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Demand Marketing in Healthcare: What It Really Means

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Demand marketing in healthcare is an essential aspect of a successful business strategy to stand out from your competition and generate more traffic to your site.

Whether you’re in hospital purchasing or medical sales, today’s marketplace is more competitive than ever. Because consumers can now conduct their own research and find solutions to their problems online, people are more discerning and selective in their purchases. Demand marketing in healthcare helps engage your audience and channel more people through your sales funnel. This attracts prospects, drives traffic, and increases the likelihood of conversions.

Keep reading to learn what demand marketing in healthcare really means and how to use it to your advantage. 

Key Takeaways

  • Demand marketing in healthcare is the process of raising awareness and generating excitement about a brand and products that provide relevant solutions to healthcare suppliers.
  • Incentivize your audience to create interest and stand apart from the competition. 
  • Follow the five pillars of demand marketing to increase the likelihood of a successful marketing strategy.

What Exactly Is Demand Marketing?

Demand marketing uses your marketing efforts to create interest in and generate demand for your products. First, you must make buyers aware of your brand and the particular solutions you provide. Then, you must pique consumer interest and provide valid reasons why they should purchase your product. Finally, through positioning relevance, you persuade consumers to buy your goods and continue to build customer loyalty for future purchases.

Demand marketing uses a multi-channel approach that combines marketing education with the persuasion of sales. Demand marketing in healthcare can include:

  • Free trials: You build trust and potential lasting relationships by giving people a low-risk opportunity to try your products.
  • Incentives: Free apps or tools with an in-purchase option might convince someone to buy from your company and become a loyal customer.
  • Expert content: E-books and podcasts can be valuable tools that increase engagement and position you as a leader in your industry.
  • Email campaigns: Customers receive special offers or discounts via email that entice them to buy, and you obtain useful contact information for future campaigns.

Demand marketing focuses on building customer engagement while channeling people through your sales funnel. The following video explains how to create demand for your products and succeed in the marketplace:

5 Pillars of Demand Marketing

The healthcare supply chain is a $2.14 billion industry and growing. It’s essential to generate demand for your products to set yourself apart from the competition and gain the business of the medical distribution sector. You can achieve this by following the five pillars of demand marketing in healthcare.

1. Know Your Audience

For marketing to be successful, you have to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. The only way to do this is to truly understand who your audience is, their needs, and their preferences. A basic understanding of their demographics like gender, age, and job can be a terrific starting point in realizing what information would resonate with them. Dive deeper by learning pain points, frustrations, and motivators to deliver messaging compelling them to buy.

Imagine your ideal customer and create a buyer persona to identify their needs and wants. Look at existing customers as well as hypothetical prospects. All of this information can help you build an effective strategy that enables you to deliver relevant content through the most impactful channels at the right time. This helps to boost conversion rates and increase sales for continued success.

Build a buyer persona to identify the needs and wants of your ideal customer.

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2. Engage Your Audience

Although delivering relevant content is a big part of a successful marketing strategy, you must engage with your audience to develop deeper relationships that last. This is important because existing customers are responsible for 65% of a business’s purchases. Audience engagement contributes to customer loyalty and helps spread the word about your brand. Engaged people are more likely to share your information with their contacts and become ambassadors for your brand. This helps broaden your reach and gains you more recognition.

Audience engagement also helps give you more insight into your customers’ needs and wants. People who interact with your brand are more likely to give candid feedback you can use to improve your products and processes. All of this works in your favor as you continue to delight customers and create demand for your products.

3. Give Added Value

One way to educate people about your brand and create interest in your products is to establish yourself as a thought leader and expert in your industry. Become the company people look to for reliable information and helpful tools and resources. Provide useful content that helps people make informed decisions about their purchases. Stand out from competitors by offering an added value. 

From e-books and webinars to whitepapers and research findings, the more value you can offer your customers, the more likely they’ll engage, convert, and return. Demand marketing in healthcare aims to generate interest in your company and your products, so anything you can do to create excitement will benefit you in the long run.

4. Integrate Marketing for a Consistent Message

Demand marketing typically uses several channels for the most impact. Whether you use social media, email campaigns, digital ads, or blog articles, everything you publish should deliver a consistent message. Make sure web content is SEO friendly to earn you higher SERPs for greater visibility. Share valuable information on your social network platforms to increase engagement and reach. Whatever you do, be sure to integrate your marketing efforts into a powerful campaign that excites your audience and spreads the word about your brand and your products.

An integrated marketing strategy ensures that you align all of your efforts for maximum impact.

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Consider implementing marketing automation tools to help streamline your efforts, increase efficiency, and boost productivity. This can save you time while allowing you to reach your audience with impactful messaging that resonates and converts.

5. Track Data

It’s important to track data and measure your performance to determine your demand marketing campaign’s overall effectiveness and success. Data can reveal:

  • Whether people are sharing your content and commenting on your posts.
  • If people can find you on search engines.
  • Your site’s searchability on social media platforms.

Metrics can show engagement and click-through rates to help you realize whether your messages are striking a chord with your audience. Website traffic will show if your content generates interest and demand. Tracking data provides invaluable clues into what’s working well in your marketing efforts and what needs to be changed. All of this helps to ensure your demand marketing strategy is creating buzz, helping you reach your goals, and making the most of your advertising budget.

Develop an Effective Demand Marketing Strategy 

Share Moving Media is a full-service media and content company that provides resources to companies in the healthcare industry. Reach your group purchasing network with valuable content that resonates, generates demand and sets you apart from the competition. Contact us today to learn how we can help you create an effective demand marketing strategy.

Increasing Your Market Share with Share Moving Media

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Are you ready to learn how to increase your market share and crush your competition? It all starts with marketing. We’ll take it a step further and say that marketing with the right content is crucial for building a solid foundation – a launchpad for building relationships and winning clients.

At Share Moving Media, our people are passionate about creating and distributing the right content to the right audience at the right time. Our full-service media and content team will create articles, webinars, videos, blog posts, graphics, and other forms of media to help you drum up new business. We also offer live events and educational services to help your team learn and grow in the right direction.

How We Can Help You Increase Your Market Share

Our goal is to help best-in-class medical suppliers – including distributors and manufacturers – gain more share of their market. Explicitly, we help our customers attract new clients by creating intriguing, relevant, engaging, and timely content their audiences are craving.

You can no longer get away with only highlighting the features and benefits of your products and services, then call it a day. Modern consumers need to understand the “why” and “how” behind the “what.”

For example, instead of running through a list of features your product offers, share how it can change your client’s life. Tell them why they can’t live without it. This may sound like a tall order. That’s why we’re here – to create strategic content your clients want to consume.

Why Does Your Business Need Content to Gain Market Share?

It takes time to build trust and turn leads into loyal customers. Content marketing is the perfect solution. It can help you move prospective clients successfully down the sales funnel – through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages. 

Here are three reasons content marketing is a game-changer for manufacturing businesses in the healthcare industry.

1. Gain a deeper understanding of your niche, audience, and competition.

To build an effective content marketing strategy, we’ll research your specific market, target audience, and direct competitors to develop a holistic picture of your organization. We’ll learn what sets you apart and makes you unique. Then we’ll help you market why you’re the best choice, emphasizing your quality services and trustworthy products. We’ll find a way to distinguish your offerings from your competitors’ and help you build your reputation as an industry leader.

2. Engage new and existing prospects, leads, and customers.

Your clients know what they want. Sometimes the best way to find answers to questions your team is asking is to ask the source: your target audience. Sending out surveys, engaging with customers on social media and online forums, communicating via email, and sharing relevant information online and in-person are valuable tactics for driving higher engagement.

Once we’ve identified the best channels for reaching and engaging your ideal consumers, we’ll target them using content they won’t be able to resist.

3. Build trust and earn long-term loyalty.

Providing content for consumers at every level of the sales funnel can help you attract your ideal audience at any point in their buying journey. Connect with prospects just starting their search and nurture them until they’re ready to buy. 

  • Awareness stage: Content at the top of the funnel may include educational videos, magazine articles, and blog posts that attract strangers to your company. 
  • Consideration stage: Content in the middle of the funnel may include ebooks, case studies, and podcasts that further engage users and continue building trust with them.
  • Decision stage: For leads at the bottom of the funnel, you can offer training, webinars, and other resources to prove you’re the best solution to their problem.

You can accomplish all this and more through strategic content production and distribution.

Who Can Benefit from Joining Forces with Us?

We work specifically with manufacturers and distributors in the healthcare world. If you’re a medical supplier selling products to distributors or end-users, we would love to partner with you.

How We Help You Gain Market Share

We’re dedicated to providing our customers with the tools and resources required to increase market share. We can develop unique content to help your business reach prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey. We’ll help you attract, engage, and delight customers, converting them into long-term brand ambassadors. Here are some options to consider: 

  • Blog posts
  • Magazine articles
  • Online publications 
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Online training
  • Podcasts
  • Ebooks
  • Case studies
  • And more

Gain Market Share with Strategic Content

Are you ready to take the next step toward building a highly engaged audience for your business? Share Moving Media would love to partner with you to help you beat your competition and increase your market share. Not only can content help boost your sales and ROI. It can help you gain a loyal client base, become a leader in your field, and maintain success for years into the future.

Contact us to learn more.

The Definitive Guide to Medical Equipment Procurement and Planning

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As a medical supplier, you are primarily concerned with selling your items. On the other side of the equation are the group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and purchasing departments in hospitals.

To improve your sales, you need to understand what hospitals and GPOs expect from the medical equipment procurement process – a process that can take months or even years to complete in some cases.

With this guide, you can gain a new perspective on the medical sales cycle and learn how to make your sales process easier and more beneficial for your customers.

Key Takeaways

  • The medical sales cycle is a complex process that requires careful negotiating through all the steps to close a sale.
  • Medical suppliers need to get to know key influencers in the medical procurement process to understand the needs of potential customers.
  • Sales representatives should provide clear and complete information throughout the medical sales cycle.

Medical Sales Cycle Overview

Medical equipment procurement can also be called the medical sales cycle. It can be a long process. However, it is something that hospitals and suppliers want to get right. Carevoyance breaks down this cycle into nine steps:

  • Documenting the customer journey
  • Identifying target customers
  • Locating key decision makers
  • Discovering your prospects’ goals
  • Raising awareness of your products’ benefits
  • Building trust with prospects
  • Presenting solutions
  • Following up with next-step goals
  • Closing a sale

Who Is Involved in Medical Equipment Procurement?

There are numerous decision makers involved in the buying process for any hospital. Usually, one of the most important people in this process is a hospital purchasing agent. It is this person’s job to make sure a hospital has all the supplies, equipment, and tools it needs to deliver the best patient care. They also want to get the goods they need at the best possible price. 

Here are some of the most common responsibilities for a hospital purchasing agent:

  • Negotiating contracts
  • Administering contracts with medical suppliers
  • Finalizing sales
  • Monitoring shipments of goods
  • Analyzing data to maintain budget limits

As a medical supply company, you should be familiar with hospital purchasing agents, their goals, and how you can help them reach those goals. One important thing to remember for everyone involved in procurement is that all outcomes should be focused on improving patient care. 

Creating an Effective Sales Strategy for Medical Equipment Procurement

To master the hospital procurement process, you need an organized plan that will get you through every step of the sales cycle. These five stages can help you create an effective strategy that will make it easier to navigate through the complex medical sales world.

1. Get to Know Key Opinion Leaders

When selling medical equipment to a hospital, you will want to get to know some of its key opinion leaders (KOL). These are people with major influence in the hospital and could include the medical director, hospital purchasing agent, hospital executives, or even researchers. 

These people may also be part of a larger Value Analysis Committee (VAC), whose primary responsibility is overseeing the procurement process, especially of major hospital equipment.

Once you have established a connection, you can talk to your contacts about their needs and goals. This will help you understand what kind of solutions you can offer them.

2. Present Pertinent Research and Data

Collect all necessary data and research regarding the equipment and supplies you plan to present to the VAC or hospital purchasing agent. This could include studies, FDA information, MSDS documents, and product literature. Having all of this information on hand can help make it easier to close a potential sale.

By the time you reach this point in the sales cycle, the purchasing team likely already knows a lot about your product. According to a 2019 study by Gartner, many B2B buyers want suppliers to act more as an “information connector” to help organize the vast amounts of information in an easy-to-understand way. 

The study also indicated that providing information that is designed to help buyers make progress in their purchase decision will have the biggest impact on sales. It is three times as likely to lead to a “high-value, low-regret” sale.

3. Be a Thorough Negotiator 

While hospitals care about the cost of medical suppliers, the lowest price is not always the best deal. When negotiating with VACs, make sure all of your bidding information is complete. Offer them more than just the lowest price. Tell them how your product or solution can help reduce their costs and how it will affect patients and hospital staff.

Be prepared to answer tough questions about your competition and how your pricing may differ from theirs. If your cost is higher, defend your pricing by emphasizing the value and other fundamental values of your products. 

This YouTube video offers practical negotiation tips you can use when working through the procurement process.

4. Offer a Trial Phase 

Depending on the product you are selling, some hospitals may feel more comfortable proceeding with a sale if they can test the product first. You can offer a discount during the trial to encourage hospital staff to try the product.

Make sure you thoroughly outline the parameters of the trial including how long it will last and any limitations. Communicate frequently during this time so you can answer any questions and continue to emphasize the product’s capabilities.

5. Maintain Honesty Throughout the Process 

Honesty is a key trait in any successful sales representative. There may be times when you might not want to share specific information. However, by always delivering complete and truthful information, purchasing groups will respect you, even if you do not complete the sale. This could lead to sales in the future.

By using these strategies whenever you start a relationship with a potential customer, you can quickly become an expert in the complexities of medical equipment procurement.

Avoid Roadblocks in Procurement Planning

Because medical procurement is such an intensive process, you want to recognize and/or remove any potential roadblocks as quickly as possible. This could be as simple as making sure the technology in your products is compatible with the computer systems in your contact hospital. 

You do not want to be further down the sales funnel before realizing your solution is not compatible with their technology. The key to doing this is continual communication through every step of the process.

Share Moving Media Can Help You Improve Your Sales Potential in the Medical Sales Cycle

Even with a complete understanding of the medical equipment sales process, it can still feel like you are not making any progress. If you need a boost in finding new customers, Share Moving Media can help. We specialize in helping medical suppliers reach their target audience through a range of media sources and marketing strategies.

If you are ready to increase your profitability in the medical equipment procurement process, contact us today to get started!

5 Ways TikTok is Changing Healthcare Marketing

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TikTok has nearly 700 million active monthly users around the globe. It’s also the most downloaded app today, ahead of Facebook and Instagram. TikTok isn’t just for individual users, either. B2B and B2C brands are also making a splash on the platform, taking advantage of the vast marketing and selling potential. 

TikTok isn’t just a social media app. It’s a community where people feel they belong and can inspire others simply by being themselves. As a business, you can create a kind of engagement you can’t elsewhere. Connect with people on a more authentic level – one that makes them laugh, cry, or learn something incredibly valuable.

The emerging social media app presents exciting opportunities for many industries, including healthcare. So how do you incorporate TikTok into your healthcare marketing strategy? Keep reading to find out.

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Quick Takeaways:

  • With 700 million monthly active users, TikTok presents exciting opportunities for healthcare organizations.
  • With social media, you can tap into industry trends, impact people’s perspectives, educate consumers, and build trust.
  • The primary demographic on TikTok – Generation Z – prioritizes finding the truth, individual expression, and creativity.
  • TikTok can help your business inspire people in unconventional ways, build connections through humor and interacting one on one, and advertise to increase your reach and expand your audience.

Why Use TikTok for Healthcare Marketing?

TikTok allows users to be free, creative, and goofy. It encourages out-of-the-box thinking and prioritizes trends. It can amplify the voices of individuals and businesses to get significant, funny, or meaningful messages out to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. The platform’s primary demographic is Gen Z – those born in 1996 and later.

According to McKinsey & Company, members of Gen Z are anchored in a single element: their search for truth. They value individual expression, authenticity, and diversity. TikTok creates a space that allows users to be themselves in a unique way. 

“So what does all this have to do with healthcare? How can my business benefit from using the app?” We’re glad you asked. Here are a few reasons to start “TikTok-ing” before your competitors beat you to the punch.

  • Tap into a trendy marketplace with younger users who will soon become decision-makers, clients, and healthcare patients. 
  • Impact young opinions, and offer essential perspectives about hot topics in the healthcare space.
  • Show the world “a day in the life.” 
  • Offer insider tips, and dispel common medical and healthcare myths.
  • Educate people by sharing valuable content.
  • Show a different side to the healthcare industry to break down stereotypes.
  • Build trust by being 100% honest, relatable, raw, and genuine in your interactions.

5 Ways to Invest in Healthcare Marketing on TikTok

Ready to learn how healthcare-related organizations should consider investing in TikTok to share authentic and creative video-based content? Here are five ways TikTok is changing healthcare marketing and how you can get in on it as soon as possible.

1. Inspire People in Unconventional Ways

Like we already mentioned, TikTok users celebrate uniqueness and being yourself. You can have fun on this channel and use it as an outlet for creative expression. Create short, simple videos using the tools the app provides.

Also follow proven techniques to optimize your videos and increase your chances of going viral. But don’t become paralyzed by overthinking the process. Posting a short video sharing some encouraging words, giving your audience a quick boost of positivity, or sharing an inspiring story can go a long way in healthcare marketing.

Check out NurseHadley, who loves to share stories and advice that resonate with her listeners.

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2. Make Them Laugh

Adding humor to your videos can instantly ease tension and make users more open-minded about what you have to say. You can make learning fun, educating your audience in creative and memorable ways. You can even present an important or serious topic in a safe and comfortable way by making people laugh in the process.

3. Interact with Users to Build Relationships 

After posting consistently, you should begin attracting followers interested in your brand, perspective, and advice. You’ll start building a community on TikTok that you can engage with. Remember to be genuine, honest, and transparent when sharing and responding.

Spend time engaging your audience and replying to comments and questions to show you genuinely value their opinions and feedback. This can help you build a strong reputation and set your business up for future success.

4. Become an Influencer

Healthcare brands have the authority to become influencers on TikTok. Sharing helpful information and advice while paying attention to trends can help you increase your influence and reach. Create content that resonates with people, and prove that you’re an expert in your industry. 

You can become a trusted resource with strong influence while simultaneously humanizing professionals in your industry. NurseBlake does a great job of humanizing nurses and sharing his personal perspective (while also making people laugh).

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5. Advertise for Discoverability and Growth

“Don’t make ads. Make TikToks.” – TikTok For Business

Like other social media platforms, you can target TikTok users in different phases of the sales funnel: awareness, consideration, and decision. Set up an ad account, and create a campaign with the parameters that meet your marketing objectives. 

Here are some of the types of ads you can run on TikTok to market, sell, or get discovered by your target audience:

  • In-feed ads
  • Top View ads
  • Branded Effects ads
  • Brand Takeover ads
  • Branded Hashtag ads

TikTok Marketing for Healthcare Suppliers

Ready for your brand to stand out and change marketing norms for your industry? As a medical supplier, you can leverage social media to connect with younger generations like Millennials and Gen Zers. Sharing original content and running ads, influencer campaigns, and hashtag challenges can help you crush your competition. 

If you work in the medical field as a distributor or manufacturer and you’re ready to adopt a killer marketing strategy, Share Moving Media would love to partner with you. We can help you target and grow your ideal audience and win new clients for your business. Contact us to get started.

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.

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!