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How to Overcome the Creative Slump in Your Healthcare Marketing

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Unlike in many other industries, marketing in healthcare can be a bit complicated.

There are numerous regulations and privacy concerns that health marketers need to navigate through while also trying to deliver engaging content. There are also a few creative slumps that many healthcare marketers get stuck in.

We are going to explore some of the reasons why healthcare marketing can be more challenging than other types of marketing. You’ll also learn what you can do as a marketer to overcome these challenges and break out of a creativity rut.

Key Takeaways 

  • Healthcare marketers must respect industry laws and regulations while attempting to deliver creative, engaging content. 
  • Marketers need to connect emotionally with their audience to get more effective results.
  • Using consistent messaging across multiple channels can help marketers produce more appealing content that resonates with potential customers.

Common Challenges in Healthcare Marketing 

Here are some of the most common challenges healthcare marketers may face while producing marketing materials in the healthcare industry.

HIPAA Compliance

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules don’t only apply to healthcare providers, many of them also extend into healthcare marketing.

Marketers must find creative ways to reach their desired audiences without violating HIPAA Privacy Rules. If you are a medical supplier, this may be a bit easier since your company may not deal directly with patients. However, you still have to ensure that you are following all applicable rules to protect patient information. 

Here are a few tips to consider that will help keep your healthcare marketing HIPAA-compliant:

  • Do not share protected health information (PHI) in any marketing materials.
  • Only share direct testimonials if you have explicit authorization.
  • Obtain written permission for all email collections.
  • Make sure your marketing tools are HIPAA-compliant.

Marketing is Seen as a Cost Center

If your medical supply company is eyeing the marketing budget as a potential place to cut costs, you may not see any growth. How much you spend on marketing will depend on how much growth you want to see and what your annual revenue is.

According to a 2021 CMO Survey, marketing budgets are continuing to grow as a larger percentage of businesses’ total revenue. This is something to keep in mind if you want your medical supply business to keep pace.

Marketing needs to be seen as a crucial area to invest in, as opposed to a bill you have to pay. The better your marketing is, the better results you will get.

While these challenges may make your job as a healthcare marketing seem more difficult, it is important to stay positive. With the right tools and marketing strategy, your company can reach the right customers and see a larger return on your marketing investment.

6 Ways to Overcome the Creative Slump in Your Healthcare Marketing

Now that you realize where potential pitfalls can happen, you are ready to overcome your healthcare marketing challenges. One of the key differences in healthcare marketing, compared to other types of marketing, is that the devices, products, and solutions you are selling are designed to change people’s lives.

Here are some positive thoughts to concentrate on to get you going in the right direction.

1. Put the Spotlight on Your Brand 

Think about what sets your company apart from the competition.

  • Do you have a unique brand story? 
  • How can you showcase your mission or value statements creatively to your customers? 
  • Is your customer journey simple and transparent?

You should also rely on all team members, even outside your marketing group, so you can gain unique insights from all parts of the company. With the various perspectives from different team leaders, you can brainstorm unique marketing ideas.

2. Focus on Real Emotions and Motivations 

By targeting the emotions of your potential consumers and the motivations behind their need for your product, you can start making true connections that feel believable. To do this, you can create content that tells a story and inspires your audience.

3. Learn About Consumer Interactions with Your Products 

Thanks to social media, you can find countless examples of people chronicling their journey through an illness. You can search for blog posts, YouTube videos, forums in Reddit and Quora, and reviews in Google and social media platforms where people share how they felt after using your product. You may be able to use that information to guide your future marketing.

4. Use Targeted Marketing Practices 

You can ask yourself the following questions to know who you need to focus on in your marketing campaign:

  • Is your product for hospitals or intended for home healthcare use? 
  • Is it something doctors might be interested in for their practice? 
  • Who are your current customers?
  • Are there other markets you could expand into?

Once you know who your audience is, you can figure out how to target your marketing efforts where your ideal audience will see it. However, you have to do this carefully, so you do not violate any HIPAA regulations or other privacy laws.

5. Focus on Multiple Marketing Channels 

Omnichannel marketing is an effective way to create a unified brand message. Like multichannel marketing, omnichannel marketing uses multiple channels, such as social media, print, and television to reach potential customers. What makes it different is its use of connected and optimized messaging across all channels.

This is a smart method for the healthcare industry as it generally increases conversion rates and gives you more leads. It also makes it easier to expand your internet-based marketing. In fact, the amount of money spent on internet advertising in the healthcare industry is set to surpass television spending for the first time in 2021.

Chart Description automatically generated with low confidence

6. Be Consistent 

Customers appreciate consistency when working with any type of business. They want to know what to expect from you. You should deliver consistent branding and messaging through the marketing materials published or displayed across all your media outlets and channels. Make sure that you have set your brand’s mission statement, tone of voice guidelines, and colors so every marketer in the company knows how to create the marketing materials that truly reflect your company.

Understanding the common mistakes in healthcare marketing combined with more effective marketing strategies can help your healthcare company increase its market share.

Inject Creativity into Your Healthcare Marketing with a New Strategy

If your medical supply company is ready to make a change and reach new customers, Share Moving Media is here to help. We can connect you with the right audience, amplify your company message, and provide creative, engaging marketing materials for your business.

