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4 Key Insights for Manufacturers from Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 Report

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In a competitive healthcare manufacturing landscape, B2B companies are beginning to invest resources and budget into building substantial content marketing strategies. With 78% of CMOs believing that content is the future of marketing, a vast majority of businesses have embraced content marketing over traditional marketing tactics. 

Quality content is an effective way to grow audience engagement, boost brand awareness, and drive sales. Not only that, but it also helps you build trust and loyalty with your audience to improve conversions over time. 

In a modern world, your healthcare customers expect you to develop valuable content that answers their questions.

Even if you run a small marketing team, content marketing can work for you. If you’re involved in any type of content marketing, reading through the Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 B2B report is essential to understand how you can get started. Let’s take a look at a few content marketing insights for healthcare manufacturers that you can start implementing today.

Why are Content Marketing Insights Important for Healthcare Manufacturers? 

Marketing moves fast. In an ever-changing landscape, you need to stay ahead of the game. 

91% of B2B marketers are committed to using content in their marketing strategy. With more healthcare companies developing content, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of current trends to remain competitive. Content marketing insights for healthcare manufacturers help you understand how to reach customers at every stage of the funnel and carry a consistent message. 

Staying updated on marketing insights allows you to:

  • Understand how your customers research and purchase products
  • Keep abreast of new changes in healthcare consumer behaviors and priorities
  • Stay relevant to your target audience, marketplace, and competitors
  • Forecast and budget better so you’re not wasting any resources

4 Content Marketing Insights for Healthcare Manufacturers

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is dedicated to providing resources to professionals who are looking to propel their company forward with content. As a leading global content marketing training and educational organization, they teach brands how to engage, attract, and retain customers through storytelling.

Healthcare manufacturers can take advantage of CMI’s 2020 report to learn more about developing impactful content. Here are the key insights from the report:

1. Top-of-the-Funnel Content Increases Engagement

Most B2B marketers focus on content that targets top-of-funnel engagement and goals. While 86% of respondents use content marketing to build brand awareness, there has been a notable increase in those that use it to build loyalty (9% increase) and generate sales (8% increase). 

For healthcare manufacturers, top-of-the-funnel content includes:

  • Infographics
  • Blogs
  • Videos
  • Ebooks or whitepapers

Top-of-the-funnel content doesn’t attempt to sell your target audience products, but instead focuses on developing educational materials that solve pain points.

2. High-Performing Content Formats Drive Results

While marketers are focusing on top-of-the-funnel content, it’s essential to understand what formats perform best throughout the entire customer journey. High-performing content at every stage includes:

  • Awareness: Blog posts/articles (31%), social media content like tweets and stories (25%), and in-person events (8%)
  • Interest: In-person events (19%), webinars/online events (16%), and ebooks/guides (13%)
  • Consideration: Email newsletters (31%), blog posts/short articles (13%), and in-person events/case studies (9%)
  • Purchase: In-person events (25%), case studies (23%), and webinars/online events (11%)

Regardless of the B2B company size, half of the marketers create content for their targeted audiences who are in the early stage of the lead flow. To successfully engage with your customers, your content needs to speak to every stage of their customer journey so you can provide relevant and personalized information to drive conversions. 

3. Paid Distribution Channels Remain Essential

While content marketing fundamentals focus on building an organic presence, 84% of B2B marketers use paid distribution channels to promote their content marketing strategy. In the same group, 72% of professionals report that LinkedIn is the top paid and organic social media platform that generates the best results. Additional paid content distribution channels include:

  • Sponsorships (66%)
  • Search engine marketing (61%)
  • Display ads (46%)
  • Sponsored email content (32%)
  • Native advertising (31%)
  • Other (14%)

Additionally, marketers report using social media (91%), brand’s website (89%), and email (87%) as the preferred free distribution channels to earn higher customer engagement. 

4. Marketers Continue to Measure Performance and ROI

When it comes to measuring content performance, 65% of marketers utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) and 43% measure content marketing ROI. Marketers track ROI with the following metrics:

  • Email: Opens, clicks, and downloads (90%)
  • Website traffic: Pageviews and backlinks (88%)
  • Website engagement: Time spent, bounce rate, form completion (86%)
  • Social media: Shares, followers, likes, and views (83%)
  • Conversions: Traffic to subscribers and sales (78%)

From the 43% of marketers who measure ROI, 59% of them rate their ability to demonstrate ROI as very good or excellent.

