Companies in the biomedical space face unique challenges – explaining your value proposition, making your mark, generating adoption – all in a highly regulated environment, and typically with a need to keep expenditures in line. Public Relations (PR), or more specifically media relations resulting in earned media coverage, is the process of building and maintaining a relationship with a third-party media outlet that speaks directly to your audience. That media outlet can help you tell your story, and because your story is coming from an unbiased source, it offers credibility and supports conviction confirmation.
In a 2020 study examining the credibility of a variety of sources used for external communication comparing media relations to advertising and other forms of audience communication, 48 percent of respondents found third party media coverage – PR – to be the most credible. In addition, 80 percent of business decision-makers say that they prefer to get company information from a news article versus other forms of communication. Building and cementing credibility is particularly important for start-ups, and in the realm of biomedical tech, perhaps even more so.
The benefits of strategic marketing…
- Build name recognition
- Create and confirm investor confidence
- Signal early adopters
- Support commercialization
Action Plan
Launching a program takes strategic thought, and building your road map is the most important part of generating a successful campaign. These steps will get you off to the right start.
- Prep your team – make sure that your team and board understand what PR is and what it can – and cannot – achieve. Set expectations and solidify understanding and buy-in.
- Plan your program – identify what you want to achieve and your best-case outcome scenarios.
- Build your budget – with PR, you can spend as little or as much as your budget allows. Knowing your budget ahead of time will help you keep focused on the targeted goals and objectives.
- Identify your target audience – target your key audiences and build a plan to speak to them.
- Start early – even before regulatory clearances, planning a program and building your key reporter relationships is essential to long term success.
- Be smart in what you promote as news – avoid releasing too much information as news, but be consistent, and regular. Momentum matters. Use a calendar to plan specific releases with other activities.
- Train your spokesperson(s) – prepare them with tips and tricks and best practice standards for communicating with reporters. Have talking points ready and rehearsed.
- Build your support channels – social media, corporate blogs and pushed communications like eblasts should be considered in tandem with PR, so that messages are aligned. Connect with support organizations that can amplify your messages. Be proactive.
- Identify opportunities for paid amplification – supporting “organic” PR with paid amplification is a important way to help ignite immediate results. Build this into your budget and plan ahead.
- Be patient – building name recognition and connecting to news sources takes time.
What reporters want
- Real news with a real voice – make it relevant to the average person, story-telling is ideal.
- Understand this is not an ad – tell me your story and why it matters to others.
- Be responsive and reply immediately to any questions.
- Build a relationship with the reporter.
- Understand that reporters have guidelines and news cadences based on audience preferences. Your job is to match current events with readers’ search interests.
- Share what is important at the beginning of a conversation.
- You will not have a chance for input or review before publishing, so don’t ask for that.
- Respect the inbox – reporters get so many emails every day so over-asking in email isn’t the best way to be heard or build a relationship.
Content provided by Lisa Owens, an independent public relations and marketing counselor with experience in the healthcare and biomedical industry.
https://lisaowenspr.com/
210-601-6647
