by Chris Nerney | May 28, 2025 | Blog
Some health technology entrepreneurs are absolutely convinced their company has a unique, revolutionary solution that will transform healthcare. And they will not hesitate to tell you!
Most, however, are more grounded. They only have to look around to see that the problems their solution is designed to solve – whether it’s clinical data quality, patient identity, billing accuracy, etc. – have attracted the interest of other clever and well-intentioned people. They have competition! Worse, some of these sector rivals are well-funded.
Which doesn’t mean your solution is any less genuinely transformative to healthcare consumers, providers, payers, or researchers. What it does mean is you likely face a formidable challenge in rising above the noise in your sector to attract and capture the attention of potential customers and investors. After all, there are a lot of stories being told out there.
So how can healthcare PR and marketing pros make their company’s story compelling enough to break through and stand out in a crowded market? For starters, health tech companies can gain a market advantage by clearly articulating (and repeating) across multiple channels what problems their solutions solve and how these solutions benefit patients. Why should customers choose your solution and not a competitor’s? You need a great answer to that question.
Hone your marketing language to highlight your company’s competitive differentiators. Once you’ve locked in on a framework for your messaging, you can deploy several specific techniques to help your health tech company rise above the clamoring masses. These include:
Practice precision marketing
The marketing messages that resonate with potential customers such as provider organizations or payers may not resonate with investors. While a hospital or health plan will want to know what your technology costs and how it would help them improve care quality or operational efficiency, they’re not interested in a graphic showing the projected growth of your startup’s market sector. Investors, on the other hand, care deeply about a sector’s growth potential as well as a prospective portfolio company’s strengths and weaknesses (particularly its technology and leadership team) relative to the competition.
It is essential that you learn the needs and pain points of each target audience and then tailor a message that specifically addresses them. Try to get feedback from members of your target audience (or people who understand their concerns and priorities) and then modify as necessary.
Go multimedia
We may be in the technology business, but humanity sells. The human connection is a powerful thing; people like to hear and see other people talk. That’s one of the reasons why podcasts have become so popular. If there is someone in your company who could shine on a podcast, do not hesitate to get that person some training and some bookings.
No matter how nervous your subject matter expert may be, once they see the positive response internally and externally, they’ll be pestering you for more podcast opportunities. Then they’ll ask for help getting an agent.
You also can use multimedia in social media and in press releases. Spice up your messaging with pictures, graphics, and even short videos. You won’t need to hire a crew for a three-camera shoot, either; videos can easily be recorded on a smartphone.
Get customers to tell their story
I know, it’s one of the hardest things in marketing. A health tech company’s customers – whether they’re a hospital, health system, payer, or academic center – may not want to get involved in your marketing efforts because 1) they’re pretty busy doing their own jobs, and 2) they worry about being perceived as shills for a vendor. From their perspective, those aren’t unreasonable concerns.
But you won’t know what your customers say until you ask. Suggest doing a white paper on their experiences with your solution or ask for one of their spokespeople to join you on stage at an industry conference or for a podcast. People like to talk about their successes and impart advice to colleagues. It’s all upside to them.
One great selling point for healthcare marketing and PR pros who are trying to get a customer to share their experiences is to emphasize that the customer’s story (and yours) centers around how they were able to better serve patients using your technology, not the merits of the technology itself (which should be apparent in the telling of the story). Again, it’s an opportunity for the customer to talk about what they’re doing to help patients, research, or efforts to control healthcare costs.
Conclusion
To succeed in highly competitive markets, health tech vendors need a coherent message centered around how their solution benefits both patients and potential customers. By tailoring these messages to targeted audiences, leveraging the power of multimedia to build human connections, and working with customers to communicate powerful success stories, health tech vendors truly can stand out in a crowded market.
by Ken Krause | Jun 24, 2020 | Blog
It sounds like a simple request: we’re going to be at such-and-such conference or event and we want to secure some media interviews while we’re there. It makes sense, since trade show media interviews have been a staple of public relations pretty much since Glogg launched the wheel at the first Prehistoric Transportation Expo.
