by Tim Boivin | May 10, 2017 | Blog
When it comes to product launches, many companies hang their hat on making a big splash at the biggest trade show in their industry. And then they are disappointed.
For those targeting the healthcare IT market, that usually means HIMSS. For those targeting providers, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) show is often cited as a great launching pad.
For payers, it’s the Association of Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo. For a life science/pharma audience, eyeforpharma Barcelona is a perennial favorite due to the heavy pharma presence in Europe.
But as Caterina Lui of PR Newswire points out on the Beyond PR blog, launching during a big show is not always ideal. And in another Beyond PR post, she provides excellent insights on whether your solution is even truly ready to launch.
One of the biggest drawbacks to launching at such large industry trade shows and conferences is the sheer number of companies who are planning to do likewise. This becomes an even more pronounced challenge if your company is launching a minor upgrade to its platform or app, or if your company is a newcomer or relative unknown in the market.
In both cases, a launch as much as a month or even two months before a trade show can help build momentum going into the show, instead of being crowded out by all the PR noise generated during the show. It allows you a greater opportunity to secure quality time with reporters whose conference schedules (covering educational sessions, filing stories, doing social media posts, etc.) are pretty crammed during the conference. It also allows you to brief analysts at the top firms ahead of the launch.
Here are some other best practices for trade show launches from my Amendola colleagues:
Lisa Chernikoff, Account Director In the best-case scenario for a product launch at a trade show, you can not only include results and ROI from a beta customer or pilot site in the press release, but also have that client available for an interview at the show (or before or after). Clients speaking about their experience with the product is much more beneficial than company execs talking about features and functionality.
Also, make sure that the new product info highlights not only what it is, but also why it really matters for the target audience. What are the larger implications for the market? How does it relate to industry trends and issues?
Chad Van Alstin, Content & Media Relations Manager As a former editor, I always found it challenging to cover product launches at trade shows without some kind of prior knowledge. Simply telling me a company was going to announce a product pretty much melded together with all the other launches after a while.
There has to be some kind of teaser or hook a spoiler that many companies are often hesitant to give away ahead of the show that is released to the media a week or two in advance. Otherwise, it all just becomes noise after a while, especially with a huge show like HIMSS. I think too many companies rely on the fact that editors will simply want to cover whatever it is the company is doing but in a market with so many new names added to a long list every year, that’s just never the case. You have to spoil things a little bit in order to drum up interest.
Amy Koehlmoos, Senior Account Director Leverage the power of social media – create a Twitter campaign around the product launch and use the show’s #hashtag to reach attendees. As with any campaign, frequency is key, but be sure to follow best practices and include plenty of non-promotional tweets to maintain an optimal content mix.
Rich media (images, videos and graphics) will help your tweets stand out above the noise, and don’t be afraid to get creative. People are much more likely to share a clever meme than a picture of a widget.
Stephanie Janard, Senior Writer — If you’re launching a new software solution, there’s no hard and fast rule that says you have to actually demo it. In this era of value-based care, why not stage a demo that 
shows how life can be better as a result of using your newly launched software or app? Likewise, if you have a tangible, physical product to demo, make a real show of it preferably with a real-life example. If you can get champion customers on the act, all the better.
So there you have it from the A-Team experts (and PR Newswire). Should you bet it all on a trade show launch or not? It may be a crapshoot, but make sure you evaluate all your options both at the show and in other timeframes before committing your entire marketing budget to the effort. And please share your thoughts below on what you have seen that works well for a product launch either at, before or after a trade show.
by Administrator | May 9, 2017 | News
Agency insiders give tips to refresh and reenergize content marketing, tradeshows, social media and more
SCOTTSDALE, AZ., May 9, 2017 With more than half of the year still on the horizon, healthcare IT marketers and communicators are evaluating next steps to promote their companies. To jumpstart creative thinking, check out the following series of blog posts from Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and healthcare IT public relations and marketing agency.
“The Four P’s to Think Like a Marketer.” As marketers prepare their budgets, a few perennial questions emerge. Should more of the budget be allocated to content marketing or advertising? On trade shows or public relations? There is no shortage of options vying for the marketer’s dollar, but savvy marketers get that a balanced approach is better than risking most of their budget on a single strategy. With that, a terrific process exists to get the most results out of existing resources.