Develop an Impactful Content Marketing Strategy

As health manufacturers compete for conversions and internet rankings, it’s essential to utilize CMI’s insights to develop a comprehensive content marketing strategy. With the right strategy in place, you can build brand awareness, delight your customers, and boost your bottom line for years to come.

Ready to develop quality and valuable content? Get started today with Share Moving Media. 

Brands as Publishers: Blogging for Healthcare Brands Could Increase Your ROI 13x

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Specializing in everything from cardiology to pulmonary, healthcare facilities include multiple departments and dozens of service lines. When it comes to developing a marketing strategy for these organizations, manufacturers often choose more traditional tactics like direct mail and overlook blogging.

While blogging was once a tactic used for personal stories and pop culture, healthcare manufacturers are now also finding success with a content marketing strategy. With the right storyline and optimizations, blogging helps you reach diverse healthcare organizations and target their procedural specialties. In fact, companies that prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI.

So, how exactly does blogging for healthcare brands impact ROI? Let’s take a look at how you can get started and succeed in a growing digital healthcare landscape.

Why You Should Start Blogging for Healthcare Brands

Did you know that 80% of internet users searched for a health-related topic online? With so many search queries ranging from health conditions to medical treatments, there is a large demand for trusted and reliable medical information online. As a healthcare manufacturer, you have the unique ability to provide ongoing educational materials that drive engagement from your IDN supply chain leaders and distributor reps. 

Developing your content marketing strategy takes time — you need to write quality content and optimize it for search engine results. However, when done correctly, you can expect the following benefits:

  • Helps potential healthcare facility customers find you
  • Tells your brand’s specific story and point of view
  • Showcases your authority and thought leadership
  • Nurtures existing client relationships
  • Supplements your digital marketing channels
  • Builds long-term positive ROI

A comprehensive blogging healthcare strategy not only improves your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, but also heightens your product line to catch potential customers’ eyes. 

3 Ways Blogging for Healthcare Brands Earns ROI

Now that you understand the value of blogging for healthcare brands, it’s important to zoom in on the ROI benefit. After all, no marketing effort is a success unless it affects your bottom line. While it does take dedicated resources to develop a successful blogging strategy, it actually costs 62% less than traditional marketing. Here are a few ways healthcare blogs impact ROI.

1. Earn Valuable Subscribers

True, subscribers aren’t traditional leads. However, subscribers are the next best thing because they demonstrate interest and loyalty in your brand. In fact, a subscriber is worth more than 3.6 times the value of a normal website visitor.

A majority of website visitors will end up leaving your website without converting. However, a blog subscriber is the first step in your lead funnel and allows you to nurture their experience. Once you earn blog subscriber’s loyalty, you can optimize your content to meet their needs and focus your time on visitors who are closer to converting. 

To boost your ROI, consider adding bold call to actions in your content to encourage your subscribers to take the next step. 

2. Establish Trust-Building Content

In the healthcare industry, trust is a huge driver for business decisions. After all, your products and technology are providing life-saving and improving services for patients across the globe. Your blog’s content is an effective way to build authority and validation within your healthcare niche. 

To build trustworthy content on your blog, consider the following elements:

  • Be honest by showcasing testimonials and statistics backed by sources
  • Use your own domain and platform with original content
  • Focus on education and avoid overly promoting your products
  • Create buyer personas to connect with your target audience

By building authority, potential customers will turn to you as a credible thought leader. It will demonstrate that you not only understand your industry, but will also persuade healthcare facilities that you’re the manufacturer to partner with. 

3. Improve Your Social Media Efforts

84% of C-level B2B buyers are influenced by social media when making a purchase. While healthcare social media is competitive, it’s an essential space for healthcare manufacturers to engage in. Social media demonstrates that you’re agile in a modern landscape and provides additional proof signals. 

Blogging also allows you to enter the conversation and publish your new content to a larger audience. Once your social media followers begin seeing and enjoying your content, they will most likely become subscribers and customers. For healthcare industries, consider sharing your blog content on LinkedIn or Facebook to drive the most ROI. 

Overall, blog content enhances your online presence to drive further signups and referrals from customers who otherwise might not have heard of your brand. 

Discover Blogging for Healthcare Brands

Blogging can be impactful for your healthcare business. It not only brings you additional authority and validation, but it also has the potential to drive new customer engagement and ROI. However, you need to develop the right strategy to reap content marketing benefits. Focus on creating educational blogs that heighten your brand and display your industry knowledge.

