Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

Cyndee Holden, AVP of Marketing at ARUP Labs

Public relations is a constantly evolving discipline, and Health B2B PR is certainly part of today’s evolution. To provide insight into how our vertical fits into the broader changes happening in PR, I asked a good friend, Cyndee Holden, to share some of her insights. Cyndee is one of the most PR savvy professionals I know, and has a ton of experience in all sorts of PR verticals, not just Health B2B. She is an associate vice president of marketing at ARUP Laboratories and the leader of their integrated marketing communications team.

Question: What are the public relations roles that your team fills at ARUP Laboratories?

Cyndee: At ARUP, our team covers the major disciplines and roles of public relations, including: branding, media relations, internal communications, crisis communications, strategic communications, event planning, public affairs and advocacy, community relations, and new media and web development.

What does your executive team expect out of public relations?

As an integrated marketing communications team, we focus on consistency of message and the complementary use of media.

Our executive team trusts our team to identify client insights and develop an appropriate promotional strategy with the right audiences and publications to create a strong brand identity and client relationship. They rely on us to know the right touch points to use to reach our clients and understand how and where they consume different types of media.

You’ve done media relations for all sorts of companies. In your opinion, what’s the biggest difference between B2B and B2C media relations?

The biggest difference is the perception of what constitutes a “big win” in media placement.

When my focus was on B2C media relations, my idea of a “big win” was reaching the largest number of potential purchasers through mass media. The idea of getting placement on all the TV stations and newspapers in a market or one big placement like The New York Times or Today Show was very exciting, because we knew we were getting our message out to the largest number of consumers possible. If we did segment the media pitch, we focused on media that skewed toward a broad demographic— like men 18-36 or females 18-36.

With B2B, the focus is on smaller audiences and niche publications. For example, getting a hit in CAP Today or Lab Manager is more likely to reach my potential client and build credibility more than a mass media hit. So while the publication may only hit 45,000 instead of 450,000, it is still a huge cause for celebration!

What role does social media play in your public relations efforts? Do you see that role expanding?

Social media definitely plays a role in our public relations and marketing efforts. The growth of social media has allowed people to build social and business connections online. In these communities, we can easily create content that draws attention to our company and encourages others to share that information with their own social networks. Social media has opened the door for increasing brand awareness and expanding conversations with our target audiences.

We view social media as a perfect combination of push-pull messaging. We push content to various platforms and then use linking and relationships to pull those users back to our website and our brand. As we continue to expand our relationships online, we will expand the role of social media within our marketing efforts.

Read More: http://healthb2bmarketing.com/2010/12/pr-leader-use-traditional-and-emerging-strategies-to-reach-b2b-audience/