The problem is the business and media worlds have changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, particularly in healthcare. Major trade shows such the HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition have grown tremendously. In fact, before it was cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns, HIMSS20 was touting that it would have more than 1,300 exhibitors covering 1.2 million square feet of floor space. And they are not the only ones to experience this proportional growth.
In the meantime, the media world has been shrinking. Overall there are fewer reporters and fewer publications. Budget considerations mean that the remaining publications will be sending fewer reporters to cover conferences, and some may not send any at all – even for large conferences such as HIMSS.
You can probably see where I’m headed. With so much competition for so few “prizes” the odds are really stacked against you. That’s why it’s important to be on top of your pitching game.
Here are a few suggestions to help you rise to the top of reporters’ must-see lists and secure more trade show media interviews once in-person conferences are a thing again.
First, be realistic
Back when I started at Amendola Communications, it was not unusual for us to target 7-9 media and analyst appointments for our clients at a major trade show such as HIMSS. That is no longer feasible.
The entire media list at a conference that size may have between 100 and 200 names on it. Of those, only a small percentage are likely to cover your company’s segment, and some of the people within that subset will be publishers who aren’t interested in what you’re selling but instead want to sell you on advertising or marketing with their publications.
If you’re lucky, maybe there are 10 names on that list that are appropriate and valuable for media interviews. It’s unlikely those 10 people only cover your niche, however, so there could be dozens of companies competing for their time.
They are also going to want to attend some of the educational sessions, or take part in other activities, so the time they have to devote to booth or media room interviews is actually fairly limited.
You are unlikely to capture the attention of all 10, so expecting a number even close to that range is simply unrealistic. A more practical number is 2-3. If you secure that many interviews with the right people these days you’re doing well.
At a smaller conference, there may only be 10 reporters (or fewer) attending, no matter what the advance media list says. If you can get even one of those 10 to interview your subject matter experts you’re doing well. That’s just the realities and economics of the media world today.
Building the pitch
Now that you know what you’re up against, and how competitive it really is, it’s time to start building the pitch.
If you’re going to be successful in rising to the top of the must-see list, you need to capture reporters attention. The easiest way NOT to do that is to talk about yourself.
If your pitch starts out “(OUR AWESOME COMPANY) has been in healthcare for 20 years. In that time we have helped dozens of hospitals and health systems (DO SOMETHING GENERIC, LIKE IMPROVE OUTCOMES AND LOWER COSTS) you’re going to wind up with a hard pass. No matter how many follow-up calls you make or how much you beat up your agency to get appointments.
There is nothing in that generic pitch that is interesting or urgent to the reporter. Remember that the first three letters in “news” are “new.”
To secure those trade show media interviews you have to present something rare and valuable, right up-front.
Offer a customer
The absolute gold is customer stories. Reporters always, always, always want to talk to customers. Did I say they ALWAYS want to do that?
If you have a customer to speak with, lead with that. Make it the major part of your pitch. You can also offer to hook them up with your SME while they’re there, but telling them they can speak to a customer who has used your product and produced quantifiable results with it moves you to the head of the class.
Talk about a new product or service
If you don’t have a customer to offer, second in line is the introduction of a new product or service. Not just an upgrade of your existing offering but a true innovation. If you can talk about an industry issue and explain how your solution addresses it in a way that has never been done before, you’re bound to capture some interest.
Lead with industry issues
What if you’re just going to be there with no customers and nothing new? Honestly, it’s going to be tough to secure any trade show media interviews. But you never know a reporter might have a hole or two to fill, or may already be a fan of your organization.
In that case, the best you can do is again start with an industry issue and then go into how you solve it versus starting with your company’s boilerplate or “About Us” from the website and then getting around to the problem you solve.
One other thing to keep in mind: although you may love and admire your CEO, unless he/she has an Elon Musk or Bill Gates level of celebrity is probably not that interesting to a reporter. Talk about an issue, then offer up the CEO as someone who can address the solution.