With a blogging strategy in place, your blog can boost your bottom line in the following ways: 

  • Earning valuable subscribers who showcase their interest and intent with your brand 
  • Establishing trust signals and credibility through quality content that convinces potential customers that you’re a preferred manufacturer
  • Growing your social media presence and displaying social proof to C-suite executives 

Are you ready to begin creating blogs for your healthcare brand? Contact Share Moving Media for more information today.

Content Marketing 101 for Medical Equipment Manufacturers

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For many medical equipment manufacturers who operate a lean organization with limited resources, content marketing might be a foreign marketing strategy. However, with the right development and cross-promotion, content marketing can take your business goals to the next level.

In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing tactics but generates three times as many leads. How can you take advantage of content marketing for medical equipment manufacturers? Let’s discover how you get started driving results through content marketing.

Why is Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers Important?

Content marketing focuses on developing valuable and relevant content for your target audience. 86% of B2B marketers use some sort of content marketing over traditional advertising to build brand awareness. However, the truth is, any business can benefit from creating content.

When it comes to a successful content marketing strategy, the keyword is value. In a competitive landscape like medical sales, content marketing will highlight your credibility to build brand awareness and increase sales.

However, it’s important to note that while your content should drive customer action, you’re not pushing an obvious sale or advertisement. Your content should be educational and provide actionable takeaways that make your brand stand out against the competition. 

5 Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers Best Practices

Whether you develop infographics full of statistics or in-depth educational whitepapers on your industry niche, your content should deliver enough value to persuade your readers to move into your lead funnel. To develop a content marketing strategy for medical equipment manufacturers, consider the following best practices.

1. Strategize and Set Goals

Before you begin writing any content, you need to develop your content marketing strategy. A comprehensive strategy will not only help you save resources and time, but it will also keep you organized and agile. 

The most important part of your strategy revolves around setting goals. Do you want to earn more leads? Boost your search engine optimization efforts (SEO)? Or, are you looking to drive more sales?  You can get started by using the SMART method (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) to formulate your content marketing objectives.

Once you establish your goals, you can build your entire strategy and marketing calendar around them to drive more engagement and boost your bottom line. 

2. Perform Keyword Research

With your goals at the center of your strategy, you need to complete in-depth content and keyword research to understand what your target audience prefers. Content research will help you determine:

  • What content formats are most popular for your niche
  • The topics your audience is most likely to share or learn more about
  • How to develop an ideal piece of content in terms of length, headline type, etc. 

You also need to understand what keywords are relevant to your industry and the long-tail phrases your audience is searching for. Using the right keywords in your content will boost your SEO efforts and help you rank in top results so you’re found by more people. The higher you rank in search pages, the more traffic and conversions you can capture

3. Develop Evergreen Content

Evergreen content provides ongoing value to your audiences and drives long-term traffic to your website – sometimes even years after publishing. Evergreen content types include:

  • How-to guides
  • Checklists
  • Presentations
  • Case studies
  • White papers
  • Ebooks
  • Podcasts
  • Video

While evergreen may take longer to create than a traditional blog post, you won’t have to rewrite it on a bi-weekly schedule. By developing content that your audience is more likely to consume and enjoy, search engines will take note and rank it higher in search results over time.

4. Target Audiences with Personalization

Personalization continues to be an important factor in content marketing strategy. With consumers bombarded with daily digital ads, emails, and blog posts, your content needs to quickly capture their attention to keep them actively engaged with your brand.

To develop personalized content, consider creating buyer personas for all the different audience types you plan on targeting. You can then start creating specific content for your target audiences that include highly personalized and relevant material. 

For example, different age groups will require different tones and topics depending on their needs. If you’re a medical equipment manufacturer focused on a certain geographic area, your content can also include more localized information.

5. Use Analytics to Optimize Future Content

While your content marketing strategy may start with trial and error, don’t become discouraged. Analytics not only show you the content that your audience prefers to consume, but it also helps you understand trends that you can optimize. For example, your content analytics will teach you:

  • The content that gets the most and least traffic
  • How often your content is shared on social media
  • The content that converted leads the best
  • Headlines or images that earned the most clicks

If you notice certain content formats or topics perform better than others, you can improve future content based on similar fundamentals to capture more audience engagement. 

Discover Valuable Content Marketing for Medical Equipment Manufacturers 

The content marketing landscape for medical equipment manufacturers is wide open for you to take advantage of and grow your company’s bottom line. With the right strategy and optimizations in place, you can develop high-quality content that not only captures your prospect’s attention but also turns them into loyal customer advocates.

If you’re ready to develop quality content that engages your audience, contact Share Moving Media today.

Social Media for Medical Manufacturers: The Top Tricks You’d Never Expect to Work

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Social media was once seen as a space reserved for teenagers to discuss frivolities like celebrity gossip. After all, Facebook – an early pioneer in the social media scene – began as a campus social experiment. Those days are long gone.

Today, social media is used by people from all walks of life, and serious discussions are taking place on social media.

While using social media as a marketing tool in the medical manufacturing space was once unheard of, this is no longer the case. Medical manufacturers can use social media to engage and connect with their target audiences – and even make valuable business connections. That’s if they use it right.

There are some do’s and don’ts when using social media for medical manufacturers.

The Benefits of Using Social Media as a Medical Manufacturer

Social media lets you engage with your target audience, whether that’s healthcare practitioners (HCPs), independent hospitals, or integrated delivery networks (IDNs). You can also monitor their activity via social media. For example, HCPs may communicate if they are headed to a conference.

You can also use social media to establish your medical manufacturing expertise. Share the latest publications and study results from your field. Demonstrate your knowledge by disseminating your own white paper or video seminar. Align social media with a publishing strategy for your blog to attract readers. These are just a few ideas.

By following others in your medical manufacturing niche and sharing your insights, you achieve social media’s ultimate goal — connectivity. What starts as a public exchange online can become a private discussion via email and then a one-on-one video chat or face-to-face meeting.

Still not convinced? Here’s one more winning reason to include social media in your medical manufacturing marketing strategy: It’s cheap. Social media doesn’t cost a thing. It also doesn’t require a lot of time and energy.

3 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media for Medical Manufacturers

The key to effectively using social media for brand messaging in healthcare is value. As with any content marketing, you want to create content that is useful.

Beyond this, there are a few tricks to making the most of social media.

1. Piggyback on Events

Healthcare conferences frequently have dedicated social media channels. Although some in-person events are canceled due to COVID-19, many have moved online. This makes it even easier to join a digital conversation.

The American Society of Echocardiography has a Twitter page (@ASE360) with 13.8k followers, for example, and hosts an annual conference. If you’re in the cardiovascular ultrasound sector, this is a valuable event for making connections. Getting a retweet from ASE gets people’s eyes on you and your company.

2. Join the Hashtag Movement

Your gut instinct might be to think hashtags are too “fluffy” for healthcare. Not so. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include hashtags in their digital media toolkit for flu season awareness.

Another great example: In March 2020, the World Health Organization, in cooperation with the video game industry, launched the campaign #PlayApartTogether to encourage social-distanced fun in the face of the growing COVID-19 pandemic.

If there is a hashtag relevant to your industry, use it to join the conversation. Say your company is a leader in the hearing aid sector, for instance. Get active on social media on World Hearing Day (March 3) using the relevant hashtag.

3. Incorporate Visuals

Visuals make social media more personal. Videos can boost healthcare sales, for instance. Physician profiles and patient experiences are particularly captivating, giving your audience an intimate look at how your medical manufacturing products change the lives of HCPs and the people they serve.

If you’re looking for something simpler, infographics are a great option. They are a visually attractive means of providing useful information your audience will value.

A Word of Caution When Using Social Media in Medical Marketing

There are a few rules to keep in mind as you start designing a social media strategy for your medical manufacturing business. First, you have to remain HIPAA compliant and in line with medical ethics codes. Sharing patient pictures without consent would be a violation, for example.

If you are operating a social media account independently from your employer, take care to differentiate your online activity from your company’s. Including a line in your bio like “Any views and opinions are my own” is helpful.

Beware that a simple disclaimer in your social media bio won’t save your job if you mess up, however. There have been many instances of persons getting fired for sharing racially insensitive or otherwise problematic content on social media.

The point of this “disclaimer” isn’t to discourage the use of social media for medical manufacturers! Use common sense and maintain professionalism in the social media sphere. A good rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t share it with your boss, don’t share it on social media.

Make Social Media Part of Your Content Strategy for Healthcare

Share Moving Media is dedicated to helping medical manufacturers increase their market share. As a full-service media and content company, we can help you reach your target audience through articles, ebooks, podcasts, blog posts, webinars, and more.

Sign up for our newsletter to get more marketing tips and tricks for medical manufacturers. Want to use our services?  Contact us today!

