As a medical supplier, you may cater to everything from integrated delivery networks to private physician practices. Whether you’re selling ultrasound diagnostics or personal protective equipment, you want to ensure your product branding in healthcare is effectively reaching your target audience.
How can you know you’re succeeding? You need to identify exactly who is talking about your product and just what they are saying – or if they’re saying anything at all. As I’ve said before, if you aren’t visible, you’re irrelevant.
Why What People Say Matters
Keeping up with consumers’ expectations and better meeting their needs is more critical in healthcare than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic has left end-users in the medical sector holding brands to a higher standard. Knowing who is talking about your product and what they are saying allows you to focus your branding efforts better.
It can also help you save money. To raise awareness about your products, you likely engage in various marketing and advertising techniques. For example, your company may participate in healthcare conferences or leverage a corporate blog and social media to support a content strategy for healthcare.
Such initiatives cost money. You want to ensure you are investing wisely and that these efforts are effectively building brand recognition. Towards this end, you can gather quantitative data (e.g., number of product mentions in medical journals) and qualitative data (e.g., physician reviews).
As an added benefit, you may also be able to pinpoint new audience segments worth targeting, allowing you to grow your market share. Consumer feedback can even give you insights into unexpected product benefits. Remember, the blockbuster drug Viagra was initially developed to treat hypertension!
Finally, knowing what people are saying about your company and products can drive smarter brand messaging in healthcare. There’s an old saying that “perception is reality.” You may craft messages that seem to address your target audience’s needs and wants. However, that’s your perception. Real-world feedback confirms whether or not this is the case. As they say, the proof is in the pudding.
How to Find Out Who is Talking About Your Product
Ready to find out what “the word on the streets” is about your products? Use these techniques to gather the data you need to improve your product branding in healthcare.
Set Up Google Alerts
Start simple. Put essential keywords like your product and company name into Google and see what comes up. If there are recent news reports about adverse events related to your product, for example, you want to know about this so you can practice reparative public relations.
To stay abreast of updates in the future, set a Google search engine alert. You input keywords (like your product name), and Google then delivers automatic updates when these keywords appear online.
Scan Google Scholar
Reputation and trust are critical in the healthcare sector, where products directly impact patient lives. New research about products, drugs, and interventions is continuously published in medical journals and healthcare magazines, which can guide industry trends.
Instead of the basic Google search engine, input your product name into Google Scholar. If there is a mention of your supplies in medical or scientific journals, this will help you discover them.
Practice “Social Listening”
Social media is a powerful platform, and you want to know if people are talking about your products on these forums. These days, everyone has an account: physicians, patients, patient advocacy groups, hospitals, insurers, and more.
Practice “social listening” to see what they’re saying. Hootsuite is a great way to monitor social media mentions in real time.
Scan Industry Website RSS Feeds
Use If This Then That to monitor industry websites in your healthcare niche. You can use the IFTTT tool to scan the RSS feeds of multiple industry websites at once and set it up to send you emails alerting you if your brand has been mentioned.
Pay for Media Monitoring Services
Don’t have the time or energy to deal with the above steps? Media monitoring services like Cision can provide daily reports compiling the latest headlines, news, and mentions about your product. You provide specific keywords (such as your company and product name) to guide their reports.
Product Branding in Healthcare: How We Can Help
If you want to improve your product branding, Share Moving Media can help. We are a full-service media company creating everything from webinars to blog posts, e-books, infographics, and more. Our high-quality healthcare marketing tools will help your brand grow and boost your bottom line. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest news on product branding in healthcare. Ready to revamp your branding strategy? Contact us now!