot cheaper than advertised.
Make the most of your data
Now that you have all this information about bars and reporters, you can carefully plan your promotion. Remember, journalists want stories. They don’t want ads. Even if you think the readers of the publication you’re targeting are a good fit for your health tech offering, the journalist who writes the story doesn’t care.
Journalists focus on providing useful information to readers who are not particularly interested in your marketing ROI. So you need to give them something they can use. Let me be painfully clear: they don’t want to write about your products and services. Now, let me repeat: they don’t want to write about your products and services. If you want to report, you need to give reporters what they need, not what you want.
Writers and editors can easily discover templates or blanket sales. They can tell when you copy-paste something you sent to the 49 other reporters you found on Muckrack. Instead, take the time to customize your pitch to reference what they’ve written before and explain why you might offer a new angle or idea. Show them that you’ve done your research, that you know the type of stories the publication typically runs, and that you have something real to add to the conversation.
So, if you’re a health tech startup that sells software to hospitals to check patients, you might notice writer Katie Adams wrote a story Provide MedCity News with information on scheduling optimization software. But don’t send her thoughts about the exact same article. Cite that story in your presentation to prove you’re paying attention, but give her a new idea, like the financial cost of a hospital’s outdated CMS software.
Publications and journalists love topical, relevant, and story-driven ideas. Don’t think of them as gatekeepers. Think of them as partners and treat them as partners.
PR evolves as much as healthcare
In the old days, PR used to be about people you knew: your PR agency’s connections in the media industry, and the exclusive access they could give you as a client.
Today, PR is a more democratized field where the best stories, voted for the right people, have the best chance of making a splash in your field. Using data to find journalists and publications, you can ensure your health tech startup gets the coverage it deserves.
Photo: Digital Vision, Getty Images,