How COVID-19 Has Turned Healthcare Sales Practices on Their Head

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The healthcare industry is in the global spotlight due to COVID-19. Analysts expect the healthcare market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% from 2020 to 2027, reaching $520.6 million. For those in healthcare sales, business is set to boom.

However, COVID-19 has wholly upended the healthcare sales cycle. Face-to-face interactions have decreased. Conferences and other large-scale industry events have been canceled. As medical providers and facilities come under financial strain dealing with a widespread pandemic, buyers are reassessing how to best invest their money.

It’s a moment of massive upheaval. You can either adapt and leverage the current changes to your advantage — or stay stagnant and let the sales opportunities pass you by.

This blog examines changes in healthcare sales in COVID times and provides practical pointers on how to increase your market shares in the evolving landscape.

How are Healthcare Sales Changing in COVID Times?

The sales sector has changed in every area. A survey of B2B sales businesses spanning 11 countries identified trends in three key areas:

  • Change in spending: In general, companies are decreasing expenditures. However, specific sectors, including healthcare, are seeing a rise in spending.
  • Emphasis on digital: Across the board, B2B companies anticipate more digital interactions. Traditional sales interactions, like face-to-face meetings and mingling at conferences, are expected to decrease in importance.
  • Increased remote work: As of April 2020, nearly 90 percent of sales had moved to video conferencing, phone, or website models. Compared to previous skepticism, confidence in such models has increased.

These trends become even more pronounced in the medical field. For instance, physicians report that patients are increasingly embracing telemedicine over in-person appointments due to fear of COVID-19 infection.

As a result, healthcare organizations may consider redistributing budgets to invest in improved video conferencing capabilities. Healthcare practitioners will be required to become more tech-savvy in this field. As a sales professional, it’s essential to understand such changes in supply and demand in healthcare.

4 Tips for Effective Healthcare Sales in COVID Times

Understanding the changes in the sales industry is only half the battle. You have to take this knowledge and adapt accordingly. Here’s how.

1. Identify Your Audience’s New Burdens

Whether you sell ultrasound diagnostics equipment to integrated delivery networks (IDNs) or patient data management software to group purchasing networks, your target audience has undoubtedly experienced changes since COVID-19 began.

Educate yourself on the new burdens your target audience faces. For instance, healthcare practitioners have had to change treatment protocols, while organizations grapple with supply chain disruptions. Surveys are a great way to identify barriers — and then determine how you can help address them.

Knowledge of your audience’s needs also allows you to adapt your sales pitch and messages accordingly.

2. Master Virtual Communication Tools

When touching base with existing clients or having a first-time meeting with a new client, odds are the exchange will be virtual. Be prepared to adapt to your customer’s needs. Acquaint yourself with the most popular virtual communication platforms, including Zoom, WebEx, and Google Hangouts.

This way, you can always quickly adapt to your client’s preferences. With COVID-19 draining healthcare resources — including time — you don’t want to demand more of your clients by asking them to download or learn new video conferencing technology.

3. Take Advantage of Digital Events

Conferences used to be a prime spot for building relationships in the healthcare sales space. While some events are continuing with new COVID-19 safety measures, others are moving online (an excellent opportunity for digital advertising in healthcare). Do your research on what events are ongoing.

There is also a new opportunity in the digital space. You don’t have to attend enormous conferences. Hosting a webinar or a virtual round table discussion on a niche topic in your field is a great way to reach your target audience and establish yourself as an authoritative knowledge source.

4. Monitor Your Success and Be Prepared to Pivot

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of adapting. Major companies have gone from housing employees in offices to having them work from home. Fitness buffs have taken their workouts from the gym to the living room. Schoolteachers have found ways to engage kids via remote learning.

If you want to succeed in healthcare sales in COVID times, you need to be ready to make changes. To enact positive changes, you need information on what works and what doesn’t. You get this by gathering granular data about your methodology.

For example, if you host a webinar, how many people tune in? How many are existing clients versus new leads? How many of them convert to sales when you follow up with those leads via one-on-one video conferences? With such meta-analysis, you can adapt your sales strategies and improve outcomes.

Get Help Enhancing Your Sales in COVID Times

Share Moving Media can help you find new ways to succeed in healthcare sales in COVID times. We help our clients increase their market share through our full-service media offering, including targeted publications, educational services, events, and more. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest healthcare sales and marketing news. Want help revamping your healthcare sales processes? Contact us today!