In today’s healthcare world, there are a wide range of medical devices that have been designed, manufactured, and tested to treat a variety of health issues. No matter how long of a process a specific medical device goes through, it eventually winds up in the same place that all other medical devices do: a highly competitive market.
When it comes to building a solid medical device marketing strategy, one place you absolutely don’t want to overlook is digital. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C medical device company, the digital landscape is where you will have to compete.
In this medical device marketing guide, we’ll outline some insights and strategies you can use to build brand awareness, generate leads, and increase sales for your medical devices. For even more insights and strategies, contact OppGen Marketing today.
Current State of The Medical Device Market
Worth $156 billion (40% of the global medical device market), the United States is the largest medical market in the world, and it’s expected to get even bigger. By 2023, it’s expected to expand to $208 billion. Over 80% of the companies in this industry are small, with fewer than 50 employees, and the majority of these smaller medical device companies have little to no sales revenue.
Given those statistics, it’s likely your company is a smaller company that may be struggling to either make or increase its sales revenue. But that doesn’t have to be the norm for your company; in fact, it shouldn’t be. Consider investing more in marketing your medical devices. The right medical device marketing strategy can increase revenue, expand your business, and even improve your product line.
But don’t start marketing your medical devices online without first having a thorough understanding of the different types of digital marketing strategies.
Special Considerations for Medical Device Marketing
B2B or B2C
Keep your business model in mind when reading the following information. B2B and B2C medical device companies have different audiences, and some marketing channels are more effective for one over the other. For example, a B2B company may have more success running ads on LinkedIn than on Facebook.
Case Studies & Clinical Reports
Case studies are a must, regardless of your business model. Though many industries have case studies, they are not nearly as important as they are in the field of medical device marketing.
Clinical reports and studies also play a pivotal role, especially when marketing to healthcare professionals. They want to ensure their patients are getting the best possible devices on the market, so being able to give them proof is incredibly important.
Webinars & Seminars
Offering regularly scheduled webinars and seminars can be particularly useful — not just in terms of business, but also for your audience. You can give product demos and answer questions that aren’t available on your website or anywhere else. Instructional demos and tutorials can bring more people to your business and make you the expert on the medical devices you manufacture and sell.
Distributors
Start viewing your distributors as an audience if you haven’t already. Distributors often have connections to more people who will buy your products. Create an audience persona for your distributors, one that focuses on their wants and needs (i.e., what makes their jobs or lives easier, what can your product help them with, etc.), and then start creating content that will be useful for them. Doing this for your distributors is almost (if not) equally important as marketing to your consumer audience.
Customer Service
Having excellent customer service goes a long way in this industry. Ensuring that all customer service representatives are trained exceptionally well on how to talk to leads and answer as many questions as possible can be what gets a lead to finally convert.
Compliance
As with any kind of medical marketing (and the medical field in general), ensuring that you are compliant with the law is a must. This means you need to understand how HIPAA works and how to avoid potentially violating HIPAA through certain marketing channels. Social media advertising in particular can be a trickier area to navigate, which is why it’s a good idea to work with a digital marketing agency that undergoes HIPAA training.
Paid Medical Device Marketing Strategies
Paid Search Advertising
Paid search ads are one of the most common and effective paid advertising strategies. They can be found on search engines like Google, Bin, or Yahoo. Search ads are a type of pay-per-click (PPC) ad. You only pay when someone clicks.
PPC ads show up on search engine results pages, typically at the bottom or top, tend to look like search results, and are only shown when a prospect searches for certain keywords and phrases. This means your medical devices will be found by people who are already seeking out devices like yours or treatment processes that your medical device may be part of or used in.
The position of a PPC advertisement is determined by keyword bidding, a process in which you decide how much you are willing to pay per click (hence the name). Usually, the better the bid, the higher the position of the ad. Ideally, you’ll want your ad to make it to the first or second page of search results; relatively few people go beyond the second page.
Display Advertising
Display advertising is another form of paid search advertising. Instead of showing up on search engine results pages, display advertisements can be found just about anywhere on the web, though their placement is determined by keyword searches, a user’s search history, and the content on the webpage these ads are displayed on.
These ads come in many different sizes and are most effective for remarketing (aka retargeting). Remarketing is the strategy of bringing a prospect who visited your website without taking an action and left back to the website and getting them to take an action. An action can be many things: signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form for more information, or checking out the items they left in their shopping cart. What that action is for your medical device company depends on your business’s goals.
Paid Social Advertising
Paid social ads involve creating ads and pushing them to certain audiences on social media sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn.
For B2B companies, LinkedIn advertising may be one of the better options, as you can target very specific audiences based on location, certain companies, and certain positions. Though LinkedIn ads tend to be one of the more expensive ad options, it’s one of the most effective for B2B sales models.
For B2C medical device companies, Facebook is an excellent option. It allows many different kinds of ads types (image, video, carousel, and more), sizes, and placements, so you can easily figure out what kind of advertisement works best for your budget and design capabilities. Its targeting tools are some of the best ones out there, as you can target audiences by age, sex, location, behavior, interests, and more — not to mention its lookalike audience tool can help you find more prospects you might not have found otherwise.
