How we come up with content ideas for healthcare and professional services clients
- Abbie Thompson
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
When it comes to finding PR opportunities for healthcare and professional services clients, knowing where to look for the right story makes all the difference. These are serious, regulated industries that have many opportunities for impactful coverage.
At Chapter II, we've developed a clear process for uncovering PR and marketing opportunities that make these clients stand out in their sectors.
Immerse yourself in the sector
As for any client, before you can start generating ideas, you must understand the client’s world properly. That means reading their key trade publications, setting up news alerts for relevant topics and competitors, and having conversations about their goals. The best PR and marketing come from understanding what a client is trying to achieve.
Know where your PR opportunities are
For these kinds of clients, opportunities tend to fall into the following categories:
Company wins – new contracts, accreditations, awards, growth milestones. The key is to frame in a way that is relevant to the audience.
People stories – who are the humans behind the business? Promotions, career journeys, team-focused initiatives, and local community engagement.
Reactive commentary – when relevant news occurs, such as a new industry report or a sector-wide challenge, this is a perfect opportunity to provide an expert comment and position the brand
Data-led stories – internal insight, survey results or market data can position clients like this as a genuine authority, and it gives journalists something concrete to work with.
Build relationships with trade press
Trade publications are hugely important within PR. We always source editorial calendars early so that we can plan content around upcoming feature opportunities. If there is a themed issue relevant to my client, we want to know! Beyond that, it’s always important to build good relationships with editors to understand what they need and champion your client at the same time.
Humanise the brand
People buy from people, and research consistently shows that customers are more likely to engage with brands they feel emotionally connected to and, even in more regulated, industries, trust can still be built through humanising the brand.
When working with a client, we always advocate the idea of bringing people behind the business to the front. Whether that’s through profiling senior leaders, sharing team milestones, celebrating community support initiatives or letting client outcomes tell the story, these kinds of stories perform well in both trade and consumer media because it comes from genuine storytelling.
Turn one story into multiple angles
Healthcare and professional services businesses don’t always generate news at a consumer brand’s pace, so when something does happen, we try to maximise it as much as possible. One client win might become a carefully angled press release for trade and regional press, social media content, an SEO-optimised website blog, a thought leadership piece or even an awards entry.
Integrate PR and marketing
The best and most efficient results come when PR and marketing objectives are blended. For example, PR coverage can be repurposed for social media and thought leadership pieces can support SEO through digital PR backlinks.
It’s important that campaign themes and PR messaging are linked, allowing everything to feel coherent. For clients who are cautious about overtly salesy marketing, this is when PR-led campaigns are particularly useful, because earned media carries a credibility to the brand that paid activity sometimes can’t.
Don’t ignore the digital PR opportunities
When looking at digital PR specifically, this is an area where sectors like healthcare and professional services have untapped potential. Every time a piece of coverage appears online, whether in a trade publication or a regional business outlet, there’s an opportunity to generate a backlink to the client’s website. These backlinks can be valuable for search engine optimisation, as they signal to Google that a site is trustworthy and authoritative.
Comments