“Don’t Judge a Book by its Sales: Tips for Making Your Book a Relationship Magnet.” It’s a marketing vehicle tapped by relatively few companies, but a book can attract attention, credibility and leads galore. For executives seeking to establish their thought leadership or steer their way to media attention, penning an authoritative book could be the most direct path they take.
“Content Marketing: Remember to Ask “And Then?” A blog post or video that’s gone viral, a webinar that attracted lots of sign-ups”¦too often these are considered ideal end goals, when what they really should be are the starting points. Wise marketers plan ahead to make sure there’s always a next step in place to guide prospects to the sale.
“Tips for Social Media Success.” A social media presence is almost as important as a brick-and-mortar address, at least from a public relations and marketing standpoint. Yet for many companies, social media remains an enigma, especially with so many social media platforms to learn and navigate. And make no mistake, each does have its own set of best practices. The good news is there are universal guidelines to quickly become a competent practitioner of social media marketing and PR.
“HIMSS is Over, Now What?” Sure, HIMSS is several months in the rear view mirror. But there is still time left to leverage the investment made in the show, and act on the contacts and opportunities that were made to secure analyst coverage, bylines and more.
“The Press Release: Marketing’s Swiss Army Knife.” Just like the Swiss Army knife performs a multitude of functions, so too does the press release. In fact, this staple of public relations turns out to have a surprisingly versatile set of benefits for marketers, from SEO to lead gen. This is in addition to the good public relations and media attention that a strong press release can still generate.
“How to Make the News, Even When You’re Not the Headline.” Companies often hire PR agencies with the intent of getting front page coverage on USA Today or the Wall Street Journal or to star in an in-depth feature in a widely read trade publication. However, such a score rarely happens at the beginning of one’s PR effort; even Steve Jobs had to wait years to become a media darling. However, there are plenty of other ways to garner attention from the press that are of great value to any company.
Amendola’s blog posts cover all things public relations and marketing. A go-to source for communications professionals, the blog publishes on a weekly basis and features over a dozen subject matter experts in every aspect of publicizing and marketing healthcare technology companies.
About Amendola Communications
Amendola Communications is an award-winning national public relations, marketing communications, social media 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 www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Marcia Rhodes, Amendola Communications / mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by Julie Donnelly | Apr 26, 2017 | Blog
Dear Republicans, welcome to the Health Reform PR Fire Swamp (HRPRFS)! Like the Fire Swamp from the Princess Bride, the HRPRFS features several obstacles that did tremendous damage to the Affordable Care Act. As Republicans are hurtling forward with their ACA replacement bill, now called the American Health Care Act, it’s time to reflect on the Democrats failures. Here’s how Democrats fared against the Fire Swamp’s terrors, and how Republicans might avoid the same fate:
Flame Spurts: In the Princess Bride, flame spurts erupt seemingly unexpectedly in the Fire Swamp. But on closer inspection, it is discovered that a distinctive popping sound precedes each flame spurt, making them easier to avoid.
In the HRPRFS, it’s very clear that flame spurts erupt every time a blanket claim is made by a health care reform bill’s proponents. Case in point: former President Obama’s claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” This statement will go down as one of the worst PR blunders of the Obama Administration. The reality was that 4 million people on the individual market had to switch plans, in many cases because their old plans did not meet the minimum creditable coverage standards imposed by the ACA. But it’s too late for explaining once the flame spurts have burned you ask Princess Buttercup.
Republicans seem to have learned something from the Democrats failure to avoid these flame spurts. HHS Secretary Tom Price, speaking earlier this month, stopped short of saying everyone would be able to keep their doctors with the ACA replacement bill, instead saying “Our goal is absolutely to make certain that individuals have the opportunity to select their physician.”
Rodents of Unusual Size: The Fire Swamp in the Princess Bride featured giant, gnarly rats with sharp teeth. The ACA, meanwhile, got hit with Premium Increases of Unusual Size. When it was reported last fall that premiums on the Arizona Health Exchange would grow by an average of 116 percent for a mid-level plan, those affected were outraged, and Republicans found a new rallying cry for their claims that “Obamacare is collapsing”.
Just one insurer remains in the market, down from eight health insurers last year, after the payers priced the products too low to adequately cover the costs of a sicker risk pool than had been predicted. It was reported at the time that just a small percentage of Arizona’s population buys their insurance on the ACA marketplace and that most of those receive subsidies to absorb those large increases. But it almost doesn’t matter.
