Marketing Minute Archives - Page 13 of 45

5 Ways You Can Use Webinars in Healthcare to Achieve Marketing Goals

September 13, 2022 By John Pritchard

It took a pandemic to show us just how valuable the internet can be for maintaining business productivity. Quarantines, stay-at-home mandates, and school closures are the reason 71% of American workers are currently working from home. All of these people rely on the internet to remain connected to their business associates and clients. From online meetings to virtual workshops, the internet has been essential nowadays in propelling businesses forward.

The healthcare industry is no exception. In particular, webinars in healthcare have been an effective tool in helping healthcare suppliers achieve their marketing goals. These video workshops allow people to tune in from all over the world and attend educational seminars about the latest in industry trends and products.

They’re an efficient and engaging way to distribute important information to a large audience with minimal effort. Their numerous benefits make them a powerful communication tool and should be considered in any healthcare business’s digital marketing strategy.

5 Ways Webinars Help Reach Marketing Goals

Regardless of product, service, or niche, all healthcare suppliers have one thing in common: they all have marketing goals to drive sales. From medical sales to hospital distribution, healthcare suppliers industry-wide can benefit from the use of webinars. Here are five ways you can use webinars to achieve your healthcare marketing goals.

1. Reach a Wider Audience

With webinars, there are no geographic constraints. Since people don’t have to travel to attend, they can tune in from anywhere in the world. Many webinar services allow you to record the session and post a link to the webinar after it’s gone live. You don’t have to worry about time zones as people can watch when it’s convenient for them. By eliminating borders, webinars enable you to reach a global audience you otherwise may have missed.

Also, because attendees aren’t traveling to a destination to attend in person, they don’t have to take time away from work to participate in the seminar. They can simply close their door and watch from their desk during lunch hour. This appeals to people who may not have gotten approval to leave the office or are otherwise too busy to attend a workshop in person. Webinars help broaden your reach to a much larger target audience.

2: Give Credibility to Your Brand

Webinars are highly cost effective since there are no venue or travel expenses involved. For this reason, you’re able to bring in high-quality keynote speakers who are experts in their field. Since they can host the event remotely, they’re often much more affordable for webinars. When you can bring in top talent to address your audience, you give credibility to your brand.

Experts can provide quality insights that answer your audience’s questions, allowing you to serve as a resource for your prospects. When you deliver this kind of value, you position yourself as an authority in your field. This helps build trust among your followers and drive brand loyalty.

3. Increase Content for SEO

A big marketing goal for healthcare suppliers is increasing conversion rates through SEO. The key to maximize SEO is content. The more quality content you have on your website, the more material search engines have to scan and index for ranking purposes. This increases your chances of landing a high search engine ranking, which increases your brand awareness and drives traffic to your site.

Webinars are a great way to generate content for SEO. You can turn previous material into an interactive webinar that keeps people on your site longer and entices them to engage more with your brand. You can also take a webinar you’ve already hosted and convert it into a blog post, an article, or an email. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. By simply repurposing your own material, you can create a positive experience for your audience and develop valuable content that boosts rankings and conversions.

4. Achieve Best Lead Generation

While webinars are typically free to attend, they do require registration that, at the very least, includes an email address. This is essential for you because it means you’re gaining contact information from people who are showing an interest in your business. This opens the door for easy marketing communications since you know they’re looking to you for meaningful information.

New prospects may be drawn to your business because of your webinar subject. Sales qualified leads who are ready to buy may be registering to compare your product to your competitor’s. Either way, webinars are invaluable for meeting your customers at any point in their sales journey and navigating them through the sales funnel.

5. Educate Current Customers

Webinars are extremely versatile and provide numerous ways to educate your customers. Workshops can be informative with experts explaining the latest in healthcare regulations. They can be product demonstrations, showing real-time use and highlighting key features that may not make sense in a still photo. Your company could host a Q&A forum, allowing customers to ask company leaders questions about your business.

Webinars allow you to meet the specific needs of your audience and educate them on your business, your products, and how you fit into the healthcare marketplace. This is important because people like to make informed purchase decisions, especially in the healthcare industry where customer goals are to provide dependable, proven, and safe products to their end users. Webinars can answer their questions, build their confidence, and make them comfortable buying from you.