 Contact us today to learn how to get started!

10 Benefits of Outsourcing Content Creation in Healthcare

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About 82% of marketers actively use content marketing. Nearly all those marketers consider it a core business strategy because it consistently yields results. However, while most marketers agree it’s a valuable marketing strategy, not everyone has the time, expertise, or resources to perform it on the scale necessary for their company’s growth. Outsourcing content creation allows you to receive the benefits of content marketing without most of the work.

Explore several specific benefits of outsourcing content creation and how to build it into your content marketing strategy.

Key Takeaways:

  • Outsourcing content creation provides a flexible and scalable content creation option
  • Content creation agencies offer expertise and resources you might not otherwise have access too
  • Outsourcing is more cost-efficient than performing all your content creation tasks in-house

What Type of Content Can You Outsource?

Content outsourcing is hiring a third-party agency to perform your content creation tasks for your healthcare content marketing strategy. Some of these tasks include:

  • Writing blog posts
  • Creating short eBooks, white papers, and reports
  • Creating video
  • Managing your social media
  • Optimizing your content for search engine ranking
  • Creating paid ads

10 Benefits to Outsourcing Content Creation

Here are ten ways content creation outsourcing will benefit your healthcare company:

1. Access Experience You Don’t Have

Content creation involves multiple parts, including design, writing, and optimization. You might not have people in your marketing department with all the required skills to create content at the level you need to grow your business.

When you outsource your content creation, you can use the talent of content creation experts with years of experience in each area you need. You can even grow your marketing strategy by creating new forms of content like eBooks, videos, and case studies.

2. Find Industry Experts

Healthcare is a highly technical field with several specialties within the industry. Therefore, while your marketing team might be experts at healthcare marketing, they won’t have expertise in each specific area within healthcare, which limits the depth and extent of their marketing content.

Outsourcing content marketing allows you to look for experts in specialty fields of healthcare. For example, if you manufacture a new device for a medical specialty, you can hire experts in that area to create content directed toward that niche audience.

3. Frees Your Staff for Other Tasks

Content creation is just one step in several stages needed in your marketing strategy. However, it takes a considerable amount of time.

For instance, content creators take over four hours to create just one blog post.

Time it takes to create a blog post

Image from Orbit Media Studios

You can free up your marketing department by outsourcing this time-consuming task, which allows your team to focus on other aspects of marketing.

4. Create a Scalable Content Strategy

Your content builds brand awareness and drives traffic to your website. You can accomplish this through strategies including:

Frequently sharing content will increase your exposure and drive more traffic to your site. Most businesses strive to publish content one to five times each week for maximum exposure. However, not all companies have the resources to handle large-scale content creation.

Content creation agencies have the resources and content creators you need to scale your content strategy for your business’s size and needs.

You should blog one to five times a week

Image from HubSpot

5. Provides More Options

Over a third of companies don’t have a dedicated content marketing team that works on content marketing full time. Instead, they use the talent from other departments to help create content. This limits your content strategy because you’re relying on your current resources.

Outsourcing gives you access to more resources, writers, and services. In addition, you can change up your content creators as your needs change to ensure you always have the right number and type of content creators and the expertise you need for your company.

6. Save on Resources

Hiring new employees can quickly become an expensive undertaking. Not only do you have salaries and benefits, but you also have hidden costs like onboarding and training. On average, it costs $4,425 to hire a new employee.

Outsourcing is more cost-efficient as you pay per project and don’t have to pay for the contractors’ benefits and training.

7. Gain Fresh Insights

Outsourced content creators offer new perspectives on your company and marketing strategies. They can give an outsider’s view on your current content and provide fresh ideas to improve your marketing, which will boost the effectiveness of your content marketing.

8. Reach More Marketing Goals

Content creators are more than just writers. They can also be content strategists. They use their understanding of content marketing to research your audience and write content aimed at specific pain points and marketing goals.

They also know search engine optimization and learn how to incorporate keywords, links, and quality content to improve your ranking and relevance.

Because of this knowledge, they will help you reach more of your marketing goals. Do you want to attract more traffic? They will write SEO blogs that rank high. Do you want to convert more readers? They know how to pack a powerful punch in their call to action.

9. Have Clearer Metrics

Measuring your success starts with proving your ROI. However, that’s not always straightforward since most content marketing strategies don’t have a clear spend and return. Only 66% of marketers effectively measure their content results.

When you outsource content marketing, you have predictable and measurable spending, which improves your budgeting. It also helps you calculate your ROI more accurately.

10. Reach a Broader Audience

Writers support their clients because if their clients succeed, they do too. They are often willing to share a client’s work on their blog as a guest post or as part of their portfolio, increasing your brand awareness as you receive the content creator’s audience and your own.

Content creators will also often link to your content on their other client’s blog posts as support to improve your online authority, which then improves your search engine ranking.

Invest in Your Content Creation

Share Moving Media is a healthcare communication and publishing leader, offering industry insights and advice to dozens of healthcare manufacturers and distributors. You can use our library of resources and training to boost your content marketing and maximize the return from your outsourced content creation.

Contact us to learn more about our content marketing solution.

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

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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

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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.

55% of advertising is digital

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

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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.