As any marketer knows, if you can’t get your product or service in front of the right audience, the chances for your brand’s success dwindle. But there’s more to successful marketing strategies than brochures, ads and a slick website.
For companies in and around healthcare, a medical device marketing plan and strategy should speak to healthcare professionals and resonate with their patients while understanding and addressing the healthcare sector’s complexities and regulations.
Medical device companies can range from those that produce tongue depressors or face masks to implantable ventricular devices and much more. Medical device companies need digital channels to effectively market their products, but how can a medical device company do digital marketing right?Medical device marketing claims must be substantiated with clinical evidence for one thing. Transparency about clinical trial outcomes, safety data and product efficacy is a critical evidence-based marketing move. But marketing medical devices requires more than just compliant messaging. Medical device marketing strategies should align with others in the B2B sector and set those in the global medical devices market up with a competitive edge.
Let’s take a look at the digital marketing tactics that work so medical device manufacturers can develop truly effective marketing strategies.
Set Clear Goals for Your Medical Device Marketing Strategy
Before you jump into the marketing game, it’s important to know your goals:
- Who are you trying to reach? Clinicians? Patients? Administrators?
- What do you want to accomplish? Brand awareness? More leads? Increased organic traffic? Introducing a new product to market?
- What tactics/platforms will you use? Content? What kind? Social media platforms? Email marketing? Video? Zero-click? Is there an in-person or conventional component to your strategy?
Use historical buying data to understand customer preferences, pain points, and engagement patterns. Marketing automation tools and CRM systems can help you segment audiences for personalized outreach. You can also incorporate BI and AI tools to predict customer behavior, optimize campaigns, and make more data-forward decisions about content strategy and targeting.
Build Trust With Healthcare Professionals and Patients
While your brand’s medical device must pass FDA clearance to be brought to market, you still need to build other forms of trust among your audiences. This can take many forms and can be subtle, like having consistent messaging and voice across all your platforms and channels — digital, print and social.
Another way to increase brand recognition and build trust is to provide your audience with non-branded information that helps professionals and/or patients solve problems. For example, one of Kuno’s medical device clients established a blog targeting each persona our client works with. While the blog provides coverage of the client’s medical devices used in studies, it also provides brand-agnostic information about the state of the industry, surgical news, techniques and more, giving them industry credibility that allows their devices greater prominence.
By having a blog that provides useful, mostly vendor-neutral information, this medical device manufacturer has established itself as a trusted source of industry news, medical research and innovations and developments in the field.
Don’t Overlook High-Quality Content in Your Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a stalwart tool for medical device companies. The important thing to keep in mind here is that, like the blog example above, content you produce should be helpful, value-rich, address your audience’s pain points and be free of any sales-pitch tone.
If there is a niche you can fill or an issue that you can address that no one is talking about yet, getting out in front of these issues can be a powerful statement for your brand credibility.
For example, one medical device manufacturer that builds hemodialysis monitors published a piece on how then-President Donald Trump’s Advancing American Kidney Health Initiative could affect kidney care professionals, as well as dialysis patients and renal care clinics.
This piece systematically broke down how this executive order, which on the surface seemed beneficial to patients, could actually adversely affect patients and those who care for them. It was popular among the audience of kidney care and medical professionals because, broadly, they were worried about the initiative’s effects, but no one was articulating these concerns.
To figure out the content that resonates most with your target audiences, you’ll need to know where they get their information and what kind of information is important to them. In the above example, we knew the above information would be helpful because we knew stakeholders and members of kidney care professional organizations were talking about the potential impact of this legislation online. In listening, we were able to give voice to their concerns, which gave the brand strong, positive exposure to an audience segment they could also eventually market.
Tailor messaging to different audiences (e.g., surgeons, nurses, hospital administrators, patients and industry professionals) based on their needs, pain points and decision-making processes. Provide educational content to help HCPs understand the benefits, usage and innovations related to your products. Address patient concerns such as the benefits, risks and long-term impact of your offerings, especially for life-altering devices like implants.
You can figure out the type of content your audience enjoys or is seeking out by asking them and doing research. If you’re able, attend professional society meetings or look within professional groups or forums for inspiration. These events remain a powerful vehicle for networking and ground-level business intelligence.
Communicate Like a Human in Your Medical Device Marketing
Whether you’re speaking to clinicians or patients, it’s important to remember that behind the job title or patient label is a human being. Things like personalization and storytelling — as well as using a conversational tone — go a long way in making a connection with the reader, even seasoned medical professionals. As a medical device manufacturer, you know the importance of creating and nurturing strong relationships with your potential clients and users.
