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4 Women Leaders in Healthcare Who are Changing the Face of the Industry

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Historically, healthcare has been a male-dominated industry. 

Decades ago, women had limited educational opportunities, couldn’t work outside the home as it wasn’t socially acceptable, and openly discussing women’s health was considered taboo.

Now, as social norms have changed, more women are seeking a career in the healthcare industry. In fact, women currently make up 65% of the healthcare workforce.  

There are numerous ways women contribute to the healthcare industry. Whether practicing medicine, conducting research for scientific studies, or developing technology to benefit healthcare workers and patients, women are changing the face of the healthcare industry.

Four Women Leaders Impacting the Healthcare Industry

As medical doctors, scientists, and professors, women are making significant contributions to the healthcare industry. 

1. Emmanuelle Charpentier

Professor Charpentier is a renowned researcher in microbiology, biochemistry, and genetics. She has completed lab work studying how pneumonia-causing bacteria use mobile genetic elements to adapt its genome. Dr. Charpentier also worked in a skin cell biologist’s lab to study gene manipulation in mammals.

Her experience as Research Associate at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in New York helped project her career as a lab head and guest faculty at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine in Sweden. From there, she transferred to Germany, where she became an Alexander von Humboldt professor.

Dr. Charpentier’s experience in molecular studies led her to identify the molecular mechanisms of CRISPR/Cas9 – a bacterial immune system – and repurposing it for genome editing. This discovery has enabled scientists to successfully change the DNA of animals and plants. Charpentier and her research partner, Jennifer Doudna, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. This is the first scientific Nobel Prize ever awarded to two women. 

2. Maliha Hashmi 

Dr. Hashmi is an expert in strategic planning and healthcare. 

A graduate of Harvard and MIT, she is a leader on many boards and programs for countless corporations, foundations, non-profit organizations, hospitals, and research centers. 

Her outside-the-box strategies bring creative solutions to the healthcare industry. 

Hashmi partnered with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School to develop the United Nations World Food Program’s Freerice initiative. This multiple-choice quiz game is a free website and mobile app that lets players donate rice to people in need.

Additionally, Dr. Hashmi has:

  • Engaged in strategic partnership with scholars and world leaders in four continents
  • Served as CEO of an educational consultancy firm in Bahrain
  • Authored several publications for research, corporate, and academic sectors
  • Held executive roles in high-level organizations worldwide and is known globally for her contributions to the health industry

She is currently the Executive Director and Deputy Sector Head for the Health, Wellbeing and Biotech Sector at NEOM. She is also the Deputy Chair of the NEOM COVID-19 Leadership Taskforce, working to find solutions to the global pandemic.

3. Frances H. Arnold 

Dr. Arnold is a chemical engineer and the current Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry at California Technical Institute. 

Among many awards and honors, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the use of directed evolution to create enzymes. 

Typically, evolution by natural selection leads to proteins that can complete biological duties. These genetic mutations take place over time. Arnold’s directed evolution introduces mutations early in the process. She can use research and data to determine which mutations to apply for a more efficient progression. If it yields positive results, she can optimize it further for even more promising outcomes.

Not only does Arnold’s work benefit people but also the environment. Her directed evolution contributions have helped produce renewable fuels and pharmaceutical products that are more ecologically friendly. 

4. Nancy Howell Agee

As president and CEO, Agee oversees the Carilion Clinic – a $2 billion not-for-profit healthcare organization in Virginia. Under her leadership, the Carilion Clinic went from a group of hospitals to a physician-led integrated clinic. As a result, Virginia Tech partnered with the clinic to develop an allopathic medical school and research institute.

The Carilion Clinic employs over 1,000 physicians and consists of seven hospitals, ranging from small rural to the third largest in the state. The organization also provides the following free services to more than one million citizens across Virginia and West Virginia:

  • Home health services
  • Imaging technologies
  • Pharmacies
  • Surgical clinics

Agee is nationally renowned as an innovative healthcare leader. She’s chair of the American Hospital Association and has been named one of Modern Healthcare’s most influential people.

Create Quality Content with Share Moving Media

From medical sales and hospital purchasing to healthcare supplies procurement and hospital distribution, more women are taking an interest in advancing in the healthcare industry. 

