Top Healthcare PR Strategies for Patient Acquisition

By Luke Hannan

The competitive healthcare industry is forcing much of the medical and healthcare community to evolve, leading to mergers and even bankruptcies for some of the biggest names in healthcare.

Making matters worse, the rapid rise of health tech is putting economic pressures on hospitals, healthcare service providers and medical practitioners to change the way they do business.

Many healthcare service providers are turning to digital marketing strategies as a solution to this rapidly changing environment, even though their understanding of PR and marketing is limited.

The top healthcare PR firm, Macias PR, recently published an Infographic that takes a closer look at the two most popular marketing approaches: public relations and advertising. (You can view here). Macias PR has run media and branding campaigns for several healthcare and health tech organizations, including Columbia University Medical Center, Burke Rehabilitation Center, Medicaid Advisory Group and others. The firm has secured news stories for their clients with all the big names: CBS, ABC, NBC, New York Times, Politico, Fox News and others.

This year, Finance Monthly named Macias PR the 2016 PR Firm of the Year – USA based on the firm’s media deliverables, expertise, client relations and innovation in PR. The NYC-based firm was founded by Mark Macias – a former Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York.

“I speak with healthcare companies all the time regarding their desire to get on the news,” said Macias. “Surprisingly, many of them have misconceptions about PR. They wrongly believe that you can’t measure the value of it. You can measure the value of a media placement in a quantitative way.”

Macias says the healthcare trend he sees suggests more companies and firms are devoting more of their marketing budgets to PR over advertising, which his firm’s meta-analysis supports as having a better ROI.

Here’s a closer look at some of the findings in their meta-analysis.

ROI Comparison of Marketing Strategies: PR vs Advertising

*A Nielsen study revealed that PR is 90 percent more effective than advertising.

*70 percent of consumers read healthcare articles to research products and services, according to Axonn Media.

*News stories cost 62 percent less than online ads per lead, according to Web Serves.

*80 percent of all business decision makers get their company information from articles vs. advertisements, according to Content Marketing Institute.

*1 in 3 Millennials say they aren’t influenced by advertising, according The Guardian.

*54 percent of Internet users say they don’t click on ads because they don’t believe them, according to Bannersnack.

*50 percent of all online ad clicks are accidental, according to Business Insider.

“You don’t need to be a social scientist to understand we are all driven to ignore ads. We look for new information from credible sources, and that usually begins with news organizations,” said Macias. “Consumers talk about what they read and watch on TV. A targeted media campaign will get your potential clients talking about your business.”