by admin | Aug 10, 2021 | News
Award-winning Healthcare IT PR agency and the leader in on-demand physical therapy delivery partner to amplify client successes and industry best practices
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Aug. 10, 2021 – Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and technology public relations and marketing firm, announced that Luna, the leader in on-demand physical therapy, has selected the firm to support brand amplification and recognition among key players in the healthcare industry.
Luna is the nation’s fastest growing on-demand physical therapy service bringing rehabilitation services directly to patients’ homes. Their mobile-first approach expands access for patients and increases adherence to post-operative therapy, lowering costs for providers and creating a new mode of employment for expert physical therapists.
“Legacy physical therapy models built solely on brick-and-mortar clinics are not working for patients,” said Luna Co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer Palak Shah. “The best evidence of this is the fact that 70 percent of patients never complete their treatment plan, and 63 percent expressing a preference for at-home physical therapy. Luna’s on-demand, in-home approach not only helps patients get healthy, but provides new levels of flexibility, independence, and income potential for therapists, and helps hospitals and clinics retain patients. We’re teaming with Amendola to get the word out about this pivotal development in healthcare. Amendola’s deep industry knowledge and media connections, virtually assures the visibility we need to continue our rapid growth and momentum.”
Amendola is implementing a full-service communication strategy for Luna that will amplify the company’s ongoing brand, growth, service updates, expertise and successes. Recently Luna officially introduced their turnkey solution, Rehab at Home™ and announced their expansion in the Greater Seattle and Dallas regions through key local provider partnerships.
“The physical therapy market was hungry for a better way to support patient rehabilitation, and Luna provides a high-quality, low-cost solution for them,” said agency CEO Jodi Amendola. “Introducing this model to the wider rehabilitation space is an important step forward in continuing to meet growing value-based care requirements and offering more consumer-centric programs. We’re excited to partner with Luna on this endeavor.”
To learn more about how Luna is a new era of technology-enabled physical therapy, visit getluna.com.
About Luna
Luna is the leader in on-demand physical therapy, delivering outpatient physical therapy beyond the four walls of a clinic. For patients, Luna has reimagined the physical therapy experience, matching them with a therapist for in-person care at the time and location of their choosing and ongoing coaching through an easy-to-use app. For physical therapists, Luna enables them to manage their careers with flexibility and autonomy, using a platform that makes scheduling efficient, documentation easy, and billing automatic.
For leading health systems and orthopedic groups, Luna improves revenue for rehabilitation services by dramatically expanding access and reach, improving adherence, reducing costs, and standardizing quality. Luna is the fastest growing physical therapy provider, with more than 1,000 exceptional therapists providing services in 19 states across the country. For more information, please visit www.getluna.com.
About Amendola Communications
Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact: Marcia Rhodes, mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by admin | Jul 15, 2021 | News
Amplification, education & patient-centric storytelling helps Air Methods’ No Membership Required program take off
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—July 15, 2021 – Amendola Communications (Amendola) today announced it has been named a finalist in two different categories for PR Daily’s 2021 Digital Marketing & Social Media Awards, including the Grand Prize for Digital Marketing Campaign of the Year and the Healthcare Marketing Campaign category. The agency’s campaign, “Amendola Helps Air Methods’ No Membership Required Program Take Off,” included amplification, education and patient-centric storytelling to help fuel pending legislation and resolve an ongoing, industry challenge.
“To overcome the widely misunderstood reimbursement for air medical care, we implemented an integrated, hard-hitting education, amplification and patient-centric story-telling campaign,” explained Jodi Amendola, CEO of Amendola. “We brought together a range of approaches across owned and paid media to make sure the message resonated. It required an extraordinary amount of planning, creativity, energy and execution. I am proud of the quality of work and dedication of the A-team, as well as the high level of engagement and collaboration with Air Methods.”
THE INDUSTRY CHALLENGE
Health plans typically don’t cover emergency air transport services, leaving already traumatized families to face exorbitant bills. The industry’s solution was to sell “memberships.” But nearly every region is covered by only one organization, which led people to pay into a membership for years and still were billed as if they were transported by another company. As a result, the medical emergency transport industry – including Air Methods, a leading provider of air medical emergency services – received negative media publicity.