This means your publication’s target audience is shifting. Ensure brand recognition by developing content that resonates with female readers. Share Moving Media is a full-service media company that creates and distributes quality content to increase your market share in the healthcare industry. 

Contact Share Moving Media today for more information about developing your content strategy.

The Proof is in the Pudding: Who is Talking About Your Product?

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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!

5 Critical Factors that Impact the Medical Device Sales Cycle

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Medical device sales is a fast-paced industry with new trends and technology constantly emerging. To succeed, medical suppliers need to adopt a comprehensive sales strategy that allows them to utilize multiple platforms and channels to interact with customers.

In 2019, medical device sales increased 5.5% resulting in over 450 billion dollars in revenue. Due to increased health concerns in 2020, medical suppliers have a unique opportunity to provide healthcare facilities with the necessary tools to increase revenue. 

What’s the key to amplifying your bottom line next year? Building a sales cycle that drives results. Let’s take a look at what factors impact a medical device sales cycle and how you can optimize your process to increase your bottom line. 

How Do You Build a Medical Device Sales Cycle?

77% of healthcare buyers said their latest purchase was difficult and complex. For your sales cycle to be effective, you need to develop a comprehensive communication and marketing strategy at each stage to increase conversions. 

The first step is mapping out your ideal customer journey to understand your strengths and gaps. To get started, consider the following steps when developing your journey map:

  1. Identify your customer’s goals and where your value intersects as a solution
  2. Assess all your communication touchpoints throughout your customer’s pre-decision, purchase, and post-close phases (i.e., search ads, case studies, presentation, or follow-up call).
  3. Understand your customer’s needs and pain points
  4. Experience the full customer journey yourself by working through every stage
  5. Develop a visual customer journey map

5 Factors that Impact the Medical Device Sales Cycle

Even when you map out your ideal customer journey, it’s important to recognize that certain factors impact its overall effectiveness. Here are the elements you need to optimize your sales cycle: 

1.Right Audience Targeting

When it comes to your sales cycle, you need to attract the right qualifying target audience to ensure you’re not wasting time on leads who are unlikely to make a purchase. To narrow down your target audience, build robust buyer personas based on quantitative and qualitative data such as surveys, focus groups, and analytics data. Buyer personas will help you determine your most qualified prospects and prioritize your lead generation resources on those who will result in higher conversion rates and retention.

2.On-Point Messaging

Only 66% of marketers develop content that meets their audience’s needs. Your messaging throughout the sales cycle can have a large impact on whether or not a lead commits to a purchase decision. Throughout each stage, your messaging needs to be consistent, educational, and persuasive enough to land the sale. 

Develop unique messaging and content that supports your audience’s needs and pain points for the following actions points:

Your sales strategy is all about reaching your audience at the right time. If you’re too late, you could potentially miss the sale to a competitor. Too soon, and you might come off too pushy. By using marketing automation technology, you can deliver messaging based on when your leads take an action throughout the sales cycle. 

  • Lead prospecting
  • Cold calling
  • Setting up an appointment
  • Closing the sale
  • Asking for referrals

3.Quick Automated Technology

Tied to the customer relationship manager (CRM), create email triggers as welcome emails, follow-ups, consultation requests, and more. You can also send valuable incentives closer to closing to sweeten the deal.  

4.Comprehensive Sales Distributor Training

Distributors are a huge part of developing a successful buying cycle. You need to not only train new distributors with an effective onboarding program, but also empower them with best practices, resources, and knowledge so they can identify growth opportunities. Additionally, to keep your distributors engaged, consider incentivizing their sales and offering additional benefits when they meet your business goals. If you fail to educate your distributors, they’re unable to advocate your brand to their healthcare facilities.

5.Performance Analytics 

To build an agile sales cycle, it’s crucial to have your eyes on real-time performance at all times. Analytics will give you visibility into what’s working in your customer journey and what isn’t — allowing you to improve any underperforming stages. You’ll need to monitor the following features:

  • Form fills
  • Email open rates
  • Appointments made
  • In-person visits
  • Presentations given
  • Conversion rates
  • Dollars closed by each sales rep

Optimize Your Medical Device Sales Cycle to Increase Conversion Rates

If you’re looking to optimize your customer journey and increase conversion rates, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of your medical device sales cycle. By understanding and reacting to your customer needs, you’ll be able to effectively interact with them throughout every stage to build long-term loyalty. 

