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The Benefits of Outsourcing Content Marketing: Why Your Company Needs an Expert

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Having a solid marketing strategy is key to successfully promoting and selling products. All companies in the medical supply chain industry should be spending time and effort on marketing to increase brand awareness and customer following.

Marketing strategies have continued to rapidly develop, as technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, legal changes, and more has recently greatly impacted the industry, according to Forbes. Options are extensive when companies are deciding how to best promote their products. Companies today are, in fact, allocating more and more of their annual budgets toward marketing campaigns. According to Forbes and a Taradel marketing survey, 94% of small businesses have plans to boost their marketing spending in 2024.

While marketing is a critical component to a business’ success, there is no doubt that content creation can be time consuming and requires expertise to properly master. That’s where outsourcing content marketing comes in— your company doesn’t have to produce its marketing content all by itself. By outsourcing marketing, your team can focus its time on what it does best.

The goal of your company should be to make a profit, maximize sales, and make lasting, trustworthy connections with customers, not to get sidetracked by marketing. Read on to learn more about how your business can outsourcing marketing:

What is marketing outsourcing?

Marketing outsourcing is delegating a company’s marketing tasks to external professionals. Outsourced marketing professionals will assist a company in creating campaigns, content, marketing strategy, determining a target audience, and more. Outsourcing allows companies to focus on its day-to-day operations while hired professionals take charge of marketing responsibilities.

According to a study from Sagefrog, a marketing agency, 59% of companies decide to outsource marketing. The primary reason is that outsourcing is more cost effective, and because marketing professionals can assist companies in implementing new, innovative strategies.

What are the benefits of outsourcing?

  1. Trusted experts

External marketing professionals/agencies are well-versed in the nuances of the industry. They thoroughly understand industry trends and how to best utilize new technologies. They can also come up with more successful tactics and navigate any potential changes or challenges. External marketing professionals, with extensive experience, are much better equipped to give your brand a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Outsourcing, therefore, allows employees to spend time and resources elsewhere while professionals take care of marketing efforts.

  1. New perspective

Outsourcing offers a company a new marketing perspective. Businesses that conduct their own marketing campaigns often fall into routines and run the risk of reusing lackluster campaigns. Marketing agencies are experienced with what it takes to create successful campaign tactics, and can bring new ideas, innovative strategies, and a fresh perspective to the table to better promote your company.

  1. Cost reduction

Outsourcing can produce results similar to hiring in-house, but it may be more cost effective for your company to outsource its marketing. Outsourcing allows a company to reduce training costs and save time by not hiring new employees. Your business can instead allocate resources where they are most needed, saving time and money in the long run.

If your company in the medical supply industry could benefit from outsourcing its marketing efforts, look no further than Share Moving Media. With over 30 years of experience in the medical supply chain industry, our team of experienced staff have extensive knowledge of industry trends, changes and challenges, terminology, strategies that work best, and more. We can assist you with marketing responsibilities, from determining a successful campaign strategy to helping your team with content creation. Contact Scott Adams today to set up a brief meeting to discuss the benefits of outsourcing your company’s marketing.

Podcasting 101

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Podcasts are a popular form of media, especially as a way for listeners to gain audio information while multitasking — such as driving in the car, exercising, cooking, etc.

Podcasts are also an advantageous marketing tool. Businesses in the medical supply chain industry can leverage podcasting as a marketing tool in a variety of ways to increase market share.

Podcasts are a media form consisting of digitally recorded audio, often with a series of episodes that relate back to a specific theme. Businesses in the supply chain industry, for example, may produce a podcast with episode titles such as “How to Improve Healthcare Sales” and “Healthcare Industry Trends in 2023,” which would be brought to life through detailed audio information shared with the audience on each of the topics.

Podcasts are a powerful marketing tool, allowing advertisers to share content with wide audiences. Podcasts are relatively simple to create, and the creator can record and edit any digitally recorded content to share with audiences themselves. Once created, podcasts can be published on a company’s website, audiences can subscribe to the podcasts (and be informed right when new episodes are released), promoted on social media, and more. Podcasts allow a company to broaden its reach through new forms of media.

Read on for steps on how to start a business podcast:

  1. Identify a podcast theme

What does your brand want to communicate to its customers? Select a podcast title based on the goals of your brand’s marketing efforts, and tailor each episode to that theme. Determine the “why” behind the podcast, the audience, and how you will make each episode stand out, then create a podcast name based off those details.

  1. Record, edit, and publish podcast

The next step in podcasting is to record the information to be consumed by already existing customers and new audiences. Structuring podcasts in an educational, interview, or conversational format is a good way to start when conveying business information over a podcast. Once recorded, edit the podcast, and publish it to an easily accessible site so customers can continue to access it.