A CUSTOMIZED, INTEGRATED PROGRAM: NO MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED (NMR)
Amendola launched the Air Methods campaign with four strategic goals:
- Change public perception that emergency air transport companies take advantage of patients in times of distress through predatory billing practices
- Shift public and media sentiment toward Air Methods specifically from negative to positive/neutral
- Establish Air Methods as a leader in reforming the industry to serve patient needs in a fair and caring manner
- Demonstrate Air Methods’ thought leadership with byline articles and media interviews focused on billing reform, industry best practices, clinical innovation, and more
Air Methods created an advocacy program to work with patients who were unable to pay their outstanding balances, ceased selling memberships (and refunded membership fees previously paid by Medicare patients) and began working with health plans to get their services covered.
Amendola launched a digital campaign called No Membership Required (NMR) to raise awareness at the national and community levels of Air Methods’ decision to stop selling memberships as well as its efforts to become in-network providers for the nation’s top health insurance companies. Amendola and Air Methods launched the NMR campaign in November 2019 with a series of digital ads, some of which included videos with testimonials from actual patients about the patient advocacy program. The patient stories helped take Air Methods from being perceived as a faceless corporate entity to a caring provider of necessary, lifesaving services.
This program included press releases on topics such as Air Methods refunding membership fees to Medicare patients and announcements of the company securing in-network agreements with various health plans. In addition, an ongoing stream of social media posts delivered positive, consistent and constructive messaging, helping promote the NMR program and its underlying principles.
IMPRESSIVE CAMPAIGN RESULTS
The NMR digital campaign earned more than 21 million video plays, nearly 25 million impressions, and more than 21 million post engagements. Most important, however, was the effect the campaign had on consumer sentiment toward Air Methods. Throughout 2019, Air Methods averaged 26.5 negative media articles/mentions per quarter. In Q1 of 2020, that number dropped to just 5, a reduction of roughly 80%. Additionally, Air Methods has established itself as a clear leader and visionary organization within its industry.
The “Ragan and PR Daily Award programs celebrate the most successful campaigns, initiatives and teams in the communication, public relations and marketing industries.” The winners of this year’s awards are expected to be announced in late July.
About Amendola
Amendola is an award-winning, national public relations, marketing communications, digital and content marketing firm. Named one of the best information technology (IT) PR firms in the nation four times by PRSourceCode, Amendola represents some of the best-known brands and groundbreaking startups in the healthcare and HIT industries. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros delivers strategic guidance and effective solutions to help organizations boost their reputation and drive market share. For more information about the PR industry’s “A Team,” visit https://acmarketingpr.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Marcia G. Rhodes, Amendola Communications, mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by Chris Nerney | Jul 7, 2021 | Blog
Successful marketers are persuasive. Whatever their medium – print, audio, video – the content and messages they create consistently prompt their target audience to take action.
There are multiple schools of thought about effective marketing, not to mention plenty of marketing and copywriting “experts” (legit or self-proclaimed) willing to offer you their insights through books, online courses, subscription newsletters, and other revenue-generating vehicles. Many of them offer excellent advice.
But there also is a seemingly unlimited amount of free online advice offering sound tips and strategies for writing deeply persuasive marketing copy. The advice ranges from the theoretical to the practical. I’ve pulled together five that jumped out at me for one reason or another. They are in no particular order. Let’s get going.
Know your audience
OK, right off the bat I lied, which admittedly isn’t a great long-term marketing strategy. The truth is, this first item – know your audience – actually is the most important piece of advice on the list, which now (so far at least) has a semblance of order!
You simply can’t hone an effective marketing message if you don’t know who it’s intended to persuade. One copywriting advice guy I read says “the key to great copywriting is to like your audience.” I understand where he’s coming from, but I would instead suggest it’s better to understand your target audience, particularly their needs and pain points that could be addressed by your company’s products or services.
While liking them might help get you there, doing some research would be even more illuminating and productive. Another way to help sharpen your understanding of the target audience is to create a profile or persona based on demographic data.
Know your message (and tighten it)
You can’t market effectively if you 1) don’t know what you’re marketing and 2) how to explain it in various levels of detail. The latter can be particularly challenging for healthcare technology companies that have complex platforms or services. There’s a lot to explain! One cofounder I know told me he knows the exact moment when he loses potential customers as he tries to explain his startup’s technology: “I can see their eyes glaze over.”