Contact Share Moving Media today to improve your sales cycle process with content development.

What is the Real Cost of Stopping Your Healthcare Marketing Campaigns?

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses to reconsider their 2021 budget and growth strategies. In doing so, it’s easy to look at your marketing campaign expenses and wonder if it’s worth investing in.

Healthcare marketing campaigns, digital platforms, and technology costs often quickly add up and cause serious sticker shock. How can you guarantee a return on investment (ROI) and growth? What are the consequences of cutting marketing out?

Once you take a closer look at those numbers, it’s clear to see why marketing is one of the smartest investments medical suppliers can make. Without consistent and effective marketing, you’re unable to reach your distributors and end-users to increase sales. However, running healthcare marketing campaigns for the sake of doing it isn’t effective. The key is finding a balance between driving results and allocating your budget. 

Many marketers plan to increase their budgets by 7.6% on average in 2021. What would happen if you stopped all healthcare marketing campaigns right now? Let’s dive into what it would cost you long-term and quick tips on how to cut expenses without hurting your business growth. 

The Cost of Stopping Your Healthcare Marketing Campaigns

If your marketing campaigns are running up your budget without impressive results, you may consider throwing in the towel altogether. However, healthcare marketing campaigns encompass many aspects of business growth including brand awareness, lead generation, customer insights, and more. 

Without marketing, your company would have to rely solely on the merit of your products and services, along with word-of-mouth referrals from past customers. Ultimately, this would lead to a decrease in sales, engagement, and overall brand awareness — costing your business thousands and thousands of dollars.

Where Your Healthcare Campaign Went Wrong

Depending on your products and services, healthcare suppliers are spending anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars on marketing expenses. With endless marketing channels and technology to test, it’s easy for many businesses to quickly overload themselves. If your marketing campaigns are underperforming, ask yourself the following questions before cutting your budget:

  • Are you targeting the right audience?
  • Have you built out buyer personas from research?
  • Did you develop realistic success metrics?
  • Is your messaging not resonating with your audience?
  • Do you understand the customer journey?

3 Ways to Reduce Healthcare Marketing Campaign Expenses Without Hurting Your Business

While marketing is paramount to your overall business growth, you can still cut down your budget without sacrificing the quality of your results. Here are a few steps you can take to optimize your healthcare marketing campaigns and expenses:

1.Conduct a Full Marketing Audit

You need to conduct a full marketing audit to determine how much you’re spending on marketing activities, active marketing channels, and measurable results. You’ll need to quantify how much you’re spending on each channel and include any software, fees, materials, etc. 

After you’re finished, you’ll most likely be surprised which areas you’re overspending and where gaps exist. You can either decide to limit the number of active channels you’re investing in or reduce your spend on underperforming campaigns. 

2.Improve Audience Targeting

The key to a successful marketing campaign is targeting the right customer, at the right time, on their preferred platform. However, 60% of marketers agree that their customer acquisition cost (CAC) has increased in the past three years. Focusing your budget on prospects who aren’t in your ideal market jams up your lead pipeline and is an ineffective use of your budget. 

Instead, build comprehensive buyer personas through quantitative and qualitative research so you can better understand your customer’s needs and pain points. Use these profiles to arm your marketing strategy and better use your budget for the right audience.

3.Use Marketing Automation Tools

While the idea of investing in new technology may seem daunting, it can help you cut back on resources and not spread yourself too thin. Marketing automation will help free up your time and ensure your team can focus on different tasks.

Common marketing automation tools include:

  • Chatbots
  • Email autoresponder and journeys
  • Customer relationship managers

Build Comprehensive Healthcare Marketing Campaigns that Drive Results

Budget cuts are never easy. However, completely stopping your healthcare marketing campaigns can have serious consequences for your overall business growth. Without marketing, you’ll be unable to attract and engage with your customers on a larger scale. If you’re concerned about your budget, consider analyzing your expenses, budget, and data to make smarter campaign decisions that propel your medical supply company forward.