These relationships, and what you know about each audience, help you connect with prospects by providing personalized content and experiences that help doctors and patients address pain points.
Education in Your Medical Device Marketing Strategy
Here are some quick hits your marketing team can leverage to connect with your target personas on a human level:
- Clinical Content: Share clinical data, case studies, and white papers to demonstrate product efficacy and safety. Publish in medical journals, participate in conferences, and present at webinars.
- Video Content and Demonstrations: Use videos to showcase how devices work, train HCPs on their use, and highlight patient success stories.
- Patient Success Stories: Highlight real-world patient outcomes to illustrate how the medical device improves lives.
Sales Enablement and Relationship Building in the Medical Device Sector
Sales and marketing work hand in hand, so your strategy should also involve sales-enablement materials about medical devices to help bolster and foster customer relationships. For example:
- Equip Sales Teams With Tools: Provide your sales team with product brochures, presentations, clinical evidence, and videos to help them engage with HCPs and procurement teams.
- Strengthen Key Opinion Leader (KOL) Partnerships: Work with renowned healthcare professionals who can advocate for your device and share their experiences.
- Offer Trial Programs and Demos: Allow HCPs to trial the device in a clinical setting, providing real-time feedback and fostering trust in the product.
Leverage Social Media for Medical Device Marketing Success
You might not think clinicians are active on social media, but growing evidence shows otherwise. Many clinicians use social platforms to keep up with trends, share insights and even provide educational information to patients. As a result, companies in the medical device industry can use social media advertising to reach clinicians. Platforms like LinkedIn are powerful for engaging with healthcare professionals, sharing relevant marketing materials and amplifying expert testimonials.
One medical device manufacturer was able to reach a broad audience that included cardio and neurosurgeons, as well as hemodialysis professionals, using Facebook ads. In this case, awareness of the company’s devices increased dramatically as it was able to connect with its target audience using a strategic marketing plan and social media channels.
A couple of key strategies and things to keep in mind for using social media to reach clinicians:
- Don’t go for the hard sell. You know sales cycles for medical devices can be lengthy and include a lot of technical information, research and data. Instead of sharing dense, data-rich material upfront, or information that you would reserve for later in the sales process, communicate these things under the radar by sharing stories of how patients have been positively impacted by your device or product. Collect and publish feedback from physicians, surgeons and patients who have successfully used your devices. This offers real-world credibility while educating your target audience.
- Show your personality. Clinicians and patients are people and it’s important to keep this in mind when creating social posts or ads. A conversational tone and/or humor can go a long way in connecting with your audience.
- Share other content. Like the above example about sharing vendor-neutral news in blog posts, the same can be done on social channels. This can help create more engagement on your channels as well as help establish your company as a trusted place to turn to for thought leadership and valuable information.
Consider Hosting Webinars as Part of Your Medical Device Strategy
Webinars can be a great way to engage leads while providing educational insights and more information about your devices. Use webinars to address topics your audience wants more information about or showcase new study results or findings. These webinars can also be used to establish your company as an industry resource for the latest research, innovations and more.
Virtual events can include live or on-demand webinars where medical experts can demonstrate medical devices, explain use cases and answer questions in real time. These sessions can then be repurposed into video content for ongoing marketing and even a boost to search engine optimization.
Post-pandemic, many conferences have incorporated virtual elements. Consider sponsorship opportunities where you can utilize these platforms to demonstrate devices to a wider global audience.
Implement Video Marketing To Explain Complex Medical Devices
According to HubSpot Head of Audience Development and Distribution Dréa Hudson, we’re seeing a massive shift to video-first content consumption for audiences, and the healthcare industry is no different.
Medical device manufacturers should incorporate video into their digital marketing strategies across channels that work best for their brands. Create explainer videos to demonstrate how the device works, its benefits and how to use it in clinical or home settings. These can also serve as tutorials for healthcare professionals.
Market Medical Devices Like a Pro in a Highly Competitive Industry
A comprehensive marketing strategy will help medical device makers effectively engage with their target audiences, navigate regulatory requirements, and leverage leading-edge technology to stay competitive. Marketing to clinicians may seem more difficult than other audiences, but it’s important to remember that just like other audiences, clinicians are humans, too. That means they will likely respond to your marketing efforts using the methods above.
Partnering with a digital marketing agency like Kuno Creative makes connecting with healthcare professionals and decision-makers easier. Our team has decades of experience helping clients in the medical device industry connect with the right audiences through tailored content, SEO, paid advertising and lead nurturing strategies that get results.
We’ll help you build a strong digital presence that meets industry standards while connecting with your audience on a human level.
See what better marketing can do. Schedule a consultation to discuss how Kuno Creative can help you reach your goals!