  1. Market your podcast

The final step is proper marketing. Podcasts create an opportunity for a business to have valuable, shareable content. Post the podcast on company social media accounts, send out the podcast in an informational email, post it to the company website, all with the goal of increase its circulation as a marketing strategy.

Below are a few examples of healthcare industry-related podcasts produced by Share Moving Media, Repertoire Magazine, and The Journal of Healthcare Contracting on topics including:

Increase Your Lab Sales in 2023

Sustainability in Medical Manufacturing

Marketing Minute Podcast: Omni Channel Marketing in Healthcare

Creating marketing content during the busy day-to-day business world within the supply chain industry can be a challenge. If your business could benefit from help creating marketing content such as podcasts, written content, blogs, webinars, etc., contact Scott Adams at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to set up a time to meet to discuss improving your company’s marketing tactics.

Go-to-market strategies are critical in today’s digital health world

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Mobile health, health IT, wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalized medicine are transforming patient care. One in three smartphone users monitor health and fitness through their phone and over half of Americans are comfortable with virtual consultations. Digital technology is changing the fragmented healthcare system to center around consumers.

The American Medical Association identifies three key trends rising to the top of the digital health landscape include:

  • Consumerization of healthcare: the retail healthcare model is being highlighted as the future of patient care.
  • Access for underserved communities: access to healthcare remains a significant challenge for many individuals in the U.S.
  • Application of big data: healthcare data is a highly sought after commodity, with organizations increasingly seeking to harness and interpret what they, and others, collect.

These trends are providing opportunities to bring digital solutions to the healthcare marketplace. To do that, organizations must create go-to-market (GTM) strategies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the marketplace, the target market and a potential product’s place in it.

The most common challenges when launching GTM strategies for digital solutions, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), are the lack of experience selling or positioning and measuring value. Successful GTM strategies include defining the benefits, creating value frameworks, identifying relevant stakeholders, developing value messages, determining the right channel mix and content type for each stakeholder, and then building a strategy.

Traditional stakeholders usually include patients and clinicians, and non-traditional stakeholders might include specialty healthcare providers and others. They demand a transformation of marketing and customer engagement led by customer needs. Identifying their digital acumen helps identify those needs.

For example, PwC highlights four physician personas that differ in the level of digital savviness:

  • Traditionalists: physicians who only use digital tools available when necessary.
  • Digital Explorers: physicians who start to realize the benefit of digital tools.
  • Digital Adopters: physicians who try to use digital tools as often as possible and are quick to get started.
  • Next Normal Champions: physicians who are among the first to use digital tools and encourage others to use them.

PwC says it’s important to define must-win moments and value messages for each. This can be a physician willing to support patients with treatment-related information despite having limited time with patients. Organizations can position digital solutions as valuable to physicians because they help patients access treatment-related content without the physician.

Measuring the value of digital solutions is challenging. Sales numbers can struggle to depict it. Organizations need to put value frameworks in place in order to highlight stakeholder value over sales numbers. Qualitative KPIs like outcomes, engagement and activity can measure the effectiveness of communication strategies and the perception of brand reputation. 

How can your organization get creative with your marketing campaigns for 2024? At Share Moving Media we help best in class manufacturers build relationships with the industry’s decision-makers. Please contact us at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share through distribution.

One CHP understands digital tactics driving consumerism, strengths of diverse patient communities

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UnitedHealth Group created the Optum brand in 2011 by merging its existing pharmacy and care delivery services into a single brand, comprising of OptumHealth, OptumInsight and OptumRx. The commercial healthcare provider (CHP) has business interests in technology and related services, pharmacy care services and various direct healthcare services. In 2019, Optum’s revenues surpassed $100 billion.

Focusing on data and analytics, pharmacy care services, population health, healthcare delivery and healthcare operations, Optum serves employers, government agencies, health plans, life science companies, care providers and individuals and families.

How did it grow its brand awareness among its target audience of health system buyers and bellwethers? Its content marketing through different distribution channels including digital, print and other media helped promote its partnerships with healthcare stakeholders.

Benjamin Meents, senior vice president of corporate marketing, brand and events at Optum, has said that the CHP’s content strategy, messaging and story was grounded around celebrating the accomplishments achieved through working with those working in the healthcare space and tackling the biggest challenges in healthcare with their partners.

The intersection of technology, data and analytics with the humanness of the healthcare sector provides a unique opportunity for those in healthcare marketing to share the impact of their organizations. Making an emotional connection with prospective patients and their families can inspire them to stay healthy for themselves and those around them.

