Medical devices have revolutionized the healthcare industry, providing patients with better treatment options and improving clinical outcomes. However, developing a cutting-edge medical device is only one step towards success.
To thrive in today’s highly competitive market, companies need to implement effective marketing strategies that highlight their product’s unique features and benefits while reaching out to potential customers.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most effective medical device marketing strategies that will help your company stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace. So get ready to learn how you can take your medical device business to new heights!
When it comes to healthcare marketing, the competition is stiff. Whether you are in the pharmaceutical or in the medical device industry, to sell your product or market your service you need a marketing strategy to scale your business.
And in the unprecedented time of Covid-19, the demand for medical devices and pharmaceuticals is on rising. With social distancing norms, there is hardly any chance to follow the traditional marketing strategy to market your product or services.
Furthermore, the medical device companies are of one kind that combines world-class engineering and product design with cutting-edge innovation. And this developing product improves the lives of millions all across the globe.
Additionally, with the increasing demand for medical devices, medical device manufacturers must find a way to catch the attention of their intended market while making their products and being one step ahead of their competitors.
And medical device manufacturers must use modern marketing tools while leveraging the traditional market practices.
The right strategies for marketing your medical device is the one which
1. Helps you to aware your target audience about your product
2. Engage them and urge them to make buying decisions
Due to the rising prevalence of chronic disease and the increasing geriatric population, the US medical device manufacturer market size is anticipated to grow at the compound annual growth rate of 5.0%.
Medical device market size value in the year 2020 was 186.5 billion which has been forecasted to reach up to a value of 262.4 billion. This has opened doors of ample lucrative opportunities for existing as well as upcoming medical device manufacturers.
Along with the ocean of opportunities, there is cutthroat competition as well, as there are more than 6500 medical device companies in the US To excel in this highly competitive market and make the best of these opportunities, we are going to discuss some proven medical device marketing strategies for your medical device manufacturing company.
If you are looking to prepare your market, go-to strategy for your medical device, then here are the best 18 medical device marketing strategies to watch in 2023.
Best 18 medical device marketing strategies to watch in 2023
1. Know Your Audience
If you are in healthcare marketing, and you lack an understanding of your target audience then you might not scale your marketing campaign and business. Identifying the target audience and buyer personas might seem traditional but to get the potential lead in the market you need to add value worth reminding.
And to make matters amend, you first need to identify what market demands, who are your customers, their pain points, the community they are following, the solution they are looking for, and to whom you intend to sell your product or services.
By using this critical information, you can identify your buyer persona and aim your marketing
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2. Identify the challenges
When you are providing services in medical device marketing and if you are not keeping insight into the challenges your customers are facing, then you might struggle to reach your intended audience.
For example, if pharmaceutical manufacturers already have a medical device but it frequently creates trouble in operations, and the service team is unable to cope with the handling instrument and struggling to maintain the operations.
These are the challenges of a customer and if you could provide a solution to the challenges, they are facing then it’s a hit. If you are producing a device that can eliminate the risk involved in operations and enable your leads to provide better service to your customers then it’s a win-win situation.
3. Build your Go-to- marketing strategy as per the Buyer’s intent
Medical device marketing is not a child’s play. To sell your product in the market you must have awareness of the marketing trends. And it doesn’t happen overnight.
Moreover, if you are a medical device manufacturer then you must have resources and instruments that are easy to meet the audience’s needs at each step of marketing. The steps of understanding buyer’s journey typically consist of-
Awareness
It’s an utmost important thing to aware to your audience that you are selling a product that can make the life of your customer better. And to achieve the same, you can include tactics like TV, press release, radio, ads, and search engine optimization.
Consideration
When your audience knows the problems, they are facing, they know the kind of product they are looking for. In the consideration phase, customers look for the information that will aid them in understanding the product’s effectiveness and the results they will get after usage. And to make it achievable, you can use content like blogs, eBooks, social ads, email marketing, and social media marketing as a part of the consideration.
Purchase
This is the last and most important stage in building a marketing strategy. After considering your product, the customer is ready to make their decision on the product that will meet their demands.
ROI analysis, product comparisons, and device guide help your customer to make a better decision. In this scenario, case studies, testimonials, and customer stories are indeed helpful in giving a complete picture of your device and product.
And if this is done effectively, this full journey approach to your marketing asset plan will help your audience in reaching one step closer to success.
4. Define Personas from the buyer’s perspective
In laymen’s language buyer persona defines who is your ideal customer is, the challenges they face, and how they make their decisions.
It’s common to have multiple buyer personas for a business and each individual involved in that decision might have a separate persona. With their different needs and challenges, you must have different strategies to address those needs.
