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  • Writer's pictureRuth M. Trucks

Writing About People’s Health? Show Compassion!

Updated: Dec 3, 2020

"We need more compassion in our writing," said Dr. Shuldiner, low vision optometrist and founder of the IALVS (International Academy of Low Vision Specialists). "Our texts are too cold and theoretical; there's not enough empathy in them!" I listened as he explained how most patients arrive at his practice only after having been told they are going blind, and there's nothing that can be done.


So, here I was. I had researched the medical conditions leading to low vision for the past two weeks but suddenly felt that it was all for nothing. How do I address readers who have just been told they're going blind? What do I tell them? That's when I began to understand what it means to write medical marketing content.


The Place of Emotion in Advertising


Remember how I said in my last post "Why writing marketing content for doctors is profoundly challenging" that many medical marketing texts do nothing to touch the reader? All they do is communicate information. Well, here you have it! When you are faced with a target audience that's about to be deprived of their eye-sight, you immediately turn around and go, "o.k., let's just stick to the facts".


But these patients are often too distressed to even care about facts. And if you are an optometrist, you don't run an NGO. You need to promote your business, which can't be done with theoretical, indifferent content. Buying decisions are made emotionally, and that's true for health care as well.


Shouldn't the marketing writer be an expert at this? That's a valid question. If I've learned anything from long-time copywriting wizards, I should be able to produce content that resonates with the target audience, in this case, the highly sensitive patient.


How Is Writing to Patients Different?


A good marketing writer evokes emotion in a reader, but that wasn’t required here. It wasn’t about stimulating desire for something, or kindling someone’s vanity. Instead of pain-points, I was dealing with visual impairment. To promote a service to people going blind, I needed to relate, not evoke.


Writing medical marketing content requires a lot more sensitivity towards the customer than writing for most other industries. I felt like walking a tightrope.


  • If I didn't relate to the reader's emotion, they'd feel misunderstood and left alone with their problem. Too many scientific details may even drive them off.

  • If I played on their emotion, I might appear to exploit their needy situation. In commercial industries, the reader can swallow this as part of the game. But no one likes to have his health played with.

  • If I focused too much on comforting the reader, I ran the risk of creating unrealistic expectations and making false promises. A practice can get into deep trouble for this.

  • If I got the whole emotional thing wrong, the reader would feel that I didn't know what I was talking about. Instead of providing hope, I’d make them lose hope.

That’s a lot of responsibility on the writer’s shoulder. I had the opportunity to do something genuinely good by promoting this valuable health service, but could also seriously hurt people's feelings and even their psychological well being (on top of the practitioner’s business).


 

Requirements for Writing Marketing Content to Patients

A medical marketing writer in B2C is faced with three huge gaps to bridge: knowledge, language, expectation, and an ever wider rift when it comes to emotion.

They are expected to create content that converts and meets scientific standards, content that is easily understandable and sensitive to emotion but not emotional, and content that encourages but doesn't advertise.

The writer needs:

  1. An understanding of the physical state of the patient and how it impacts their emotional wellbeing.

  2. High sensitivity to the delicate emotional state and address it without offending or scaring the person.

  3. To create hope and provide comfort without raising false expectations.

  4. To promote a service without teasing, selling, pushing, bragging, promising.

  5. Advanced knowledge in the specific medical field.

  6. An understanding of the particular scientific language.

  7. The ability to translate highly scientific language into simple language understandable for the average person.

  8. To precisely extract the relevant and interesting information for the patient.

  9. To leave out complex, in-depth explanations and still provide a complete, understandable picture of a medical condition, including symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options.

  10. To be aware of the strict regulations about advertising medical or pharmaceutical content.

 

How Can You Make it Work?


When I first started writing for the International Academy of Low Vision Specialists (IALVS), I was vastly unaware of all this. What was low vision, anyway?


To get clarity, I set up a call with Dr. Shuldiner, who had a very clear concept of how to communicate with his patients directly or through various media. I admit I was nervous. I was about to receive instructions directly from the world's number one low vision optometrist, who has specialized in his field for over 40 years.


Would my content be good enough for the top expert in his field? I didn't even have a clue about what I needed to know. And that's always what scares me the most: I know what I know. It's the things I'm expected to know but don't, that are the real traps. I was ready for a long, painful road when I started researching low vision.


Before the call, I read everything I could about macular degeneration and glaucoma and cataracts, their causes, symptoms, treatment, and diagnosis. I created a low vision dictionary to get the terms right and find simple-English explanations. I made a list of questions for the meeting.


Dr. Shuldiner never spoke about these things. He is a man who devoted his life to low vision patients out of compassion, and that's what he asked me to communicate.


Be Practical, Get Personal


That's not to say I had wasted my time. It was crucial that I acquire knowledge and understanding. Thorough research is fundamental. However, the writing needed to focus on life, on everyday tasks, and practical challenges with which patients struggle.


That was my most important lesson. When marketing medical services to patients, keep it practical. Put yourself in the reader's shoes, figure out how their activities are affected and how that makes them feel. Then open the door to a possible solution.


A patient with macular degeneration, for example, has a blind spot in the center of his/her visual field. They know that, so there's no need to tell them. They also don't benefit much from knowing what exactly happens in their eyes. What matters is the practical impact this has on their lives. They may be unable to read, write, watch TV, drive, recognize faces, in other words, live normal lives where they don't depend on others for daily activities.


... and Suddenly Everything Changes


When I started focusing on that, I began to relate. My compassion grew, and I was no longer apprehensive about addressing the reader directly. I began to understand the meaningful service a low vision device could do for these people. Suddenly, I was not marketing a medical service or product; I was writing to show people there could be a way to keep living normally and independently.


Doctors are in the business of saving and fixing lives. Readers want to know how that can work for them. The way to touch the doctor's target audience is to be compassionate about the personal, practical challenges a health condition causes. Everything else is back-up information.


Doctors With Devotion


Not enough people know what low vision optometrists do and the importance of their work is underrated.


Many patients with eye-conditions for which no cure has been found yet could get help if they only knew about the support and solutions these eye doctors provide. Their work is rooted in the desire to help people live better lives and a commitment to doing so.


Writing to promote their work felt highly rewarding. If only one person found a low vision optometrist based on my content and got help, it was worthwhile.


(But then came COVID-19 and everything stopped :( )


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