A brand awareness campaign in healthcare must be flexible and adaptable to the diverse communities that the healthcare community serves. Optum strives to portray the real, lived experiences of patients and understand that strength comes in many forms. Highlighting patients’ exceptional stories is one of Optum’s own strengths through its omnichannel marketing approach. 

Optum also understands the need for digital marketing in healthcare and what’s driving it. Consumers want instant gratification with access to information anytime, anywhere, online and on-the-go. They want innovation that integrates the disparate data from all their devices into a single view. They also want personalization and expect their needs to be known and their communication preferences to be targeted. And they want simplification in all their interactions, which must be quick and easy.

According to an Optum whitepaper, digital tactics today that support healthcare consumerism include:

  • Online health insurance shopping.
  • Doctor email patients within secure applications.
  • Pharmacy calls with prescription refill reminders.
  • Consumer receives push message on smartphone, e.g., fitness challenge ranking.
  • Health insurers provide free wearable for completing preventive screening.

And digital tactics in the future include:

  • Request medication from smartwatch.
  • Get a real-time text alert when blood pressure is too high.
  • Receive one simple bill for care.
  • Build their own health plan, based on their personalized needs, on their insurer’s website.
  • Have a single dashboard with all their health information.
  • Receive personalized messages based on their data to drive better decision-making and better health.

Healthcare organizations must meet consumers where they are online. Optum says the most commonly researched topics are specific diseases or conditions, treatment options, doctors or other health professionals, and healthcare coverage in general, and that digital marketing is a critical enabler.

How can your business leverage marketing to generate revenue and attention for your brand? At Share Moving Media we help best in class manufacturers build relationships with industry stakeholders. Please contact us at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share.

How to Create Shareable Content

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Social media marketing is all about creating shareable content – those viral posts are veritable gold in the hills for social media marketers, and it’s not always easy to find that gold. The goal of using your social media to connect with your audience is to leverage the power of each platform to get your followers to engage with your posts. When your followers are sharing the content you create, knowledge of your brand will organically, naturally grow its online presence. It’s a big job, but it’s critical to succeeding in a digital world.

Finding the right ingredients for content that is inherently shareable can be elusive and challenging for organizations who are trying to engage with their audience through strategically engineered content. Strategy is the key word here – when you are intentionally creating content with the audience in mind, this becomes much easier to do well.

Here are three key ideas to keep in mind when you are creating shareable content.

It needs to be relevant

With all of the background noise in the world right now, there’s never been a better time to strive for relevancy. Our attention is constantly getting pulled in a dozen different directions, so when we find something that is relevant to our experience or circumstances, it resonates much more. This is especially in regard to creating shareable content. When your audience sees something that is relevant to them, they are much more likely to share it with their own colleagues and peers, effectively getting more eyers on it.

Shareable content has to be relevant. It has to have some sort of deeper meaning or be timely to the person who is engaging with the content. Without relevance, why will it matter to your audience? If you aren’t sure what’s relevant to your audience, do a poll to see what kind of content they would be interested in seeing. Approach your content and social media strategy as sharing news related to your organization and your industry with your audience.

It needs to get an emotional response

The quest for meaning and value is a huge component of the human experience – part of what makes viral content so powerful is the emotional response it elicits from the people engaging with it. If you want your content to have any resonance with your audience, it’s important to craft it with what your audience cares about.

Stories are the most powerful tool for eliciting an emotional response. When you tell stories that speak to the emotional triggers of your audience, you can better create content that will drive results for your organization. Whether you are using a personal story, a customer testimonial, or even a case study, leveraging a narrative into your content will help to connect to your audience on an emotional level.

It needs to be valuable

The need for valuable content cannot be overstated – if it’s not creating value for the end-user, why would they bother to spend time consuming the content? If you’re looking to create shareable content, anything that’s overly promotional or an advertisement will likely not be shared by your audience. Instead, lean more towards educational content like blogs, infographics, and white papers that are designed to provide relevant information to your audience.

Consider the “80-20 Rule”: 80% of the content that you post on social media should be educational and value-based, while 20% should directly promote and advertise your organization. The reality is that you’ll never connect to your audience by only sharing ads. If you limit the amount of promotional content that your audience sees, they may be more willing to act when they do see one.

Creating shareable content can be a powerful way to increase customer engagement and brand awareness. Share Moving Media has over 30 years of experience adapting business’ marketing campaigns to succeed in the healthcare supply chain industry. If your business could benefit from the creation of online content such as blogs, podcasts, webinars, marketing material, and more to set your business apart in the medical supply industry, contact Scott Adams at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to set up a time to meet.