Having a buyer’s persona help you understand and emphasize with your customers so that you can do a better job in servicing them.
5. Make your digital presence
According to a study, around 89% of B2B buyers look for the solution on the internet. And if you don’t plan for social media marketing then you might leave behind your marketing strategy.
Moreover, merely having a social presence is not enough. Only if you will provide the information that they need, customers will return to your website over and over as they move through the buyer’s journey.
And in medical device marketing, to make this achievable you need to optimize your site with enriched keywords, and SEO. This would eventually generate organic traffic and will bring potential clients directly to your sales funnel.
6. Personalized Learning can be influential
According to global personalized learning, the market is estimated to surpass $2 billion by 2024. Personalized learning is a technique that caters to individual educational needs with constant feedback regarding progress.
By providing this educational approach, you can present the creative content with real-time performance analysis of the learner. And in medical device marketing, you can use a computer or mobile software to teach your customers and clients.
This teaching approach can leverage artificial intelligence which can perform behaviour analysis to structure the content.
7. Enhance Brand & Product perception
Whether you are pharmaceutical, healthcare marketing, or medical device marketing your main goal is to spread the word about your brand and get noticed by your target audience. And to achieve the same, you can design a highly functional website, and arrange a set of events such as medical conferences, seminars, massive social media giveaways, and live videos on social media.
It would be best if you kept your audience engaged after the event, analyse your performance reports, segment your audience, and collected their feedback. By giving some exceptional service, you can make a better connection with your potential client.
8. Distributors are your brand advocates
Online businesses depend on word of mouth to garner customers. Every time when you sell your medical device or product and your customer talks about your service to others it creates a new potential customer.
Brand advocacy is a new and innovative marketing strategy that is naturally out of social networks. And to achieve it effectively you must understand the medium and build relationships with these messengers.
In addition, these brand advocates discuss their purchases among their team, which also creates a brand visibility feedback loop.
Even in unprecedented times of Covid-19, there is a huge opportunity in the challenges. Medical device manufacturers have to look beyond the challenges and stand out from the crowd like never before.
This is the reason business organizations and CIOS are looking for innovative ways to harness the full potential of marketing to provide a better customer experience and services to their clients.
9) Create a Buyer Persona
Creating a buyer persona is the cornerstone of an effective medical device marketing strategy, without which it would be like searching for something in the dark.
You should be well informed and clear about whom you will be selling to; whether it is a doctor or a patient, whether it is a hospital or private practice, what problem you are going to solve, etc.
This helps you curate more impactful and personalized content that has better chances of turning prospects into customers.
10) Understand the problem
Knowing about the needs and pain points of your buyers is equally important as knowing them. Unless and until you are not clear about their problems you will not be able to convince them to buy your products.
11) Analyze competitors
The other important medical device marketing strategy is to research market trends. Analyze how your competitors are positioning their products in the market, and which strategy they are using to attract prospects and market their products.
You should also check how your competitors are increasing their website traffic and conversion rates.
Along with focusing on their success, focus on their failure as well. Check how they are curating their marketing campaign and how much they get benefited from it and how much they lose.
12) Develop your value proposition
To stand out in a highly dense and competitive market your product should add some value to your prospect’s life. Determine all the benefits of your product and show them how it’s going to help them.
13) Create compelling content
Content is king, it’s the very first part of any marketing funnel. In the first three steps whatever information you have gathered about your products and the customer needs and their pain points, now it’s time to articulate them in an engaging and informative way.
Your content speaks on behalf of you, and along with creating awareness about your brand, it shows your expertise. That’s why create content that increases the chance of a conversion.
14) Create a content strategy
Along with writing compelling content, it’s vital to know what kind of content you should write and what kind of content will work with various platforms.
For example, a blog post is the best way to drive traffic to your website and attract more customers, and also it shows your expertise.
In the same way, long form content works for Linkedin, whereas infographics and reels perform better on instagram rather than long form content, and twitter supports only shortest form of content.
15) Connect on social media
If you are not leveraging social media, you are missing many opportunities. Connecting on social media has become a mandatory part of marketing strategies these days.
- 70% of primary care physicians and oncologists use social media to either explore or contribute to health information.
- One-third of the surveyed physicians, registered nurses, and physician assistants claimed they would like to click on an ad if that interests them.
Being present on social media helps you to get connected to hospitals and administrators and also helps you to build a strong brand reputation. Connecting on social media helps you to clear the doubts of your clients and potential clients and helps you to build trust in them.
