In the time of the world’s largest medical crisis, this is a major opportunity for health tech companies to shine. Businesses that can directly help should be taking the time to make smart moves to grow their reputation. This is my POV on what health tech marketing teams could do to support.
It’s a scary time out there. With the massive amounts of misinformation around COVID-19, it’s no wonder that nearly everyone you know has become a skeptic these days. Not only skeptical of the media, what our own president is saying, but how many people do you know are even skeptical of what you are saying or how do you feel when you talk to someone?
I recently had a long conversation with a medical professional (and good friend) about telemedicine. Pre-quarantine, I had participated in a dinner sponsored by one of these new businesses and I had a trust issue with them. How would I know if the doctor I was speaking to on the other end was right? Why would a doctor give up seeing patients, owning their own practice, to talk to someone through a chat box (they didn’t use video)? Even through video, how could a doctor tell what was actually going on without checking vitals? Would the advice of a telemedicine doctor always be “go see a doctor live?”
From my perspective, telemedicine has an image issue.
Now, after talking it through with my medical professional friend, I did end up being pro-telemedicine – but how? She let me know what telemedicine IS and ISN’T for.
I’m assuming that health tech marketers have already thought this far, and nothing I am saying is new (although I was surprised that the COO of the business did fight my skepticism a bit with arrogance instead of addressing my questions with understanding). Here’s a few things, from my POV, that health tech marketers should do to support growth:
Create content that matters – and builds trust.
If you aren’t already working on increasing your reputation, this is the time. Putting out thoughtful and informative content – ones that will build long term trust – is key right now. Being consistent, straightforward, and simple.
- Support with facts and data – use reputable sources, or carefully put out your own proprietary data),
- Leverage experts – especially those with influence; say a well known medical professional with years of history and positive track record
- Don’t overwhelm – there’s a lot of extremely detailed content out there – point people to reputable sources, don’t try to cram it all into one piece of content.
- Be consistent – this matters greatly
And really – be truly helpful. If it isn’t helpful, and it’s just noise, don’t do it. It could be more damaging for your reputuation in the long run.
Build partnerships with influence.
You’ve seen that meditation apps have taken to supporting entire cities to working with brands with significant influence (e.g.: Headspace & Sesame Street). Now is the time to identify who you would work with to support each other’s reputation.
Take this time to re-examine your value prop.
This is an exercise for leadership, but is what you’re doing still relevant, especially during this magnitude of tragedy? If may be a time to address your vision, mission, positioning, and key messages, and ensure that they can stand the test of time. Ideally, these things don’t change much, but sometimes if they aren’t pressure tested like this, you’ll never know how resilient they will be. So take a minute to breathe and look at the long term sustainability of your brand.
Header Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash