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How Artificial Intelligence is Improving Value-Based Care

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Artificial intelligence (AI) allows computers to mimic the learning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making skills of a human. Once considered science fiction, AI has become a part of our everyday reality. Today, AI is used for customer service chatbots, media streaming providers, banking and financial services, smart home devices, and more.

AI is also gaining ground in the healthcare sector, where it’s driving the efficiency of value-based care. Value-based care is defined by its intent to create more value for the patient. Every element of a value-based healthcare system should enhance the quality of patient care and thus improve patient outcomes. AI in value-based care can help realize this vision in various ways.

An Overview of AI in Value-Based Care

Value-based care isn’t just about individual patients. It further aims to create better health for broader populations and to lower per-capita costs of healthcare at large. All of this adds up to more effective and efficient healthcare systems that better serve patient interests while minimizing needless spending.

Organize and Analyze Healthcare Data

Healthcare is a data-driven industry. A single patient file can contain extensive amounts of information, from past diagnoses to blood test results and basic facts like height, weight, and age. To diagnose a patient successfully, a healthcare provider needs to have access to all of this information. AI can help better organize, manage, and even analyze such data.

What’s more, AI can take datasets from not just one patient but from many patients, bringing together large swaths of information to make it easier to identify significant trends across patient populations. For example, AI algorithms can track, pinpoint, and analyze adverse events in pharmaceutical clinical trials, helping to speed drug development and get patients new medicines they need faster.

Research suggests that AI can be used at many stages of the drug development process. For example, in drug design, AI can predict drug-protein interactions and help model the 3D structure of a target protein. In the later development stage of drug screening, AI can be used to help predict elements like bioactivity and toxicity.

Enhance Diagnostic Procedures and Predictions

AI can also help improve diagnostic procedures and predictions for individual patients, directly impacting care decisions and outcomes. This fact becomes especially evident when looking at the promise offered by human genome sequencing.

Every individual has unique DNA. Through genome sequencing, researchers can now analyze each person’s DNA and identify genetic markers that indicate a person has a greater likelihood of developing a particular disease. With this information – which goes well beyond what a standard physical exam and health history can provide – doctors and patients can benefit from improved diagnostics predictions.

One famous example is the actress Angelina Jolie. Through genome testing, the actress discovered that she was a carrier for the BRCA1 gene mutation, making her more susceptible to breast cancer. A woman with the BRCA1 gene has a 69% chance of developing breast cancer. In comparison, the average woman has about a 12% chance of this. As a preventative measure, Jolie opted to have a double mastectomy.

Improve Support Informed Clinical Decision-Making

As the Angelina Jolie example also shows, AI-driven data analysis can be used not only for predictive modeling but also to guide healthcare decision-making. The more data a patient and healthcare provider have, the more informed of a decision they can make, jointly, regarding the patient’s course of care. In Jolie’s case, the identified risk warranted what some might consider a drastic step.

This shows how AI in value-based care can directly impact individual patients. Data-driven decision-making removes some of the unpredictability of healthcare. Instead of waiting to see if cancer developed, Jolie proactively decided to minimize the risk. The promise of AI-supported data analysis is especially significant given the rise in electronic health records (EHRs), which digitize patient data.

This approach would arguably also prove more cost-efficient at an individual level and minimize the burden on the healthcare system (when considering a long-term cancer patient’s requirements). Cost-cutting is also part of the value-based healthcare model, which aims to reduce the cost of services without negatively impacting the outcome – or, better yet, improve outcomes without increasing costs.

AI in Value-Based Care: A Case Study

A case study can help crystallize the information above and demonstrate how AI can contribute to value-based healthcare. For example, consider how AI can be used to help predict epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is a neurodegenerative illness that causes recurrent and unpredictable episodes.

Individuals diagnosed with epilepsy can benefit from medication. However, approximately one-third of patients can’t successfully manage their symptoms using medicine and still experience dangerous spontaneous seizures. While surgical interventions are available to treat epilepsy, the overall success rate remains relatively low, and the risk of complications is significant.

More recently, researchers have begun exploring the utility of AI in predicting epileptic seizures. By analyzing large swaths of historical data regarding epileptic seizures, it may be possible to identify so-called seizure generators correctly. This can help keep patients safe and further open up new avenues for developing alternative interventions to address and possibly prevent seizures.

This example clearly shows how AI can help healthcare become more personal while also allowing for more significant predictive and preventative measures. As AI capacities continue to evolve and the healthcare system gains confidence implementing tools like those described above, more such examples of AI in value-based care can be expected.

Understand the Healthcare Marketplace with Share Moving Media

As a healthcare manufacturer, it’s essential to stay up to date on the latest developments in your field. Technological innovations like AI in healthcare directly impact the providers and systems you serve. Understanding what matters to them will help you better map the customer journey and meet each customer’s unique needs.

Share Moving Media is committed to helping medical suppliers gain a better understanding of the healthcare marketplace, which allows them to increase market share. We are a full-service media company that helps healthcare suppliers create compelling content to reach their target audiences, including blogs, podcasts, webinars, and more.

Subscribe to our newsletter, The Marketing Minute, for more updates. Contact us to work together.

8 Pay-Per-Click Tips for Healthcare Advertising on Google

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Google pay-per-click (PPC) is a means of advertising on Google. Given that Google is the world’s largest search engine – commanding some 86% of the market – a successful Google PPC campaign can be a great way to extend your business reach and raise your profile.

For healthcare manufacturers, well-planned PPC ads can help drive traffic to a website, convert customers, and boost sales, ultimately increasing the bottom line and improving market share.

This e-guide explains how you can benefit from healthcare advertising on Google and get some top tips for using Google ads for healthcare below.

The Benefits of Healthcare Advertising on Google

You might think that there’s no need to pay for advertising using Google PPC, given that your healthcare manufacturing or distribution business can likely be found via the search engine anyway. Think again. Paid healthcare advertising on Google offers unique advantages.

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) can indeed help your website climb the Google rankings, making it easier for a potential customer to find you online. However, Google’s algorithms only prioritize the highest quality websites when determining organic search rankings.

Getting that “free” traffic generally requires an extensive investment of effort and money devoted to optimization. Unless you’re an SEO pro yourself, you’ll likely want to hire an expert.

What’s more, building a solid SEO profile takes time. Take backlinks, for example. The more high-quality, well-ranked, reputable websites link back to your website, the higher your website will rank in Google search results.

However, getting other websites to link back to you doesn’t happen overnight. You have to generate high-quality content first and establish a reputation as a trustworthy source worth linking to. Google PPC offers a more efficient alternative.

Finally, PPC also gives you more control over how your listing appears in the search results. Paid ads are listed above the organic results on Google. You can see them marked with the word “Ad” in a small box. Even with the “Ad” label, getting this front-page placement is critical to getting people to click.

One survey showed that the vast majority of Google users stay on the first page of Google results, with 75% of users clicking on the first or second result that comes up. Only a meager 7% of searchers look beyond the first page of results.

Unless your organic SEO efforts are top-tier (which, as mentioned, demands significant effort, money, and time), scoring a first-page results ranking could be tough.

8 PPC Best Practices for Google Ads for Healthcare

This quick e-guide highlights some best practices for healthcare advertising on Google.

1. Educate Yourself About PPC

If you’ve never used PPC advertising before, take the time to learn about the process. Once you set up your Google Ads account, you can set up a PPC campaign. You set a budget (e.g., daily, monthly, etc.). Whenever someone clicks on your ad, this eats into your allotment (hence the term “pay-per-click”). You can target your ad using keywords. If you haven’t already set up a campaign, you can do so here.

2. Set Clear Goals

One of the significant advantages of PPC is that you can track the results. You will be able to see exactly how many clicks you get on your ad. You can then see whether the number of clicks aligns with subsequent conversions. Decide what you want “success” to look at beforehand. For example, do you want to increase website traffic, boost sales, or raise general brand awareness?

3. Include Negative Keywords

Many PPC newbies focus solely on what keywords they want to rank for. However, it’s just as important to specify which keywords you don’t want to rank for. Someone searching for these so-called negative keywords is unlikely to be interested in your product or company – and thus unlikely to take any action that will meet your end goal.

4. Define Your Keyword Matches

There are three main types of keyword matches:

  • Exact: An exact keyword match will allow your ad to appear in the results only when the precise given keyword is input, e.g., “cardiovascular stent.”
  • Phrase: A phrase match will allow your ad to appear in the results if the keyword appears as part of a general search phrase, e.g., “cardiovascular stent provider.”
  • Broad: Finally, a broad match will allow your ad to appear in the results even if the precise keyword isn’t used, but a synonym is used, e.g., “coronary stent.” A broad match is only recommended if you have a large budget.

5. Create a Compelling Ad

There’s no point investing in PPC ads if you aren’t going to make them great. Your ad copy should be concise and convincing. The goal of the ad copy should be clearly defined, with a well-defined call-to-action. Logically, the copy should also be closely related to your chosen target keyword.

6. Ensure Your Landing Pages are Relevant to Your Ads

Your ad is creating a promise. Make sure that whatever landing page your consumer clicks on delivers that promise. For example, if you advertise a specific product, you want to ensure that the user is directed to that product page, not your general web page. You want to minimize the number of clicks your website visitor needs to convert.

7. Monitor Your Results

As mentioned, one of the most significant benefits of Google PPC is that you can track the results. Track your conversions regularly and adjust your ad campaign (e.g., keywords and negative keywords) accordingly. You can use Google AdWords Search Query Reports to gather valuable details to determine what keywords you aren’t using might help you capture more visitors.

8. Abide by Google and HIPAA Guidelines

Last but not least, whenever you’re undertaking any digital marketing in a healthcare campaign, make sure you’re abiding by HIPAA guidelines. Additionally, note that Google ads for healthcare and medicines are subject to unique rules. For example, remarketing isn’t permitted (in which you basically “follow up” and target people who have already visited your website).

Increase Your Market Share with Share Moving Media

Share Moving Media is a full-service media company that helps healthcare manufacturers and distributors increase market share. We work with a diversity of media, from print publications to webinars and more. With a holistic approach to healthcare marketing, we can help you raise your company’s profile.

Get more digital marketing in healthcare news by signing up for our newsletter, The Marketing Minute. Contact us to collaborate.

Lead Scoring in Healthcare: How to Build an Effective Qualification Model

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While generating leads is an essential goal for all healthcare suppliers, qualified leads that convert are critical to a company’s success. Knowing where prospects are in the sales journey— whether they’re motivated to buy or are at the right time for a follow-up— helps build a reliable sales pipeline.

Lead scoring in healthcare provides useful insights to help you rate your sales leads for a more efficient and effective sales process. An effective lead scoring qualification model can help you hone in on qualified leads with a higher likelihood of completing a sale. This allows you to increase sales and grow your business faster.

Lead Scoring in Healthcare and Why It’s Important

Lead scoring in healthcare enables you to gather data for a particular lead and use that information to assign it a point value. Typical models use a scale of 0 (least qualified) to 100 (most qualified) to determine which leads are most engaged with your brand. The more you learn about each lead, and the more they interact with your business, the higher their score should rise.

Lead scores rely on five main data points:

  • Demographics: Qualitative and quantitative information, from age and gender to purchase behavior and job title, guide campaign strategy and retention efforts.
  • Business details: Company size and revenue can impact the language you use to communicate with your prospects as well as the products and price points you promote to them.
  • Online presence: Monitor chats and discussions on websites and social network forums. Look for pain points and opportunities to solve their problems with your products.
  • Social network: If your leads are on social media, consider communicating with them in a more casual, conversational format to build a deeper, meaningful relationship. 

Once leads achieve a particular point threshold, they are deemed qualified and can be directed to the sales department. When a sales team receives a notification about a qualified lead, they follow up to help convert the prospect to a customer. 

The insights you gain from lead scoring and the process of qualifying leads are critical to your success. The more you know about your prospects, the more you can do to create a positive customer experience for them while guiding them through the sales funnel. From customized messaging to useful promotions and educational materials, understanding your audience gives you the leverage you need to build trust, rapport, and solidify brand loyalty for sales growth.

7 Tips for Building an Effective Lead Scoring Qualification Model

For the most effective results, lead scoring should be accurate and consistent. Use the information gathered from the lead scoring data qualifiers to develop a model that follows these seven guidelines.

1. Establish Your Minimum Criteria 

Determine what you require from a lead before they can become a customer. These steadfast qualifications could be age, location, or job title. Maybe you only sell to people in hospital distribution or group purchasing networks. Whatever the criteria, it must be essential to passing them through the funnel. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be considered here. 

2. Identify Your Target Market 

Identify the characteristics of your target market. Unlike your minimum criteria, these are common traits typically held by your preferred audience but are not mandatory. The goal is to identify prospects that are most similar to your existing customers. The more comparable they are, the more likely they are to be interested in your products.

This is a simple process if you’re familiar with your current customers. If not, your marketing team should know these characteristics from their research in developing custom content. You can also rely on your sales team for input since they encounter your audience daily and are in touch with your customers’ needs.

3. Define the Ideal Customer 

In a perfect world, what does your dream customer look like? Think about traits like job title, field of expertise, typical turnaround demand, and budget size. Seek input from your sales and marketing teams to build a more well-defined snapshot of your ideal lead. Once you know what your desired customer looks like, your leads can achieve a higher score.

4. Assess Customer Engagement 

Understanding customer behavior is crucial in assigning point values. Consider all of the opportunities a prospect has to engage with your company.

Assess behavior such as:

  • Website clicks
  • Email opens
  • File downloads
  • Social media comments
  • Completed CTAs

Evaluate website analytics to find such details and observe customer behavior. Critical conversion behaviors, like requesting more information or watching a product demonstration, are indicators that a lead is interested in becoming a customer. The score for these behaviors should carry more weight when you begin assigning points. 

5. Set the Parameters for Your Scoring System 

Although a scoring system of 0-100 is straightforward and widely accepted, incorporating more digits in your structure can help categorize your leads. Consider adding a thousandth digit to signify company size. Weed out weak leads by assigning a certain number of points for leads that meet your essential criteria. If they don’t meet the threshold for quality, they don’t make it to the sales team. 

6. Assign Points 

The point of lead scoring is to identify characteristics and actions that result in a closed sale. Assign points to behaviors accordingly. It is rare that a lead who registers for blog updates becomes a paying customer. That behavior should earn a low score. Leads who click on downloadable files do tend to convert, so they should get a higher score. 

7. Adjust as Necessary

Once you’ve determined your scoring system, try it out for a month. Then reassess and see how effective it’s been. Look for any surprises, like low-scoring leads that converted and high-scoring leads that didn’t. Make adjustments to your system as necessary until you develop a model that yields positive results.

Let Us Help You Build an Effective Lead Scoring and Qualification Model

All businesses in the healthcare supply chain can benefit from an effective lead scoring and qualification model. With this model, you can target the prospects most likely to convert and allocate your resources most effectively. Share Moving Media specializes in helping healthcare businesses generate qualified leads and reach their marketing goals for increased market share.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you close sales and generate revenue with an effective lead scoring and qualification model.

How to Use Webinars to Create Content for All Stages of the Funnel

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The medical supply market is competitive. As a healthcare supplier, you can boost success by proactively targeting consumers at every stage in the marketing and sales funnel. Webinars are one effective way to do this. This e-guide explains how to harness the power of webinars for healthcare sales.

An Introduction to Full-Funnel Marketing

Experts agree that a full-funnel approach is essential for future digital marketing success. While the terminology for the stages of the marketing and sales funnel varies, a general breakdown might look like this:

  • Awareness: A prospective customer is made aware of a business’ product or service.
  • Discovery: The prospective customer – the lead – learns more about the product or service.
  • Evaluation: The lead takes time to consider whether they need the service or product.
  • Engagement: The lead decides whether or not to make a purchase.
  • Commitment and purpose: The lead commits to making a purchase and becomes a customer.
  • Loyalty and advocacy: The customer returns to make a repeat purchase. They may also recommend the product or service to others.

Webinars for Healthcare Sales at Every Stage of the Funnel

Although the concept of full-funnel marketing has been prevalent for years, technological and organizational hurdles made practical implementation difficult. Until now, of course. Today, modern digital technologies –like webinars – make a full-funnel approach more accessible than ever.

Here is how to harness the power of webinars to create content for every stage of the medical equipment sales funnel.

Awareness

At the awareness stage, the goal is to target your potential customer with compelling content. Through that content, you want to make the lead aware of your product or service offering.

It is generally more impactful to steer clear of product-, service-, brand-, or business-specific content. The lead isn’t yet looking to make a purchase. Overtly and aggressively pushing them to buy something will likely turn them off and send them away.

Instead, you want to inform and entertain them. At this point, webinars should focus on providing value-added content, not on proactive selling. For example, a webinar raising awareness about a specific ailment (e.g., Type 2 Diabetes) can segue to discussing treatment options (like glucose tracking) and ultimately serve as a platform for a product (such as blood sugar monitors).

Discovery

The goal of the discovery phase is to provide the potential customer with more information about a company’s product or service. With your content, you want to pressure the pain. What does that mean?

You want to clarify how the product or service can improve the lead’s life. What pain point will it fix? At this point, it’s critical to maintain the lead’s attention. It is like reeling in a fish — you need to keep them on the line until they are ready to conclude a purchase (the final stage in the funnel).

You want to make sure you are providing the lead with all the information they need about a service or product. Unanswered questions at this point can cause them to exit the sales funnel. For example, they may want to know essential details, like cost and delivery time. A how-to webinar guide can be helpful towards this end.

Evaluation

This stage aims to provide the consumer with additional winning arguments that will sway them towards making a favorable purchasing decision.

A positive way to do this is to incorporate new information from verifiable external sources of information. Instead of simply telling the lead about the product or service first-hand, you give them personal agency and the chance to verify the facts themselves using objective third parties. 

This is where you can dive into greater detail. A webinar featuring a round table discussion gathering objective insights from third-party medical experts can be helpful. In-depth case studies, customer stories, and free product demos are also viable options.

Engagement

The goal here is to get the lead to confirm their decision to make a purchase. This tends to be one of the most challenging points of the sales funnel, as consumers may waver and go back a step to the engagement phase or take two steps back to the discovery stage when they find a competitor.

You want to make sure your brand or business (and its product or service) stays at the forefront of the potential customer’s mind as they weigh the decisions. This requires eliminating any doubts associated with concluding a purchase and the process towards the next stage.

Interactive webinars are helpful to spur engagement. You can invite participants to submit questions via social media in a live stream, for example.

Commitment and Purchase

In this stage, the aim is to get the client to actively conclude the purchase – for example, by inputting their credit card details or completing an order form. They are then fully committed.

Although the lead is ready to purchase at this point, you still have to provide some reassurance that they are making the right choice. A webinar of customer testimonials is a great fit here. You might also include videos covering practical points like pricing guides or product comparison sheets.

Loyalty and Advocacy

In the past, some pros ended the sales funnel after the commitment and purchase stage. However, savvy marketers know that there is one more invaluable phase to consider: a loyal customer can become an informal brand ambassador as they promote and advocate for your products or services. There is even a new type of marketing built around this concept called advocacy marketing.

Webinars allow you to show your customers that you care about them even after they have made a purchase. Build user communities with ongoing educational webinars featuring product tutorials, the latest research, and upcoming innovations. A “frequently asked questions” webinar is another option.

We Help You Implement Digital Marketing in Healthcare

Trust Share Moving Media to help you create webinars for healthcare sales. We are a full-service media company dedicated to helping our clients expand their reach and improve engagement with their target audiences. Using quality crafted content informed by in-depth marketing expertise, we help you improve sales and boost the bottom line.

 Subscribe to our newsletter for more healthcare marketing e-guides. Contact us to collaborate.

Why Trade Publishers and the Industry Need to Join Hands to Revive Sales in Healthcare

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The healthcare industry has seen big shifts in recent years. Legal, compliance, and regulatory changes have impacted how healthcare suppliers operate. Technological advancements are changing the face of healthcare procedures, but possibly the greatest impact on the healthcare industry is the advancement of the internet.

Now, people have access to infinite information. They can do their own medical research and are less dependent on medical salespeople. As a result, healthcare sales are on a downward trend. Industry professionals, like hospital suppliers and those in medical distribution, need to rethink their marketing strategy and find new ways to reconnect with their audience and reach them with meaningful information. 

The answer may lie in trade publications. It’s time for trade publishers and the industry to work together to revive sales in healthcare.

Why Trade Publications are an Invaluable Marketing Tool

Trade publications are a reliable source of information, and people trust their authority and reputation. These magazines provide education, expert knowledge, and thought leadership to keep readers informed and knowledgeable while helping to solve business challenges. From industry announcements and press releases to case study findings and opinion columns, trade publications offer multiple benefits to their readers.

With the vast accessibility of the internet, many people prefer to read their information online. Trade publications have been able to remain current by adapting to meet consumer’s needs and deliver the same useful resources through digital distribution. 

Some readers will dispute that paper publications are a dying breed and continue to prefer hard copy formats. In any case, trade publications are an invaluable marketing tool in many ways.

To connect with your audience, you need to understand them. Identify the challenges they face, find out what answers they’re seeking, and see where their interests lie. An effective way to gain this knowledge is to read the same materials they’re reading. See what they’re learning about and use that information to create effective marketing campaigns that address their concerns and pique their interests.

More than content distribution, trade publications facilitate engagement among the healthcare community. They provide online forums, content libraries, virtual networking opportunities, and downloadable resources. Industry workers who become involved with these things themselves can build a relationship with their audience while gaining a deeper understanding of their needs and wants. All of this can help generate leads and increase sales growth. 

4 Reasons Why Trade Publishers and the Industry Should Join Forces

Trade publications are especially beneficial to the industry because they raise awareness, boost name recognition, increase visibility, and help to gain credibility. Not only should industry leaders read these publications, but they should also consider contributing articles, editorials, and purchasing ad space in them. Here are 4 reasons why trade publishers and the industry should join forces to revive sales in healthcare.

1. Lead Generation 

Trade publishers are distributing their materials to a highly targeted audience. By contributing to these publications, you’re getting your company name in front of new viewers you haven’t yet reached. With the information you’ve gained from following what readers are discussing in forums, you can develop authoritative content that answers their questions meets their needs.

Not only will you broaden your reach, but you may also have readers contact you on other platforms to connect and discuss your thoughts further. This kind of engagement enables you to develop a relationship with your new-found audience and helps with lead generation.

2. Position Yourself as an Industry Expert

By nature, trade publications are reputable sources delivering trustworthy information. When industry professionals develop content that appears in these publications, readers perceive them to be equally trustworthy. The more meaningful and useful content you get published, the more you position yourself as an industry expert. As people begin to associate you with valuable, knowledgeable information, they’ll begin to look to you for answers and insight.

Company decision-makers read these articles. As they see your name more and more as a trusted resource, they’ll be inclined to contact you directly for possible business opportunities.

Additionally, your trade association may take notice of your content and consider you for in-person opportunities. Serving as a discussion panelist, a forum monitor, or even a keynote presenter would get you in front of more people for even further brand awareness. All of this leads to potential sales opportunities.

3. Stand Apart from the Competition 

Trade publishers are always looking for content to fill their pages. Through articles and advertising, they provide several opportunities to set yourself apart from your competition. After all, if you’re not appearing in these magazines as a contributor, chances are that your competition is. Even if you don’t have research findings or editorial content to contribute, consider taking out an ad. 

Publications provide opportunities for heightened visibility. Do what you can to get your name in front of readers and attract prospects before they turn to your industry competitors. By standing apart from your competition, you increase the chance of gaining new customers and boosting sales.

4. Drive Company Efforts

Trade publications provide a means to highlight your team’s achievements and industry successes. Not only does that strengthen readers’ perception of your organization and drive traffic to your team—it gives a morale boost to the people in your company and solidifies the trust of your stakeholders. When people are proud of the work they’re doing and believe in the company they work for, they have more drive to continue to succeed.

Publicizing your company’s leadership is good for business development and provides materials that are helpful for sales efforts. When you can present prospects with featured industry articles touting your company’s strengths, you build credibility with your client base and earn their trust for purchase power.

Share Moving Media Can Help You Join Hands

Healthcare professionals that want to revive sales in the industry should partner with trade publishers to develop quality content that’s visible, targeted, and generates leads. Share Moving Media is a full-service content company that helps healthcare professionals increase market-share through articles, blog posts, and publications. We understand the importance of developing meaningful content and providing training and educational opportunities to help businesses grow. 

To learn more about how we can help you revive healthcare sales, contact us today.