Share Moving Media Includes Webinars in Your Marketing Strategy

The majority of people are currently relying on the internet as a way to remain connected for business productivity. Today, webinars are an especially important element of digital marketing strategy. Share Moving Media is a full-service content and media company that develops videos, graphics, articles, and webinars for the healthcare industry. We pride ourselves on providing our customers with the tools they need to boost mindshare, profitability, and market share.

If you’re ready to grow your business and deliver valuable content through quality webinars, contact us today!

How To Combine the Power of Online and Print to Reach Hospital IDNs and GPOs

September 12, 2022 By Scott Adams

Digital and print media aren’t mutually exclusive. If done right, these two strategies build on each other to improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy when reaching hospital IDNs and GPOs. You can combine online and print strategies to target your audience, increase visibility, and improve engagement.

Learn five tips for creating a combined digital and print strategy for healthcare.

Key Takeaways:

Combining print and digital marketing builds on each other’s strengths to create an effective B2B marketing strategy
Print ads can help your digital content stand out in the oversaturation of online content
Create consistent branding and messaging by combining your digital and print marketing teams for a seamless client experience

How Digital and Print Media Complement Each Other

The total digital advertising spend was $436 billion in 2021. Offline advertising that year was $196 billion. In total, 55% of marketing is digital. However, print marketing is still highly effective, with the largest segment being magazine advertising, reaching a marketing volume of $6.34 billion in 2022.

Here are four benefits of combining your digital and print strategies.

Image from Wordstream

Reach a Targeted Audience

Targeting your advertising ensures you only invest in quality B2B leads with a high intent to buy, which increases your chance of a return on your investment.

Healthcare marketing to IDNs and GPOs is a niche market with a specific audience. You can use digital advertising to reach some of your audience, but you will have difficulty guaranteeing prospective buyers see your marketing content.

Print marketing, on the other hand, is more targeted. For example, you can publish ads in medical journals and healthcare magazines where you know a large portion of your audience will be. You then use your print ads to direct your audience to your online content, where your digital strategies will complete the sales cycle.

Cut Through the Online Noise

Bloggers publish over six million posts a day. The oversaturation of online content drowns each brand’s content out, with only a few breaking through the noise. As a result, many marketers struggle today to appear in front of their target audience online.

Print ads help you stand out to increase your visibility.

Print ads require 21% less effort for your readers to process your message. In addition, 75% of consumers say they remember a brand from a print ad compared to 44% who remember brands from digital ads.

In a world filled with digital ads and marketing content, you can stand out by using print to reach your audience and make an impression. That impression will make your online content more likely to stand out because your audience would already recognize you from your print strategy.

Stay Relevant Longer

When you publish a post online, it will remain relevant as long as you keep updating it. However, newer content will eventually take its place in search results or in your sponsored ad spot after a short time as digital content moves quickly.

Print ads remain for the lifetime of that magazine edition. You can invest in an ad spot once, and you will continue generating a response as long as people look through the magazine and display it in hospital waiting rooms or their offices. Since print has a longer lifespan than digital media, with new editions usually coming out monthly or quarterly, your magazine ad will be relevant for longer than your digital ad.

Increase Your Engagement

Direct mail is more personal than digital ads and has a more significant impact on the reader. Because of this impact, those that read print ads are more likely to purchase from your brand than those that just read digital ads.

However, you can use the increased engagement from print with the ease of purchase from digital marketing to create a seamless experience. This experience moves your engaged print readers to your website, where you can close the sale through digital marketing strategies.

5 Tips to Combine Online and Print Marketing

Use these five tips to master your next print and digital campaign.

1. Use Consistent Messaging and Branding

Brand consistency is what ties all your marketing strategies together. A united message and appearance help your audience recognize you at each touchpoint. Without brand consistency, you can’t build on your efforts, as each strategy will feel like a separate interaction.

In some cases, conflicting branding can even hurt your objective because you might send contradictory messages.

Because of how different print and digital marketing are, keeping a consistent brand is even more important to help connect your online presence with your offline ads.

Some ways to create a consistent brand message include:

Using consistent voice in your messaging
Incorporating slogans and logos
Keeping consistent colors and fonts
Using similar call-to-actions

2. Connect Your Print to Your Digital Content

Your digital and print campaigns aren’t islands working towards individual goals. They are roads leading to the same destination. Sometimes the most effective route to that destination is by overlapping paths.

For example, you might use QR codes or URLs in your print ad to lead your readers to online marketing content for the next stage of the buyer’s journey.

Leading your readers from print to digital content also helps you track your audience, which allows you to customize your interactions with your healthcare leads.

3. Unify Your Print and Digital Teams

To encourage a connected experience and unified branding, start by collaborating between your print and digital departments.

Working together also allows you to combine your data and eliminate siloes. For example, since your digital team has more data, they can share that information about your target audience to help you create personalized print ads that reach the same audience.

4. Understand Your Customer’s Journey

Combining your data can create a more accurate customer journey map that includes online and offline activities. Your customer journey map represents where your customers interacted with your brand, what actions they took, and when they purchased or lost interest. It helps you identify your strongest marketing strategies and fix weaknesses in your process.

For example, you can identify where most prospective buyers are in their journey when they see your ads in healthcare journals. Then, you use that information to customize your print ads for that point in the buyer’s journey.

5. Use Print to Build Trust

Most buyers trust print ads more than digital ads. Your print efforts hold greater authority because of their permanence and straightforward format.

When you invest in print advertising, your authority overflows to your digital marketing efforts, increasing your reader’s trust in all your content. Brands that use both print and digital ads have a 400% increased effectiveness.

82% of consumers trust print ads the most when making a purchase decision

Image from FinancesOnline

Time to Add Print Marketing to Your Strategy

Share Moving Media can help you reach your marketing goals with unique insights into the healthcare marketing industry and opportunities to use targeted magazine advertising to reach Hospital IDNs and GPOs.

Contact us to learn more about our print marketing services.

Why Medical Suppliers Need to Create Content Distributors Can Use

September 6, 2022 By Scott Adams

The world of medical sales is competitive, with over 10,000 establishments in the U.S. alone. As a medical supplier, you know that you need to sell your products and services to get the revenue you need. But you also know you must build a relationship with your customers. They need to know who you are, what you are offering, and why you are the best choice for them. This means more than just selling to them; it means adding value to their lives. To do this, medical suppliers must create content that distributors can use to market their products and services.

Your job as a medical supplier is to help your customers see you as an authority on the subject matter they are discussing. While many customers searching for medical products and services will sometimes look up medical suppliers directly, they will likely run into distributors first.

Distributors are the ones who are most likely going to be selling your products and services to their customers. They will tell your customers who you are and what you are offering, and they cannot do that without the right content.

Key Takeaways

Distributors use your content to educate themselves and buyers, so having high-quality physical (or digital) content at the ready is crucial.
Without the right content from medical suppliers, distributors cannot communicate the benefits of your products to buyers.
Supplying your distributors with high-quality content can help build brand recognition and trust.

Benefits of Creating Useful Medical Supplier Content for Distributors
Medical suppliers have a lot on their plate these days when it comes to running their businesses. Not only do they have to think about their own daily operations, such as their supply chain needs and customer service, but they also need to think about their distributors and how they can help them sell their products.

Medical distributors are the big movers when it comes to getting your products into the hands of doctors and patients. While you have a lot of control over the products you sell and the services you provide, your distributors are the ones who will likely make the final sale. However, to do this, you must provide them with the right tools and resources, and this comes in the form of content.

From product descriptions to how-to videos, the content that you provide your distributors can make or break their ability to sell your products. In today’s digital world, distributors will often provide information to their customers through text and video. This means that you need to have on-the-go content that distributors can use as a quick and effective way to answer questions or concerns that buyers may have about your products.

You can also use content to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Either way, the content that you provide your distributors is vital to not only their success, but yours as well.

5 Types of Content That Medical Suppliers Should Be Creating for Distributors

Many medical supplies and equipment distributors offer their clients professional advice on what medical supplies to use in what situations. However, as a distributor, they must first educate themselves on the products they are selling and the medical supplies they are recommending. From there, they can provide the correct information to their customers.

Therefore, as a medical supplier, you must create content for distributors to use for themselves and their customers. Here are five types of content that you can create to help your distributors:

1. How-To Articles/Guides

Arguably one of the most beneficial types of content you can create for your distributors is how-to articles and guides. These pieces of content are useful for several reasons, including:

They are easy to read and understand
They are written to inform, educate, and answer questions
They guide the reader on how to use a specific product or inform them on how a service can address their particular pain point, concern, etc.

