subject: Health Care Pr: Stretch Your Marketing Budget [print this page] With increasing levels of competition and constrained marketing budgets, drug companies are increasing their health care PR efforts to ensure they are ahead of the game. The main objective of health care PR is to increase awareness for a certain product or therapy to gain sales or patients. Public relations is often employed as an alternative to advertising since it delivers the same or better results without costly outlays for media buys or other promotional activity. In addition, health care PR allows the company to communicate with their consumers and enables them to gather opinions and comments about their products or services.
Health care PR purveyors have truly embraced the use of social media. Health care PR practitioners have come to recognize that social media can provide ease of access to frequently asked questions or community forums through the Internet, increasing their credibility while reducing operating costs. This can also be very useful in terms of crisis during which health care PR often takes a leadership position in communicating with various constituencies.
For health care PR practitioners, the main objectives of their campaigns are to build product awareness by communicating its advantages and effects. This is typically accomplished by disseminating detailed information about the product to the target audiences by several means such as press releases, media relations, the submission of bylined articles as well as the aforementioned use of social media. With the use of articles, newsletters and websites, Health Care PR pros can provide information to the consumers, giving them more understanding about the product.
Beyond product support, health care PR pros have recognized that it is helpful for maintaining a public image for an organization through communication between that organization and its publics. In other words, it is a set of practices that gives any business positive effects on their reputation. Pharmaceutical companies have come to utilize health care PR to burnish their corporate reputations through the delivery of messages that portray the company as a good corporate and community citizen.
In the battle for consumer attention, health care PR can put companies at a decided advantage. Third-party endorsement via media coverage be it social or traditional can go a long way in building support for a product or therapy and can be done in a highly cost efficient manner vis--vis other forms of commercial persuasion.
