Marketing minute
To PR or not to PR
A public relations firm can improve your
practice’s image in the community. You can do it
yourself, but it may be worthwhile to hire a professional.
One difference between public relations
and advertising is that public relations is free, right? Well,
not if you hire a PR firm. Good public relations is the sine
qua non of a successful doctor, but there may be elements of
your public image that it would be worth paying a professional
to polish.
Of course PR can mean many things.
If you have a great bedside manner and your patients tell their
friends and colleagues to seek your care, that is positive PR.
However, the kind of PR I am talking about here has more to do
with how well the larger community (regionally and possibly
even nationally) knows you and your work. This extension beyond
your usual reach is what PR professionals can help you achieve.
When I sat down to write this column
my main objectives were to assess why physicians might want to
use a PR agency, what the firm could do for the doctors, and
how much it would cost. Here’s what I discovered.
Reasons to use a PR firm (or not)
When I asked Timothy Blair, the president
of BlairPR, Inc. in Los Angeles, California, why doctors might
want to hire a PR firm he said, “Physicians need a public
relations firm to help build and reinforce positive brand
identity.”
Another PR expert, Ron King, who is
the president of Vanguard Communications, a Denver-based firm
that specializes in health-care PR, told me that there are two
reasons why a physician should hire a PR firm. The first is if
there is a “perception problem or a crisis in
communication problem.” By this he means that if a doctor
or a practice has experienced negative publicity (perhaps due
to a malpractice claim or because of unseemly behavior by
someone in the group such as alleged Medicare fraud or illegal
drug use), then he or they may need some positive spin. While
this is not the usual case, it is something that may lead a
physician to hire a PR agency. King says the more common reason
to engage PR services would be that “it is good for
business.”
If you read the book Public
Relations Kit for Dummies, you’ll note that the author
tells readers that they can do this themselves. He discusses
the “myth” that a PR firm has contacts that you
don’t. He writes, “The ‘contact myth’
is a lie perpetuated, in my opinion, by the PR firms in an
attempt to make potential clients feel dependent on PR
professionals.”
Richard Laermer, the author of Full
Frontal PR, counters this by writing, “People think that
PR professionals do nothing but send out releases to reporters
and that editors and writers make all the news happen... Well,
PR is more than just that—it encompasses dozens of
avenues. Media relations, press alerts, trade shows, brand
creation, marketing communications, by-line pieces, internal
messaging—a PR agency must do all of these jobs
superbly.”
While the Dummies book suggests that
people can do their own PR, the author does go on to say that
there are legitimate reasons to use professional PR
firms—one of the primary reasons being that it takes a
lot of time to do your own PR and outsourcing may make
financial sense.
Ron King concurs with this point. In
fact, he says that his firm, which specializes in health-care
PR, provides clients with not only a valuable time savings in
that they don’t have to do the work themselves, but also
“10 times as much value in ink and air time as
advertising would cost.”
On the other hand, if you have
someone in your office who has the time and the talent to learn
to write press releases, make media contacts, and much more,
then you may be all set. A good place for that person to start
would be to read the Public Relations Kit for Dummies as it
does offer a lot of good advice.
What a PR agency can do for you
Besides simply getting your name out more,
Timothy Blair says that a good PR firm will help a physician or
group of physicians “build and reinforce positive brand
identity.” In the past, I have written about the
importance of branding. However, for a quick review, Kristie
Kuhl, the vice president of the New York-based PR firm Makovsky
& Company Health Practice, says that branding is about an
emotional connection. “When you see the Nike swoosh, what
does that mean to you?” Kuhl asks. In the same way that
products make people feel certain ways, so do the names of
doctors and practices. “People want to feel a connection
with their doctor’s office,” Kuhl says. “For
example, in my ob/gyn practice, people know that these are
women doctors who are very caring. Patients call the doctors by
their first names and vice versa.” She goes on to say
that when women in the community hear the name of her
doctor’s practice, they immediately have the image of a
caring group of physicians who treat their patients more like
peers.
All of the experts I talked to agree
that what a PR agency could do for you depends a lot on what
goals you have. As Kuhl says, “When you don’t know
where you want to go, any road will take you there.” Kuhl
believes that there is no “cookie cutter” approach
for doctors and that the goals depend a lot on the
individual’s training, practice setting, age, and many
other factors. Kuhl says it is important to make sure that the
PR tools you use match your goals. “You don’t want
to use a screwdriver when you need a hammer,” she says.
Timothy Blair agrees. “Any
consultant or firm worth its salt will develop a Strategic
Communications Plan to guide and measure its efforts,” he
says. This plan contains your goals. If you aren’t sure
what you want to achieve, Kuhl advises that you look to the
future and think about what would make you happy two years
hence. Would it be more time off, a larger patient base, a
higher income, or developing a specialty niche? The answers
will be different for everyone, but this is a good place to
start considering your goals and goes back to the idea that if
you know where you want to go, you can plan the way to get
there.
Finding and retaining a firm
I found the PR firms in this column
through an Internet search that cross-matched “public
relations” and “healthcare.” Timothy Blair
suggests you contact your local office of the Public Relations
Society of America and ask for a list of members who specialize
in health care.
When interviewing a firm, ask to
talk to satisfied clients. Also inquire as to how long they
have had their clients. If they don’t have longevity, it
may be because they are good at selling their services to
physicians but not so great at delivering what they promise.
It is helpful to know that PR firms
generally charge clients in one of three ways. First, they may
do a “project” rate. Second, they may charge by the
hour. Third, they may work by retainer. For some, an hourly
rate is billed against a monthly retainer. Ron King says,
“In the end, people just want to know what the job will
be and how much it will cost. We detail the work with a
detailed contract (plus or minus 10 percent guaranteed).”
If King needs to do more work, then much like a construction
contractor, he writes a change of work order.
The rates vary widely (generally
from around $80/hour to more than $400/hour for the top PR firm
executives). However, you can probably hire a PR agency for
something in the range of $5,000-$20,000 per year. Again, this
depends a lot on your goals and how much work you want them to
do.
Although it may be tempting to work with
an agency for a very short period of time (and therefore save
money), King advises against this. He cautions, “I
don’t like to do anything for less than six months
because it takes time to develop a relationship between the
physician and the media.” He does believe that six months
is a reasonable amount of time to try out an agency and track
results. If you aren’t satisfied after this time, then
consider moving on. However, in the early stages, be patient.
As King says, “[Public relations] is like pushing a large
boat out to sea. It takes quite a few tugboats to pull it out,
and then once it gets going, it can cruise for a long time with
little effort.” g
Julie Silver, MD is an assistant professor
at Harvard Medical School and the author of several books
including Chronic Pain and the Family. She also directs the
Harvard CME course, Publishing Books, Memoirs and Other
Creative Non-Fiction.