Try working relationships
One other thing you can try is working good, existing relationships with reporters. If you’ve worked with someone a few times in the past that person may be willing to at least do a “drive-by” an unscheduled stop when he/she has a few free moments.
While not as reliable as confirmed trade show media interviews you never know. The reporter may stumble across something interesting and spend some time checking it out.
Of course, if you don’t have any relationships already it might be a good time to speak with a PR agency that does. I can think of one in particular that has an outstanding reputation with reporters and editors in healthcare and health IT.
An agency with a large client roster will sometimes get opportunities not available to the general public, such as a reporter asking for a list of clients attending the conference so he/she can pick and choose the ones he/she wants to visit. That’s the fast track to a trade show media interviews because the reporter is depending on his/her relationship with the agency to lead him/her to the right clients.
No guarantees
Even with all of those tips there is still no guarantee you’ll get the trade show media interviews you desire. There’s a lot of hard work, and not a small amount of luck, that goes into it.
Still, these tips can help you increase your odds and make your own luck. And if you’d like that agency help, give us a call.
by Morgan Lewis | Sep 19, 2018 | Blog
Prior to joining Amendola Communications, I was a senior editor at Medical Economics, the largest monthly business management journal for primary care practices. Before that, I was a senior editor at a couple monthly city business publications as well as a daily newspaper reporter.
The journalistic experience has proven invaluable as a public relations writer because it gives me a deeper understanding of how to create the articles that editors want in their publications. As an editor, I would receive pitches daily from PR professionals. I admit that not every pitch received the time and attention that were clearly put into them, for various reasons which I will describe later.
My last day as a publication editor was in May 2011. Judging from my experience since then as an independent and agency PR writer, however, not much has changed, other than the growing importance of social media, which you can read more about from one of our experts here. In that light, here are five confessions from my time as an editor reviewing countless pitches from PR and marketing professionals that might help your company score an interview or article placement.
- If it wasn’t relevant to us, it was deleted. Explain clearly in the pitch how the potential article’s information would be relevant to readers. The editor may not agree, but at least it demonstrates that you took the time to learn about the publication instead of just sending out a mass email with the editor’s name at the top.
- Data/outcomes were always interesting. Quantifiable results jumped out in a pitch, especially when there was a “$” before those numbers. Business management publications, even in healthcare, love to publish articles about dollars earned or saved. Numbers were even more powerful if my publication was offered the first chance to share them with readers, which brings us to another attention grabber.
- Exclusivity was exciting and appreciated. Offering just one publication the first opportunity on a story can be difficult for a company because it limits or delays spreading the story to a wider audience. Exclusivity, however, is alluring to many publication editors, especially web or breaking news publications where being first is mission critical.
- Sharing research builds trust. This tip is somewhat unique to healthcare, but as a trade editor, I always appreciated when a company representative presented medical journal literature that supported the claims in the pitch. Medical journals, unlike marketing content, are objective and critical, which are two qualities journalists prize. Presenting literature in the pitch showed me that the company was trying to be as transparent as possible, which built trust and fostered a stronger relationship with the company representative.
- Offering a real customer was almost a sure thing. Interviewing or publishing an article by a senior executive didn’t intrigue me as an editor as much as speaking with a physician or other customer of the company’s solution. This rule especially held fast if the company was relatively new. Readers want to learn from other readers like them, which is part of the reason today why blogs and YouTube channels from ordinary people are so popular. Sharing the perspective of an actual customer also builds credibility, and again, earns trust with the editor and readers.
There are plenty more tips I could share to grab an editor’s attention, but another quality I appreciated in pitches was conciseness, so I’ll stop there. Fortunately for Amendola Communications, we have lots of former print and web journalists working here, and many others with extensive media-relations expertise. Give us a call or email and we can discuss how we can help spread the word about your company across all types of business and consumer print and digital media.
I promise that we will respond.
