Siilo, the secure medical messaging application designed to help healthcare professionals and teams better collaborate on difficult cases, improve patient care, and share knowledge in a compliant way.
Today, Siilo is the largest medical network in Europe with over 250,000 active members.
In summer 2020, Siilo had just closed funding in a Series A funding round while providing critical services for medical professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. They wanted to communicate their funding and use it as the first step of a long-term PR collaboration, as well as building their brand to elevate their station as leaders in MedTech.
That is why they came to PRLab, they wanted to make an impact.
Shifting gears for long-term PR:
PRLab first worked with Siiilo when they approached PRLab with the goal to launch funding news in the Dutch and Belgian markets, and boost their global visibility as a brand. The intrepid company wanted to build foundational brand awareness as well as their thought leadership credentials.
With the successful launch of Siilo's funding news, PRLab dove headlong into boosting Siilo's brand awareness and thought leadership credentials through long-term PR. This entailed moving away from simply having news to share for Siilo to diligently working together to create news and pitch it on a consistent basis.
PRLab’s work for the funding announcement laid the foundation to spring straight into action. Targeted media lists were drawn, key topics assayed, and an eye-cast on the developing trends in HealthTech.
To achieve this, PRLab endeavoured to highlight and share Siilo's unique expertise and vision of healthcare through PR stories, interviews, and thought leadership editorial pieces in order to achieve constant media attention in key industry publications, rather than waiting for news to happen.
Time is always of the essence, and PRLab hit the ground running. They assembled a team focusing on key elements to share with the media and understand the value of Siilo that needed to be made known.
Making noise for the news of any launch happens to be one of PRLab’s specialties, and they quickly divided up the tasks and got straight to work.
PRLab’s dedicated research team went to work to maximize reception for a launch, in-depth research into competitors, media, and journalists is of utmost importance. PRLab surveyed the lists and divided the media into tiers and selectively picked the journalists and publications that would provide the optimal coverage.
They took time to analyze Siilo’s competitors in order to find ways to make the coverage stand out from the rest. Along with keyword analysis, PRLab could effectively begin crafting the right tone for the pitches and press releases to be shared with the targeted media.
As with any big launch of funding news, press releases play a vital role in spreading the word to as many outlets as possible. PRLab composed the press release in concert with the Siilo team to ensure that it made maximum impact.
Using thorough research, PRLab targeted Tier 1 media in the Netherlands and Belgium were pitched under embargo. Using varied angles to hit media of different sectors amplified the funding news announcement.
With the successful launch of Siilo’s funding news, PRLab dove headlong into boosting Siilo’s brand awareness and thought leadership credentials through long-term PR. This entailed moving away from simply having news to share for Siilo to diligently working together to create news and pitch it on a consistent basis.
PRLab’s work for the funding announcement laid the foundation to spring straight into action. Targeted media lists were drawn, key topics assayed, and an eye cast on the developing trends in HealthTech.
To achieve this, PRLab endeavored to highlight and share Siilo’s unique expertise and vision of healthcare through PR stories, interviews, and thought leadership editorial pieces in order to achieve constant media attention in key industry publications, rather than waiting for news to happen.
In the build-up for Siilo's funding announcement, the team at PRLab undertook extensive research on the HealthTech industry but also interviewed Siilo's founders to have a clear view of their overall vision, goals, and perspectives on healthcare, especially in the Benelux. These insights informed the varied angles and slants to pitch to the right journalists covering the pertinent topics at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and business.
Landing stories and interviews in Dutch and Belgian tier 1 publications
Working in concert with Siilo's executives and marketing team, PRLab pitched stories focusing on Siilo, the Dutch healthcare system, and how Siilo as an organization sought to improve the system by facilitating more collaboration across healthcare teams and departments in a safe and compliant way ultimately, for the benefit of better patient care.
PRLab targeted the salient outlets and journalists for the story and secured an interview for Siilo's founder and CEO, Joost Bruggeman. It was published in Het Financieele Dagblad
Siilo is a HealthTech company constantly pushing the envelope and adapting its services to the needs of medical professionals. Enter Prisma, Siilo's first dedicated network designed to improve patient care and reduce hospital referrals specifically within the Dutch healthcare system.
Prisma was announcing a new partnership with the second-largest insurance provider in the Netherlands, CZ. They wanted this news shared in the Netherlands as this was the second partnership with an insurance provider and signified the value and appreciation of Prisma among Dutch medical professionals.
Newsjacking
In early 2021, WhatsApp announced new policies that could have serious ramifications for those working in healthcare and using the app to communicate with each other. One of Siilo's principal values is that their platform is safe, secure, and compliant for communication between medical professionals and, therefore, was the appropriate organization to provide expert commentary on these policies.
PRLab took on this news, and again, working as a part of Siilo's team, crafted a pitch targeting the key journalists for the story. This time, using their network in Belgium, PRLab secured an interview for Joost Bruggeman with Business AM to discuss the issue in detail.
After the launch of the funding, Siilo capitalized on that momentum to build a more global presence as a HealthTech company. Siilo had a story to tell; they were continuously discovering new activity on their platform that could help healthcare professionals in novel ways, and they had a vision for their position in the future of healthcare.
To help Siilo on their path to realizing these goals, PRLab took a thought leadership approach and made use of Siilo and CEO Joost Bruggeman´s expertise to share contributed content with key industry publications in the form of editorial articles.
PRLab used their knowledge of healthcare media to scour the news, trends, and important developments in order to craft pitches for potential contributed articles. This entailed an in-depth understanding of what these healthcare publications were looking for and building trusted relationships with the relevant editors and journalists. What could have been a nebulous and frustrating process was instead simplified and clear because PRLab took the time to learn what the media wanted to hear.
After six months of collaboration, the thought leadership approach, built upon the placement of contributed content, became metronomic as PRLab consistently landed op-ed pieces that shared Siilo's key insights and vision for the healthcare industry. In the end, PRLab landed eight articles in targeted and important healthcare publications.
