Frequently Asked Questions
There are many descriptions online. For us, we like the simple definition. Marketing communications (often shortened to marcomms) are the channels and tactics you use to share key messages with your intended audiences, such as patients, staff, stakeholders etc.
Marketing communications in primary care help you to:
- Share something important with a specific audience.
- Improve understanding of what you do and why.
- Influence what people think and improve their knowledge.
- Encourage specific groups of people to do/feel/act differently.
- Make more people aware of you.
- Build a community around your organisation.
- Reduce complaints, confusion and criticism.
It’s not as easy as it looks. It comes down to how you identify your many audiences, which channels and tactics you use to reach them and most importantly, the words and ways you choose to combine all that.
Remember, it’s often not what you say; it’s how you say it. That’s where marketing communications skills are essential.
Not always (didn’t expect that, did you?)
It appears to be an expectation these days, and it’s mighty when used correctly, BUT there are still many other communication methods at your disposal that, when planned correctly, can reach your intended audiences with more clout than social media.
A virtual communications manager considers the best channels, tactics, messages and audiences you need to reach with a strategic, wide-angle lens and a practical, put-things-into-action ability.
They can pick up the communications, marketing and social media tasks you don’t have time or skills to do and offer you vital advice and guidance just as you might outsource aspects of your HR, finance and IT.
GP practices, primary care networks, GP federations, LMCs, organisations that provide services to primary care, independent community pharmacies, physiotherapy clinics, dentists, community services and optometrists.
If it’s a service that falls under primary care, we’re there for you.
At the bottom of each of our services, we provide a rough idea of our prices. Every client comes to us for something slightly different, designed for them, so we can’t quote outright until we know what you specifically need.
The price we quote you includes:
- the expert skills, experience, value and creativity it takes for us to do the job successfully
- wiggle room for any adjustments or last-minute tweaks
- the software or licences we need to use or obtain to carry out your work
- any additional materials we need to source on your behalf such as print, advertising or stock imagery.
That’s why we take time to produce a quote that covers everything so there are no surprises and you know the price from the start.
We’re not a big team, so we’re very careful to only work with a set number of clients at a time, so we have ample time to care for each one. Small team but mighty results!
Of course – we insist. We’re happy to introduce you to clients where we’ve completed similar pieces of work for them so you can grill them on what we’re really, really like and what our annoying habits are, like sending GIFs and emojis in our emails and being utterly frank about stuff even at 9am!
Learn more about us here. When people ask ‘why you guys though?’, we say it’s because clients tell us we’re the best at:
- writing with warmth and authenticity
- answering angry patient comments and reviews with clout and compassion
- refreshing tired website content
- crafting key messages to cue in on what really matters
- helping insanely busy teams find super simple ways to do things commsy or social media-related that’s been taking them a long time to do
- making the complex, simple for technophobes
- finding fresh ways to say the same boring things everybody else does but in your own unique and brilliant voice, so it stands out.
Check out our services for more details on all of these.
It’s a bit like you and your appointments. If a patient is late or doesn’t show up, you still have other patients you need to see, so you have to try and fit the patient in at another time which isn’t always easy.
That said, we might need lots of information upfront for some projects, such as for website refreshes, and then you can leave us to it. Don’t worry; we have a straightforward process for pulling this together.
For other work, we ask questions when they come up or book regular catch-ups so we can save all our questions up for then. Like you, we hate an overflowing inbox.
Each client prefers something different but whatever we do for you, we must keep in touch regularly to keep projects moving and on message.