Great social media doesn’t just happen overnight. There’s no magical social media recipe, sadly. Great social media is like any other marketing strategy – carefully crafted, measured, managed, and founded on clear strategy. To deliver on your strategic vision you need to be up-to-date with the latest trends, practices, and tools.
You need to opt for social media management tools to level up your social media, for that you can opt for best buffer alternatives to make your social profiles stays active.
16) Create a compelling case study
Case Study gives credibility to your product. 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before they make buying decisions.
In medical technology too, use case studies to build trust in your prospects. By showing your prospects how your device or solution has helped your customers to reduce operational costs, increase the quality of care, and has impacted other outcomes.
17) Build trust through consistency
Building trust with your audience and prospects is paramount for an effective medical device marketing strategy. And one of the easiest ways to build trust is to be consistent with your brand reputation.
That means all your marketing properties like offline, events, and online should have a consistent voice, look, and feel. Maintaining consistency in marketing material helps your customer to know what they are selling and let them know that you know them well.
18) Present at trade shows
The trade show is a gateway to so many amazing opportunities, as it allows you to network with so many business leaders and decision-makers. If you have any one piece of your medical device in working condition, then exhibit it in the trade show. When key decision-makers come and see the device in Person it increases your chances of conversion.
Why Marketing Medical Devices to Physicians and Hospitals is essential
Though final decision-making is done by hospitals, physicians’ opinion matters a lot in selecting the right medical equipment. And that’s why it is quite essential to market your medical device to both hospitals and physicians.
Your go-to-marketing strategy should involve effective communication and you should be able toco bey what problems of them you are going to solve.
Your medical device should have some advanced features that set you apart from your competitors. A good example could be Sensonica, a company that built a line of its healthcare products built on scientific research followed up by a number of registered patents.
Hospitals and physicians always look for products that help them to provide improved patient care. That’s why you should be clear with the features of your product and should know how they make your product better than your competitors.
Marketing Challenges to Hospitals and Doctors
No matter how useful your product is for medical professionals, making them buy decisions is hard and takes time. Marketing to hospitals and doctors is quite challenging, let’s see why:
1) Because of hectic work schedules, doctors don’t find time to talk to device manufacturers. And that’s why salespeople and marketing people struggle to reach them which leads to a long sales cycle.
2) In this highly competitive and dense market, standing apart is very difficult. There would be many products like yours and solutions like you have suggested. In such cases driving the attention of key decision-makers to your products will be tough.
3) Before making any buying decision doctors check the device thoroughly and go through every minute detail. But it’s difficult to explain so concisely and engagingly when your product is complex.
What are the mistakes to avoid as a medical device marketer
1) Doing marketing in the same old way
Many medical device manufacturers are scared of taking the less traveled road when it comes to marketing their products. The market in the same old way such as a brochure with a product picture or stock image, this tactic also works but doesn’t drive your extraordinary results.
The medical device go-to marketing strategy to achieve extraordinary results staying updated with the current marketing trends and should not hesitate to take risks with new marketing strategies.
2) Not keeping up with new technology
Many medical manufacturers don’t understand the importance of online presence. Either they don’t know how to leverage the new technologies, or they have misconceptions about the presence of their audience on social media.
But whatever may be the case, it’s absolutely their loss, as more patients are using the internet to search about many health-related issues.
Managing an online presence is an important medical device go-to marketing strategy as it helps you to stay connected with your audience and clear their doubts.
3) Not enough focus on value
Take interest in your customers to make them interested in you. And for this, tell them how your product is going to solve their problem, and how it will be beneficial to them. When you talk about something that interests them, they will take interest in you.
That’s why the medical device go-to marketing strategy is instead of talking about features, talk about how much difference your product is going to make in your customer’s life.
4) Minimal focus on corporate brand
In this highly competitive market to accelerate your sales, having a solid brand is a must. Having strong brand awareness makes your product marketing easier as people are already aware of what your company offers depending upon the brand name behind it.
5) Impersonal marketing
Professionalism with a bit of personalization does wonders even with the marketing of medical devices and it is an important medical device go-to marketing strategy.
But some marketers in order to avoid looking unprofessional, make marketing campaigns very formal which lacks the connection. So, it’s always better to make personalized marketing materials to increase conversions.
Conclusion
Thus, to sustain and excel at a competitive pace, following strong marketing strategies is crucial. An effective marketing strategy helps you in creating and maintain demand, relevance, reputation, and competition.
In order to stand out from the crowd, establish a cutting-edge reputation, and establish a stronger relationship with customers, the marketers to step out of the traditional strategies and should follow the above mentioned marketing strategies.