After hearing those Premium Increases of Unusual Size, everything else just sounds like a dull hum. Those big numbers stick in the imagination of the public and explaining, again, is fruitless. Earlier this month, The New York Times tried again, publishing an interactive feature explaining that only 3 percent of Americans face ACA premium increases, because everyone else either has employer-sponsored health plans, which have faced modest increases in recent years, or they receive subsidies to cover large premium increases.
Republicans faced their own Rodent of Unusual Size when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 24 million Americans would lose their health insurance under their proposed replacement bill. They attempted to defuse the anticipated RUS by discrediting the CBO ahead of time, explaining that the non-partisan agency had previously been wrong on ACA insured estimates. But that tactic mostly failed, and Republicans are busily amending the bill to try to reduce that 24 million uninsured number, while also appeasing conservatives who want to further limit Medicaid spending.
Lightning Sand: Another of the three terrors of the Princess Bride’s Fire Swamp is lightning sand, a drier and quicker form of quicksand that swallowed up Buttercup in an instant. When it comes to health reform PR, the lightning sand tends to suck in any positive PR, making it instantly disappear in the shadow of bad news.
The dominant story of the ACA over the past several months has been high prices and few choices for consumers. This narrative has drowned out more positive stories, such as how the ACA has enabled a large number of small business owners and entrepreneurs to access health coverage. The health reform PR lightning sand has also tended to bury encouraging ACA cost data. For instance, the federal government saved $7.4 billion in avoided payments to hospitals to cover the uninsured known as the uncompensated care pool in one year alone, 2014. More than two-thirds of these costs were avoided due to Medicaid expansion, a part of the ACA which is now in Republicans crosshairs.
Republicans are getting their first taste of the lightning sand, as the CBO estimated that their ACA replacement bill would save $337 billion, but it was quickly buried by the fact that the bill would increase the ranks of the uninsured by 24 million (See: RUSes, above).
**BONUS**
Bog of Eternal Stench: The pitfalls of health reform PR cannot adequately be contained by one 1980s fantasy film. So, I’ll offer Labyrinth’s Bog of Eternal Stench as an important cautionary tale for Republicans as they move their ACA replacement bill through Congress.
When it comes to PR, a botched launch stinks for a long, long time. The healthcare.gov debacle haunted the ACA for years. It severely hobbled the credibility of the Obama Administration’s health reform efforts, as well as causing actual harm for some consumers who were unable to sign up for new health plans in time. Reporters continued to write about it as late as 2016.
Republicans will necessarily have to overhaul or completely replace the federal exchange. State exchanges will also have to change dramatically to accommodate new plan designs, pricing structures and tax credits.
If Republicans decide to eliminate the exchanges, they will need to figure out how Americans will access these new plans instead. In any event, this upcoming transition is ripe for technical and operational challenges that are likely to have real human consequences. Republicans would do well to prepare the public ahead of time for road bumps, while maintaining realistic internal timelines.
Putting the Fire Swamp in the Rearview
In the Princess Bride, Buttercup and Westley manage to best all the Fire Swamp’s challenges and live happily ever after. Robin Wright has moved on from hapless Princess to shrewd First Lady, as Claire Underwood on House of Cards, with a very promising political future.
But that’s only in Hollywood. The only escape from the health reform PR Fire Swamp, it seems, is to hand off responsibility for crafting and executing the legislation to the other party. Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi has been clear, it’s the GOP’s Fire Swamp now. It’s Republicans turn to listen for the popping sounds before the flame spurts, and do their best to set Americans expectations about what this new incarnation of health reform will and won’t accomplish, and within what timeframe.
by Matt Schlossberg | Apr 19, 2017 | Blog
On the night of November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, ending the longest drought in the history of American sports
OK, before I continue a caveat. This isn’t going to be another metaphorical sports-as-insert-unrelated-industry-here blog post. I’m not going to compare media relations to a clean-up hitter nor end this piece advising your team to “hit is out of the park.”
But there is a practical lesson the Cubbies historic run can offer to organizations that contract with a healthcare PR agency.
When he was hired to run baseball operations for the Cubs in 2011, Theo Epstein held a remarkable press conference. He explained that in order to build a winning club, the entire structure needed to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. The overhaul would affect every aspect of the organization, even the ball park, and that several years would pass before the front office’s effort bore fruit.
It didn’t take much to read between the lines the Cubs were going to stink. And not in the usual way fans had become accustomed to. In other words, history-making bad.
What was remarkable and perhaps overlooked about that press conference was Epstein’s transparency. It’s an unwritten rule in sports to never admit to a rebuild, to confess that the product you are placing on the field may be intentionally awful for the foreseeable future.