How-to articles/guides are designed to be a go-to resource for distributors and customers alike. They are a great way to provide your distributors with the information they need to be successful. So taking the time to put care and detail into these pieces of content is essential.

Source: Biologics By McKesson

2. Case Studies

Case studies can help your distributors and customers better understand how to use the products you offer and best use them to address their needs. They also show your distributors how your products have helped other people. This can help build trust and help your distributors feel more comfortable selling your products.

3. Research Studies

Research studies are designed to provide facts and figures that prove why your products are superior to the competition. This is especially important when trying to convince distributors to carry your products. Taking the time to put together a well-researched study can significantly impact those on the fence about whether or not they should carry your products.

4. Video Content

Videos provide information to your distributors and customers that they can refer to anytime, making them one of the most successful types of content. Video content is often much easier to break down and understand than text, which can be especially helpful when explaining the benefits of your products to someone unfamiliar.

Here’s an example:

5. Informative Blog Posts

Blog posts can inform your distributors and customers about new products, services, and programs that you offer. They can also keep your distributors and customers up to date on the latest news and developments in your industry.

Example of an informative blog post targeting medical distributors and how they can prevent healthcare product shortages.

Image Source: Repertoire Dail-eNews

Create Content Your Distributors Can Use with Share Moving Media

Content is the backbone of any marketing strategy. It can help build a strong connection between your brand and your customers. However, when it comes to medical suppliers, content is also a great way to help your distributors.

By creating content that your distributors can use to answer questions, provide guidance, and help build your brand awareness, you can help them better serve your customers, leading to more sales for your business.

Here at Share Moving Media, we can help you build and execute a content marketing strategy that will help you not only connect with your customers, but help your distributors do the same.

Are you a medical supplier needing guidance on creating content your distributors can use? Contact us at Share Moving Media today, and we’ll help you get started.

7 Big Brand Marketing Tactics Healthcare Suppliers Should Copy ASAP

August 30, 2022 By John Pritchard

When was the last time you saw a healthcare supplier go viral on social media for a video, hashtag, or user-generated campaign?

Can you even think of a single instance?

You might even be laughing right now, shaking your head at the idea of Big Brand marketing tactics used in healthcare going viral.

It’s really not such a ridiculous idea.

Just look at Apple – extremely utilitarian products by any standard. Still, Apple has ongoing user-generated content via its viral hashtag on Instagram:

Instagram

Specialized healthcare manufacturers and distributors might not have the mass appeal of a household name like Apple – but suppliers reaching both B2B and B2C markets certainly do.

Why is it so easy for Apple to make a utility exciting online and in real life while their counterparts in healthcare don’t even consider the possibility?

That’s the mystique of Big Brand marketing tactics: People strategize behind the scenes to make certain product features exciting to specific groups of people.

Yet from the outside, their remarkable success appears completely effortless on the brand’s part.

It’s not. Not by a long shot.

You healthcare manufacturers and distributors can capitalize on those same tactics and trends as the Big Guys with incredible success too.

Just open your mind to the possibilities, tap into valuable data you already have, and figure out how to make those tactics work in your market.

7 Big Brand Marketing Tactics for Healthcare Suppliers to Get Trending in 2021

Big Brands know their audience.

Massive consumer corporations like Apple and Starbucks might seem to target “everyone” but that’s far from the case in their actual marketing content.

Look closer at any brand’s individual Facebook posts, Twitter hashtags, and Instagram captions:

Instagram

That Apple Instagram video for Women’s Day of a woman in hijab drawing henna isn’t random. It appeals to specific market segments.

You’ll notice each piece was clearly developed for a specific audience persona based on age group, interests, behavior, hobbies, culture, style, pain point, profession, and much more.

That’s also where manufacturers and distributors must start before using Big Brand marketing tactics in healthcare online spaces.

You can’t excite, interest, engage, and emotionally connect with everyone – even if you technically sell to “everyone.” You must first decide which specific audience segments, firmographics, or key accounts you want to reach in your online campaigns.

