Megan Redzia - 02/21/2024
Summary
Gastroenterology Associates of New Jersey (GANJ) is one of the largest groups of highly skilled gastroenterologists in the state. As the practice continues to grow into additional counties with New Jersey, GANJ was looking to raise its profile as a leader in GI conditions, while also attracting talented physicians.
Objectives
3E PR developed a public relations and social media advertising strategy for GANJ to achieve the objectives of:
- Increasing awareness of the wide breadth of conditions and diseases that GANJ treats.
- Establishing GANJ’s doctors as thought leaders.
- Attracting highly qualified doctors to join the practice.
- Growing the following and engagement on GANJ’s social media channels.
Strategy
The public relations strategy for GANJ focuses on leveraging the practice’s experienced doctors for media relations and speaking engagements. We collaborate with the GANJ marketing team and doctors to identify timely medical topics and patient stories that will resonate with media to pitch. We also tap into the relationships we have established with reporters, producers and editors in the health category to identify opportunities for the GANJ doctors to provide expert commentary for articles or segments they are in the process of developing.
3E PR also identified community organizations located where GANJ has offices and secured the opportunity for GANJ doctors to provide educational workshops on
topics related to gastro care. Some of examples of organizations where GANJ doctors have been able to conduct speaking engagements include Senior Source, the Montclair Public Library and Kaplen JCC on the Palisades.
To help GANJ reach its target audience on social media and grow its following on each platform steadily, 3E PR is implementing a paid strategy on Facebook and Instagram that includes a variety of ad types. Social media posts are being promoted and we are running quarterly ad campaigns to promote key services or initiatives related to overall annual practice marketing objectives. Our strategy includes audience creation, advertising copy and creative development, and optimization based upon analysis.
Results
The 3E PR team has been able to secure GANJ’s inclusion in a wide range of print, broadcast and digital media outlets. Despite GANJ only having a physical presence in one state, we have secured placements in a variety of national, top tier publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Parade Magazine, Yahoo, Prevention, HuffPost, Forbes and HealthCentral. Our media relations program for GANJ resulted in a reach of 5.5 billion in 2023 and a total ad equivalency value of $15.8 million.
GANJ has also experienced a significant year-over-year spike in new patient appointments since the public relations program began. The doctors being featured as thought leaders in media opportunities and speaking engagements are experiencing increased web traffic to their bios and spikes in patient appointments.
From a social media perspective, the brand Facebook and Instagram pages have experienced growth in awareness across both platforms through a paid social media strategy that amplifies organic content, including media coverage.
From March 2023 through December 2023, the GANJ social media pages achieved:
- 8% increase in impressions
- 10% increase in following
- Over 49% increase in video views
The media coverage secured through the public relations strategy represents almost 50% of the top performing content over the last nine months, consistently attracting the highest number of clicks from social media users.
Through this truly integrated PR and social media marketing strategy, GANJ is better positioned – both online and offline – as a qualified health care option for users when they have gastroenterology needs that arise.