Even under tough regulation, you can be creative. Marketing through attractive and relevant content, built layer by layer and involving support teams in sales, is the way to the hearts of caregivers and medical institutions
Try to recall an impressive marketing or advertising tool you recently encountered in the medical device sector. If it didn’t jump out at you, it’s no coincidence: there’s something quite repetitive and banal about this field. You always see patients there with a big smile on their lips, even if they’re moments before or after a complex surgical procedure. The doctors look more or less in the same position, just in a lab coat so we can tell. The stereotype may stem from the need to speak in professional language to professionals in the field. Maybe it’s a fear of regulation. Or maybe it’s a comfort zone we’ve already gotten used to. Either way, it doesn’t work: professionals are also, above all, people, with a certain attention span and a certain pace of life. Like everyone else, they are bombarded with advertisements and text messages. Second, presenting things more attractively does not mean crossing a regulatory red line. And as for the comfort zone, well, what is good and effective advertising if not originality and creativity.
A good way to start is to simply learn from other industries: see how the big guys do it, from successful cross-media integration, physical and digital, to the global excitement surrounding every Apple launch. Before launching a big product, before even talking about technologies and solutions, we can first raise awareness of the problems we are going to address. And this is true even if our target audience is doctors and therapists, when in such a case, the solution is supposed to help them help their patients.
Beyond content, it also has to do with the platform: When everything is done online, certainly in the era of Corona but even before it, there is no reason for marketing in the medical equipment sector to be left behind, with a collection of studies, press releases and brochures from the 90s. On the contrary, this is a classic area for content marketing, with more and more interesting information about success stories and new use cases. This can be generic or sponsored advertising on media and medical niche sites, a blog that is updated frequently, posts, or any other use of our and others’ digital assets.
The idea behind Inbound Marketing is to go out into the world of the web to bring target audiences to us. And this can and should work in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors just like in any other industry. You just have to take into account that this is a method that is built gradually, layer by layer. Here, you can’t stand with a stopwatch or measure conversions. KPIs are more qualitative than quantitative, and there is mainly a cumulative effect.
By the way, it is important for marketing people to market this insight to all stakeholders, especially to the organization’s management. Because among companies in the sector, there is sometimes a reluctance to the subject. Marketing, as well as distributors, are treated as a kind of “necessary evil.” This is, of course, a mistake: there is nothing wrong with spreading the message in a focused and creative way to the relevant audience – an audience that in many cases will know how to use the product to extend life and improve the quality of life. Equally, there is nothing wrong with measurable indicators such as usability, usage volume, and market awareness. On the other hand, the marketing system also has something to learn from the financial people, when it comes to the mindset of profit and loss. Because in the end, even if content marketing is difficult to quantify, there must be some reasonable ratio between how much it costs us to acquire a customer and how much we can profit from it. Otherwise, in the long run, it is not economical.
If we have already mentioned distributors, a smart way to increase sales is to recruit technical support and customer service people to the task as well. They, who come into direct, daily contact with existing customers, can serve as fertile ground for expanding the database and connecting to additional products. Up-sell and cross-sell channels can be opened for them and encouraged with the same incentives given to the salespeople themselves. Yes, including bonuses.
There are also aspects in which the mandatory title of medical content differs from digital marketing in other sectors. Google, for example, checks such content more rigorously, with the understanding that the price of a mistake there may be heavy. To make such a site stand out, regular SEO is not enough. Search engines expect to see expertise, authority, and credibility. Therefore, repeated reports of errors, inaccuracies, and anything that smacks of charlatanry can be devastating to the status of such a site.
When it comes to medical equipment, effective marketing through content will aim to slowly but surely instill the insight that the product or service is essential to the field. We would like to convey that we are defining a standard, a new benchmark for the industry. That there is a reduction in time or a significant simplification of procedures, and that without that equipment it was and will be more difficult to manage. And given that this is a niche, or even a sub-niche, targeting is of enormous importance, whether it is in our digital assets or in the media we prefer to be in.
Digital marketing of medical devices poses unique challenges for both marketing experts and manufacturers. Precisely for this reason, this is exactly the place to cut corners, step outside the box, and ensure real differentiation from the rest.
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