If you were a Cubs fan between 2011 and 2016 and you referred to “The Plan,” everyone knew what you were talking about.
Reflecting on those sour years, Epstein said, “You realize it’s just easier when you’re transparent. You realize it works with everyone. It works managing up, it works with the media, it works with agents, it works with your fans.
It’s kind of the best way to do things if you can pull it off. Something as simple as transparency is really scalable, because it quickly impacts the culture.”
Transparency is a critical component of a successful PR program. Great PR teams are proactive. Not only do they get ahead of stories, they also help create the narrative. But that only works if a transparent culture is fostered between the agency’s team and the organization it represents.
PR teams that understand the good, the bad and the ugly of the organizations they represent allow them the space to best position the company and its narrative in the public eye. Quietly working on a months-long initiative only to bring it to your PR rep’s attention the day before launch and expect the moon in terms of coverage is unrealistic. Obscuring a poor outcome or promising customers that never show up to interviews puts your rep on the defensive and makes your program reactive, always playing catch up.
Think of your PR team as the guardians of your reputation. They can only protect and position what they know. In short, anything and everything you tell your PR teams helps them help you. On the flip side, a good PR team is going to be explicit about being upfront, diligent and discreet in their communications.
So what are the ingredients for a culture of transparency?
- Be open. It’s important to focus on missed opportunities as much as victories, so we can learn from our experiences and apply it to the next campaign.
- Seek and deliver feedback. PR is as much an art as science. Some initiatives work, others don’t. If your agency’s style of operation doesn’t mesh with your own, speak about it openly and frankly. If you have a good agency, they’ll adapt.
- Make sure good news isn’t the only news. Every organization hits a rough patch a delayed initiative, an unhappy customer, internal shake-ups. Keeping your PR team in the loop helps them offer constructive advice and a strategy for dealing with these issues should they become public.
A transparent culture impact everybody it build trusts, strengthens relationships, and enables your PR team and organization to tap the flexibility and creativity required to be a positive, proactive force in the marketplace.
by Heather Caouette | Apr 12, 2017 | Blog
Swiss Army knives are generally thought of as the go-to multi-tool, capable of performing all sorts of handy functions in one neat little package. Marketers have their own version of the Swiss Army knife: the press release. It has the versatility to advance a variety of marketing goals.
That was not the case several years ago. Back then, press releases were written for the media; hence the name. Today the internet, social media and business practices have blurred the lines, which means in many cases a press release is no longer written with the sole purpose to attract media attention or fulfill an SEC guideline. Instead, it is a multi-function business tool.
Press releases allow you get your message out to your audiences unfiltered. This one piece of collateral is completely versatile and can help companies work towards a plethora of goals, including:
- Media relations: Good, solid media relations. Through distribution services, press releases are sent to journalists’ email, where they can choose to write about the news. Even if the reporter does not cover the announcement right away, your information may be filed as a “source” for future articles. The exposure can also make journalists aware of your company, or keep them informed about your latest developments.
- Sales: Current projections estimate that 60% to 70% of the business buyer’s purchase process is made before they contact the vendor. Given that most information a prospect obtains is before they enter the sales funnel, you need ways to reach them earlier in the purchasing journey. Also, press releases can be a reason for the sales team to go back to a prospect. Customer wins may be shared with prospective client of a similar size, specialty and/or location. Many deals are completed by potential customers after seeing what their peers are doing.
- Attract New Talent: Who does not want to work for a company that is doing exciting and innovative things? Showing momentum can turn the heads of qualified candidates for even hard to fill spots.
- Keep Investors in the Know: Highlighting your successes can attract investors. A steady cadence of news signals an active company that is gaining traction, a key to obtaining investor interest.
- SEO Benefits: When credible websites and search engines pick up your press release, it can raise your placement in Google search results, which drives traffic and increases awareness for your site. Using specific keywords can optimize the press release to be easily searchable by audiences, including prospective and current customers, employees, investors and the media.
You can significantly increase interest in your press releases by adding images or video, making them even more beneficial. Which business objectives will they help you unlock?
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Amy Koehlmoos, Senior Account Director Leverage the power of social media – create a Twitter campaign around the product launch and use the show’s #hashtag to reach attendees. As with any campaign, frequency is key, but be sure to follow best practices and include plenty of non-promotional tweets to maintain an optimal content mix.