Younger segments, like the millennials constituting 50% of your B2B buyers – are an excellent place to strategize and test Big Brand tactics in healthcare because they’re particularly receptive to digital media.

Once you have one or two detailed personas handy, dive into strategy with these tactics.

1. Thrive on Quality Content

Strategize useful content for sustainable results, not one-off SEO rankings and social boosts.

Comprehensive evergreen content – with authentic quality – multiplies its value over time. By prioritizing consistency, usefulness, and relevancy, a single blog post published today could earn you 250k organic monthly visits one year out.

Content results don’t happen in a vacuum – they encourage brand-wide results everywhere online.

2. Launch Genius User-Generated Content Campaigns

Apple’s #ShotOniPhone is a true gift that keeps on giving on every social media platform:

Twitter

Instagram

What’s yours?

Don’t overthink it. Consider how different customer segments interact with your products then choose relevant, actionable, branded hashtags and start the fun.

3. Appear in the Right Digital Spaces

Big Brands create the right kind of content for each platform – not force themselves in.

You might not expect Barilla Italia to have over 121k Spotify followers, but they do. Why and how? Pasta-themed playlists with song times calculated for perfect cooking:

Spotify

4. Leverage Humanity and Holidays

You won’t find any content dry, overly technical, or riddled with jargon in effective Big Brand campaigns.

Even brands in highly specialized industries understand nobody wants to consume boring online content. Content should:

Tell a story
Trigger a specific emotion
Offer entertainment
Include scannable subheadings and bullets
Rely on conversational human language

Likewise, Big Brands understand how to tap audience emotions by caring about the same things they do.

What holidays and societal causes matter to your specific audience segments? Which of those fit your brand values and products?

5. Prioritize Multimedia

No one wants to read all the time. Humans need multi-sensory stimulation from content like:

Podcasts
Videos
Infographics
GIFs

Find ways to work each format into your healthcare marketing ideas. Johnson & Johnson fully embraced the idea with their YouTube channel:

YouTube

6. Partner with Influencers for Community Building

While useful, smart brands don’t partner with influencers just for access to their targeted audience. Big Brands know that an influencer’s true value stems from the sense of community they foster.

Every niche in every market has relevant influencers – even healthcare supplies. LinkedIn has millions of potential healthcare influencers, in fact.

Influencers usually see their audience as individual humans because they share important qualities with their followers. These influencers run groups, forums, chats, Discord servers, and more – as a common community.

You just can’t achieve that type of connection behind a logo – not even the Big Brands can.

7. Follow Consistent Branding Across All Channels

A Big Brand’s worldwide recognition stems from consistent branding at every touchpoint, like McDonald’s.

Today, those same principles apply to the world wide web for establishing trust and recognition.

Perfect your digital brand guidelines for a consistent look, sound, and vibe everywhere:

Language and tone
Graphic design colors
Logo watermarks
Tinted image filters
Typography

All Big Brand Marketing Tactics in Healthcare Need a Content Foundation

All successful Big Brand online campaigns have three high-level components:

Audience personas serve as the blueprint.
Strategy and KPIs provide the structure and frame.
Content supplies the foundation.

Your audience research and strategy are useless without consistent content to grab attention, engage, and encourage audience action.

High-quality, interesting, and valuable yet simple content. That’s exactly what your Big Brand tactics in healthcare need to drive those emotional connections that the consumer giants make look unintentional. Tap into Share Moving Media’s marketing training programs specifically crafted to help healthcare manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers foster deeper connections with their audience.

5 Ways a Blog Can Help Your Business Grow in 2022

August 29, 2022 By Scott Adams

Whether you have a thriving healthcare manufacturing business or are a small manufacturer trying to compete with bigger companies, blogging will help you stand out. There is a reason why 59% of B2B marketers say their blog is their most valuable marketing channel. Learn why you should also be blogging and five ways a blog can help your business grow today.

Key Takeaways:

Blogging guides your B2B customers through the buyer’s journey with timely and educational content.
Blog articles bring traffic to your website that can turn into quality leads.
Use your blog posts to build trust through thought leadership content.

Why Should Healthcare Manufacturers Start Blogging?

Nearly 80% of businesses use blogs in their marketing strategy. Healthcare bogs are a live part of your website where you can post regular updates and articles that lead readers to specific static pages on your website, like your pricing page or contact page.