Eye glazing is never a good sign. Make sure you can explain your technology – and, more importantly, what problems it can solve – clearly and concisely. That’s a struggle for some technologist entrepreneurs, which is why many of them hire marketing and PR professionals to help them shape and deliver their message.
Write about your audience (not about what you’re selling)
Your content needs to read as if you’re personally addressing your target audience, as if you can read their minds and are on their side. The best copywriting puts the focus on the needs of the audience, not the merits of a product or service. Yes, those eventually will have to be discussed, but only in the context of solving a problem for the potential buyer. At all times, it is about the customer. A lot of “you” in your marketing content goes a long way.
Write for your medium
How you write content for a 2,000-word white paper will be dramatically different than how you would write 150 words of web copy for a home page. People who sit down to read a white paper they downloaded have different expectations than those who are surfing around looking for something to interest them – or a solution to their problems.
For the former, you have room to delve into how your technology works, how it applies to various use cases, etc. You can geek out. In the latter case, your mission is to capture readers’ attention and keep them on your site. That requires the equivalent of emotionally hard-hitting ad copy that leads to data capture, lead generation, and potential customers.
Invite a conversation
Granted, you can’t do this with every marketing asset. But a steady social media presence can enable you to have an ongoing dialog with members of your target market. There may not be an immediate revenue payoff, but social media is about the long game. It’s for building relationships, encouraging engagement, learning about your customers, and establishing a consistent voice for your brand. Writing for social media should be relatively informal and conversational.
Conclusion
Marketers have more tools and channels than ever for connecting with existing and potential customers. To get the most out of your marketing strategy and efforts, you must understand your target audience, know how to talk to them (depending on the medium), know what to say to them, and be eager to listen and learn.
by Jodi Amendola | Apr 28, 2021 | Blog
As many readers of the Amendola blog are probably aware, I lost my mother, who was my inspiration and guiding light, to COVID-19 the night before Thanksgiving last year. It was difficult for my family as well as me, especially because I believe it was unnecessary.
She should have been there to celebrate the holidays with us and would have been in my opinion had it not been for some missteps in her care.
As part of my process of dealing with this unexpected loss, I wrote a story about her that appeared in the Arizona Republic. If you’d like to know more about the details, along with my thoughts about what you should do to advocate for your loved ones should they be in the same unfortunate circumstances, it’s all contained in that article.
It’s what happened next, however, that I want to address today.
Shortly after that article appeared (and was re-posted on Facebook), I began to receive the most touching and beautiful comments, messages, and emails. And I’m still receiving them.
Some were from friends, of course, expressing their sympathy for my loss. Many, however, were from strangers who had gone through a similar experience and found a sense of kinship in sharing their grief as I had shared mine.
It was a stark reminder of a basic principle we, as marketing and PR professionals, should keep in mind: PR in general, and thought leadership in particular, works better when you make it personal. A topic, incidentally, I also explored in my latest Forbes Agency Council article.
The most effective thought leadership comes when the person behind it is passionate about the subject matter. Yes, you can write in a detached away about something technical, conveying information and/or data that is worth sharing. But while it informs, it usually doesn’t move people to action.
For that you need a human element. And nothing is more human than sharing something personal.
It can be a story from your childhood, your teen years, or your time as an adult. It can be about something funny that happened to you, or something sad, or something that contains a mix of emotions you can’t even sort out yourself.
Or it can be about a person who means a lot to you. Like my mom did to me.
The important thing is that it is a little glimpse behind the façade we all tend to put up in our business encounters to cover our true selves. In other words, it’s real.
Organizations often talk about creating an emotional connection to their brand during branding meetings. But then they’ll do everything they can to hide anything that seems remotely raw or real.
To me, that approach makes no sense. Sure, you don’t want to air all of the organization’s dirty laundry in your marketing and PR efforts. But what’s wrong with showing your human side?
The point is a person or a company can be open and honest about their feelings and reactions to events without falling into the rabbit hole of controversy. The key is to focus on the parts that are universal to the human experience.
We all experience joy and caring. We all experience excitement and wonderment at one time or another. We all experience grief and loss.