YouTube Advertising
YouTube advertising is a great option for medical device marketing companies with access to local production studios or an in-house video expert. YouTube offers several ad formats (skippable and non-skippable, ads that only show up on mobile devices, discovery ads, to name a few).
For those lacking access to a production crew, YouTube ads are still an option. You can film a testimonial from someone whose life was positively changed thanks to your product and make small edits as needed in a very basic video editing program.
Depending on the goal of your marketing campaign, some ad formats are better than others. Remember: you only have a few seconds (in the case of skippable ads, at least) to really get viewers’ attention, so be sure your ad is capable of doing that. Think of the story or message you want to get across in 30 seconds or less.
Organic Medical Device Marketing Strategies
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the organic strategy of getting a website to rank higher on the search results page for certain keywords. SEO generally involves improving a website’s content, speed, user experience, and mobile accessibility.
SEO is often an overlooked strategy for medical device companies because a lot of companies are still focused on traditional marketing. Unlike other types of digital marketing strategies, SEO is a long-term strategy that takes time, strategic planning, and great content to produce consistent results.
The good news is that since a lot of medical device companies are lacking cohesive SEO strategies, there’s ample opportunity to compete on search engines. A digital marketing agency that specializes in the medical segment, such as OppGen, will be able to pave a roadmap and build a robust plan for getting a medical device company onto the first search results page for their most valuable keywords.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategic approach to creating, scheduling, and distributing useful content for your audience with the end goal of getting leads to take the desired action. Content usually refers to blogging, but it can be more than that. Content can be creating a podcast or YouTube channel with the goal of educating listeners or viewers about subjects that are relevant to what you’re marketing.
For example, if you’re working to market a B2C medical device company that manufactures glucose monitors, you may want to create content about subjects diabetics should be aware of. This could be anything from covering new discoveries about diabetes, interviewing medical experts on the disease, diabetes management tips, and tricks, and depending on your brand’s tone, maybe sharing some delicious diabetic-friendly recipes.
These are starting-off points that can be expanded on further down the line, and many of these could overlap with others in terms of format. Uploading a podcast interview with an expert could also be revised as a blog post summarizing the interview or sharing highlights. If there were any subjects discussed in the podcast that could be discussed in more depth, those could be other blog posts.
You can make sure more people are able to see your content by posting it to your company’s social media accounts.
Social Media Management
If you don’t have any yet, you should create social media accounts for your medical device company. Managing professional social media accounts allows you to share updates (such as when your next webinar or trade show appearance is), interact with prospects and leads by either replying to their comments or direct messages, and link to blog posts and other content you’ve recently published.
Some updates can be more personal, such as giving a staff member kudos for something they did well or introducing new staff members. Doing so humanizes the account, making it more approachable and relatable to followers. Posting teasers for new medical devices in the form of pictures and videos is another kind of update that may be worth sharing to your audience.
Interacting doesn’t just have to stay in the comments section. Many social media platforms have live video streaming options (i.e., Facebook Live and IGTV) that give you another level of social interaction, but in real-time. Consider hosting webinars, FAQ sessions, and/or product demos and answer viewers’ questions over live video.
Testimonials & Reviews
While case studies and clinical reports tend to satisfy medical device companies marketing to doctors or companies with a B2B sales model, B2C medical device companies’ audiences tend to find fellow consumers’ reviews and testimonials to be compelling. When researching products, most people will read reviews, both good and bad, to get a better picture of what it is they’re considering buying. Encouraging consumers to leave reviews and or give testimonials, then, can help prospects decide if your medical device is right for them.
Plus, positive reviews on Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook can improve your website’s SEO. Positive feedback and reviews “tell” search engines that your company is one that is doing good work and is useful, which can bump you up a few positions on search engine results pages.
Of course, not all reviews will be positive. Rather than ignore the negative reviews, reach out to the person who posted it and apologize. Don’t make a copy-and-paste apology script and fill in the blanks; read what they have to say and apologize for that, and offer some kind of special incentive, if/when possible.
Traditional Medical Device Marketing Strategies
Trade Shows & Relevant Conferences
Attending trade shows and other relevant conferences and gatherings is a great way to market your medical device. It helps other experts or others in your industry put a face to the product, and it also allows you to show your professional peers how your device works. You can also learn from other medical device manufacturers and industry leaders and consider new ways to market your product, or even come up with new medical device ideas. Trade shows and conferences are also excellent networking events, and it never hurts to have more people in your network.
KOL
Key Opinion Leaders, or KOL, in this industry, are typically doctors who are highly regarded in their respective medical fields. When a KOL talks about your medical devices and how they have helped their practice and more importantly, their patients, to others in their field, they are marketing your product. Word of mouth marketing is perhaps the most important form of marketing, and even more so when a respected KOL recommends your products. Not all industries have KOL, but the medical field certainly does, so use KOL marketing to your advantage.
Grow Your Medical Device Company with a Digital Marketing Strategy That Works
This medical device marketing guide is simply that: a guide. It is meant to start sparking ideas for how to better market your medical devices. For more ideas, inspiration, and digital marketing guidance, contact our HIPPA-trained digital marketing agency today. We offer a free digital audit to see where your medical device company’s marketing strategy is doing well, and also to identify improvements and new opportunities for growth.