Since 70% of customers prefer articles to digital ads, you have more opportunities to connect with your B2B healthcare customers and move them through the buyer’s journey by regularly publishing healthcare content. As a result, you can attract more traffic, generate more qualified leads, and convert more prospects into loyal customers.

Without a blog backing up your website claims, you rely on your customer’s intuition to make a purchase. Your blog supports your B2B buyers and provides all the information they need to make an informed decision.

Image from FitSmallBusiness

5 Ways a Blog Can Help Your Business Grow

Here are five ways a blog can help your business grow through quality, educational content marketing for healthcare manufacturers.

1. Increase Your Online Traffic

Healthcare blogs for manufacturers bring in 55% more website traffic than your website alone.

Each blog post you create is a way to target new keywords. Those keywords present another opportunity to rank in online searches and bring new visitors to your website.

To ensure your blog posts are ranking well and generating traffic, use the following search engine optimization (SEO) strategies:

Use high-traffic keywords with low competition
Include several synonyms and variations of those keywords
Use internal links
Link to reputable third-party websites

Search engines aren’t the only place you can generate new traffic. You can also share your blog post on social media, popular websites, and in your email campaigns.

For example, LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for B2B marketing because 80% of members drive business decisions. When you share your blog content on LinkedIn, you also share offers, links, and a call-to-action that brings those readers back to your website.

2. Improve Your Lead Quality

Generating quality leads is one of the most popular metrics for measuring your marketing success. Your leads are potential buyers who show interest in your brand.

While generating traffic is a positive sign of growth, it only tells you half the story. For example, are all those leads interested buyers, or are some of those leads individuals who were looking for information on healthcare manufacturing?

The number of leads you generate from your traffic tells you how many of those visitors are serious buyers. About 80% of marketers who blog said their blogging strategies brought in new customers.

You can attract more quality traffic by targeting keywords specific to your ideal buyer. For example, using keywords that patients might use to search for healthcare information will attract patients and healthcare providers. However, using keywords specific to healthcare business searches increases your chances of attracting those website visitors.

You can turn quality traffic into leads through your call-to-action, a link during or at the end of your blog content. For example, this link might ask them to fill in a contact form, sign up for an online event, or request more information. Other ways to capture that lead’s information include lead magnets. These are gated content your readers must exchange information to download or access.

67% increase in leads from B2B marketers who blog over those who don’t

Image from FinancesOnline

3. Build Brand Trust and Authority

Trust builds the foundation for loyal customer relationships. Before a healthcare facility purchases from you, they must trust that you offer the best products and are a reliable partner.

Building authority in the healthcare industry is how you encourage your leads to trust you because you are backing your claims with proof. One of the most effective ways to build authority is through thought leadership content on your blog.

Roughly 54% of decision-makers will spend over an hour reading thought leadership content weekly. The five top reasons why decision-makers engage with thought leadership include:

Staying up to date with the latest thinking
Stimulating their thoughts and generating new ideas
Gaining insights into emerging trends
Understanding current trends
Discovering new products

4. Engage Your Customers

Engaging your customers is how you keep them interested in your brand and build relationships so they want to continue buying products from you. Some ways you know if your blog content is engaging is that customers are:

Liking the content
Sharing the content
Commenting on the content
Clicking on links
Watching video
Participating in polls

According to Neal Schaffer, about 94% of readers will share blog posts when they think the content can help someone else. Therefore, creating educational, quality content is key to increasing your engagement.

5. Nurture Leads for More Sales

While most of your blog articles will be top-of-the-funnel content, that isn’t the only type of article you can create. Even after you attract those visitors to your website and generate leads, you can continue using blogging to move those leads through the buyer’s journey.

Strategically post content for each stage of the customer sales journey to address concerns and questions. For example, talking about challenges in healthcare might be a way to attract new leads to your website. However, discussing the benefit of a specific product you offer is a topic that will resonate well with leads looking for solutions and are ready to buy.

Grow Your Healthcare Business through Blogging

Getting started with blogging requires several tools and industry-specific knowledge to help your articles rank well and help you to maximize your return. Our healthcare content marketing experts can help you succeed with your B2B healthcare blog with our training, resources, and industry insights.

Contact us and get connected to the information you need to build a successful blog.