Ready to develop marketing campaigns that amplify your growth? Contact Share Moving Media for more information.

Brand Storytelling in Healthcare: If You’re Not Visible, You’re Irrelevant

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Today’s world is fast-paced and digitally driven. Consumers have adopted a “need it now” mentality and value brands that prioritize instant gratification. 

As a result, brands focus on convenience instead of the personalized human touch. However, to better connect with your target audience and break the cycle of endless scrolling, it’s important to engage with them on a deeper level through storytelling. 

Brand storytelling in healthcare requires embedding skill, creativity, and vision in your marketing campaigns to evoke emotion and increase your bottom line. By telling the “why” behind your brand, you’re able to engage with your customers and give them a reason to invest in your products and services. 

You need to start sharing your story to edge out the competition. Let’s take a look at what brand storytelling is and how medical suppliers can implement it in a marketing strategy.

What is Brand Storytelling in Healthcare?

Storytelling has existed for over 27,000 years. Brand storytelling is the art of weaving fact and narrative together to communicate a message to your target audience. While you’re providing real and transparent stories, you can embellish them to better explain your core meaning. While “good” and “bad” storytelling is relative to your customer, developing a positive brand story includes the following elements:

  • Entertainment
  • Education
  • Universal
  • Memorable
  • Organized

As a medical supply brand, you can utilize storytelling to create powerful videos, testimonials, case studies, marketing materials, and more to amplify your brand.

Why is Brand Storytelling Important?

Brand storytelling in healthcare is no longer a nice-to-have. Successful storytelling allows you to boost your brand awareness, profit, and impact to drive more engagement and conversions with your customers.

Why is brand storytelling successful? Consider the following benefits: 

  • Stand out: You can gain an edge against the competition by creating a memorable narrative that highlights your products and how they have helped save lives.
  • Build loyalty: You’re not just attracting customers through a story; you’re building a relationship with people who will become loyal to your brand and products. 
  • Increase bottom line: You can boost your ROI and overall profitability through complex content marketing stories that drive engagement.

How to Create Healthcare Brand Storytelling for Your Brand

As a medical supply brand, your story can bridge the gap between your company, distributors, and the end-user to increase awareness and engagement. It’s not just a differentiator, it’s a strategic tactic that yields long-term results. Here are two types of brand storytelling for healthcare you need to know:

Data-Driven

76% of marketers fail to use behavioral data in their marketing strategy. With 149 zettabytes of data created worldwide by 2024, you can leverage data to create more targeted stories based on your audience’s preferences and pain points. 

As the key to create content that resonates with your audience, your data is one of the most powerful resources you can leverage for powerful storytelling. Consider analyzing your data from qualitative and quantitative sources to derive key insights for your stories. For example, you can use data to discover the following insights:

  • Does your audience prefer videos over static images? 
  • Do they consume short-form or long-form content? 
  • What are they searching for on search engines? 
  • How long are they engaging with content?
  • What platforms does your audience prefer?

Audience-Focused

To develop successful stories, you need to take your healthcare brand out of storytelling. While you may be accustomed to selling yourself, building impactful content needs to focus on your customers instead. The purpose of your story is to provide your audience with valuable content that evokes emotion and compels them to move forward with your products.

Brand storytelling videos are the most popular types of media marketers create. Get started by assessing your current content and note how often you mention your products or brand throughout the story. Depending on your audience needs, you can develop storytelling through the following mediums to attract customers:

  • Podcasts with industry-adjacent guests to connect with your audience on topics that matter
  • Micro-moments through videos and mini-ads that quickly bring your brand to life
  • Philanthropic news to showcase what your business cares about on social media

When you create user-generated content, you’ll be more likely to expand your reach and build trust with your customers.

Strategic Brand Storytelling for Your Healthcare Business

What’s the “why” behind your brand? Impactful storytelling is the art of highlighting your brand purpose. Without honest and transparent content marketing, your customers will likely find a competitor they better connect with. If you’re looking to build a deeper connection with your distributors, developing brand storytelling is the best way to establish long-term relationships. Looking for quality content marketing services that engage your customers? Contact Share Moving Media for more information.