Tap Native: Blog

HOW TO USE CONTENT MARKETING
IN HEALTHCARE PUBLIC RELATIONS

By Tapnative | Native Advertising In Healthcare |

How to use Content Marketing in Healthcare Public Relations

The native content marketing boom is particularly relevant in healthcare because healthcare is such an information rich industry. The content format and storytelling style has been particularly attractive for public relations endeavors because healthcare is about making emotional connections. Because native ads are the beginning of the discovery process, content marketing is about elevating brand perception, driving awareness through timely and personally relevant content and the positive engagement surrounding the experience.

We are bombarded with information today that spreads quickly and recirculates in smaller more digestible portions. Content marketing using native advertising has been revolutionary to the PR business especially in healthcare because it allows for the targeted delivery of paid and earned media and highly scalable brand reputational management. There are several important factors that can make public relations within healthcare more effective using content marketing and native ads.

1. Earned Media

Pitching a story to industry news outlets is time consuming and while worth the effort is not guaranteed to get you any placement, distribution or viewership. Augmenting earned media through content marketing with the right partner becomes scalable. Using Tap Native to distribute your earned media however is effort that can be throttled to your budget and pays with every single view and click. You can disseminate specific messages to specific audiences in a scalable manner using tools and tech that give you control. Using Tap Native also creates opportunities for additional sharing and awareness or even seeding viral campaigns. The more your brands name is displayed on third party websites, the more recognizable it becomes and the more it becomes associated with the content you’re pushing out.

2. Crisis Management

On average healthcare brands experience a potential crisis every two years. Whether a competitor launched a fake review attack, or your drug or service category is being attacked or even when false negative customer claims damage your brand - content marketing using native ads is fast response that can be launched in minutes. Furthermore, it is scalable and can be kept “on” as long as needed to ensure your side of the story is also being heard. Companies are often remembered for their crisis response even years after an emergency ended. Johnson & Johnson, set the gold-standard for crisis management in the 1980’s for how it handled the Tylenol recall. The company turned around a crisis situation in which seven people were killed due to cyanide-laced Tylenol. J∓J acted quickly to recall all Tylenol capsules in circulation and worked with FDA officials to create new tamper-proof packaging. As a result, media coverage regarding the event is still positive nearly four decades later (we’re writing about it now). But positive actions by a company are all too often overlooked by the media who get more traction with negative or even fake news. Content marketing is a way to turn the tables to push accurate and balanced information out in order to counter false, misleading or downright inaccurate information being reported, shared or circulated.

3. Owned Media

Hospitals, health systems and pharmaceutical companies are great examples of organizations that have invested tremulously in creating deep credible content assets. Today’s brands are also publishers that understand content is only as useful as the people who engagement with it. PR’s importance to a brand’s owned content is growing thanks to content marketing. With several tools and tactics available to promote owned content, PR may need to assume more responsibility for assets like the client’s blog — both in the sourcing of the content (to make sure it’s always up to date) and increasing its reach among qualified audiences to better establish the client’s position in the marketplace as a thought-leader.

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Tap Native ad units are integrated within the content of popular health destination sites. You can see in the example below that Tap Native ad units focus on health and provide the source of the content: