INBOUND ACCELERATOR

Healthcare, especially working with IT companies that serve the healthcare industry, has been one of my specialty fields for years. Through more than decade of experience working with a variety of businesses that serve healthcare providers and organizations, we’ve learned a few things about how to reach the unique target audiences within healthcare.

In particular, healthcare IT companies need to understand the decision-making process of CIOs, as well as how IT impacts multiple aspects of healthcare, from patient outcomes to revenue streams.

When you are trying to cut through the clutter of an exponentially expanding amount of online content, it has to be great (as I talked about in my last lesson). One way of making your content great is to base it on original research.

Any good integrated marketing and PR program is built on a foundation of planning, strategy and interdepartmental collaboration. But the bricks, steel, windows and doors that make up the structure the world sees are composed of content.

Content is essential, whether you are talking about basic website text on the homepage and in FAQs, downloadable whitepapers, reports, and other resources, or blog posts, bylined articles contributed to industry media, social media updates, or even videos and infographics and other images. Content matters.

In my last two articles in this series of lessons in marketing, I’ve talked about the importance of trust when dealing with finances and money, and the importance of understanding the science when marketing in the life sciences industry. Healthcare IT is another field in which decisions are made slowly, based on data and authority.

Healthcare marketing has traditionally been dominated by two approaches: awareness campaigns on billboards, print media and broadcast; and general educational material, first as magazines, and now in electronic newsletters, blogs and websites. All of it is focused on a broad audience.

The philosophy we subscribe to at JONES, and have been able to bring to fruition for some of our most successful clients, is the idea that everything you do in marketing and public relations is connected. And it should all be pointing, ultimately, toward bringing in leads and closing deals.

Our client West Corporation has successfully done just that with its healthcare communications and patient engagement technology department, working with us to take communications strategies from concepts through research, writing and design, promotion, and inbound lead generation all the way to finalized sales that

With 2018 winding down and 2019 about to kick into high gear, it’s a great time to do a little research, learning and goal setting for the next year. If you are like me, each year you set a resolution to spend more time learning things that I can apply to my life — my health, my family and my job.

But there is only so much time available and there is SO MUCH out there to read, watch and listen to. How to choose?

I want to personally congratulate our new biotech/pharmaceutical client QPS on the expansion of its U.S.-based Phase I clinical trial capabilities to support the growing needs of its pharmaceutical, biotechnology and CRO (contract research organization) partners.

To fill their drug pipelines, large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are buying promising drug compounds that have been developed by small biotech companies up to the point of candidate nomination. These promising compounds then become candidate drugs that the large companies put through rigorous testing and analysis before potentially being reviewed and assessed for approval by the FDA.

Original data provides an authoritative underpinning for the most compelling stories marketers tell. While the story is essential, when it is backed up by research that provides guidelines for solving problems, the combination is twice as strong. So you want to get the most mileage possible from the data and the stories it tells.

Too often, marketers fall short in their use of surveys, however.

Healthcare is changing, and how healthcare providers and hospitals approach marketing, is changing along the way.

Those changes in how healthcare is chosen, provided and paid for opens opportunities for healthcare IT companies to step up and assist their customers by changing their own marketing approach to one that provides information and guidance, not just a sales push.