That doesn’t mean we experience it in the same way. But we do share those experiences to some degree.
The more willing organizations are to take a stand and tell stories about themselves, their employees, their customers, and everyone else who is connected to them, the more “real” they will become in the minds of their key audiences. And the more successful they will be in creating a brand image that is unique and memorable.
I know it’s not always easy to tell these stories. We can all feel a little exposed when we offer these types of details about ourselves.
When I wrote about my mom it was like going through it all over again.
Yet as I see the reactions continue to come in I know I made connections with people I’ve never met, and probably never will properly meet. Isn’t that what marketing and PR are really all about?
by Chris Currington | Oct 7, 2020 | Blog
Whenever asked to come up with a marketing plan, many people refer back to the “The Four Ps of Marketing” and use them as the basic foundation to develop an integrated strategy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of healthcare and health IT companies have had to totally rethink the four Ps—whether they know it or not. And, they’ve had to do this as fast as possible while trying to save lives—of frontline workers and infected patients—while remaining relevant and profitable.
Here’s an example. Currently all eyes are on the biopharma industry to see how quickly they can develop a vaccine that will effectively stop—and hopefully eradicate—the coronavirus.
- The “P”roduct here is the vaccine, and there are many companies testing theirs to see which offer the best and safest results.
- But have you also noticed a lot of the “P”romotions that these companies have been making in the national news? So far, none of them have been paying for these promotions—and that’s an important point of clarification—not all promotions are paid.
- There are also a lot of national arguments on the “P”lacements of the vaccines. How will the vaccine be distributed and who will be first in line to receive it? How will they know it’s available and where to get it?
- And of course, we’re also hearing a lot or rumblings about the “P”rice of the vaccine. Will it really be free (someone has to pay for it) or will there be a hefty cost when people pull up their shirt sleeves?
Because we’re in a pandemic, the whole healthcare industry has had to deal with its effects on their individual products and services. Here’s a recap of a few observations of what’s been happening.
Product
Because of COVID-19, many—if not all—health IT companies have had to take a very hard look at their products and solutions and how they can help health workers deal with and provide care to those in need.
Some of the products are back-end solutions that integrate with technologies such as EHRs—to provide faster service and track results. Certain companies may deal more directly with healthcare coordination or how data is being used and sent, while others may provide community-based services to those who are most vulnerable. And as mentioned above, many are dealing with therapeutics that help in delivering care to those affected with the virus.
Placement
Directly related to the product or solution is where and how it will be used. This will have an effect on how it will be marketed and determine the channels for those efforts.
Right now, in healthcare, certain products (think thermometers, COVID-19 tests, ventilators, etc.) are moving very quickly all around the world. But it takes sophisticated logistical operations to get equipment where it needs to be.
But this also affects how the public is informed and how the product gets used. For example, we’ve heard several instances of how someone may be feeling symptoms related to the virus but has absolutely no idea about where to go to get a test.
Promotions
This is probably the most confusing and difficult of The Four Ps to navigate during the pandemic. With so many companies wanting—and deserving—earned media placements, many news outlets are overwhelmed with requests. Having the right relationships with the media, and offering them true, compelling and factual stories is key to making sure products and solutions receive the attention they deserve.
Paid promotions are an obvious possibility, but with so much information “out there” companies will need to be very analytical, specific and targeted to reach their audiences and cut through the noise. Social media is also a good option to promote a product or solution, but knowing the right channel and frequency are keys to getting attention, followers, likes and shares.
Price
The most compelling of the Four Ps to the consumer of a product or service is the price! Remember all the fears about toilet paper and hand sanitizer shortages, and efforts to control supply and demand?
Many healthcare and health IT companies—in order to meet needs and create a common good for care delivery—provided their solutions for free. But they can’t do this forever because they’ll go broke. And, in an unstable economy, pricing dilemmas will surely consume many of these companies’ time—while trying to maintain and salvage relationships with clients and customers.
As has been demonstrated time and time again, The Four Ps of Marketing create the formula for a winning strategy and a profitable company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have had to revisit all the Ps to make sure their product or solution gets where it needs to be or does what it can do for health workers.
Products, places, promotions and price are now more relevant to healthcare delivery—and saving people’s lives—than they have ever been before.
