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Content Marketing 101 for Healthcare Distributors

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Healthcare distributors are an integral part of the U.S. healthcare ecosystem, helping deliver medicines and devices to the market. Distributors create efficiency, providing some $33 to $53 billion in savings every year.

As a medical supplier, you are tasked with bringing the latest innovations to patients. An effective healthcare marketing strategy allows you to reach the decision-makers in the medical equipment sales funnel who bridge the gap between you and the end-user.

Whether you’re targeting private physician practices or large-scale integrated delivery networks (IDNs), content marketing can help you engage your audience, allowing you to ultimately ramp up sales.

This guide introduces the basics of content marketing for healthcare distributors and gives you five concrete ideas for implementation.

Why Use Content Marketing?

Content marketing encompasses various media, from blogs to websites, videos, infographics, and more. This diversity allows for fantastic flexibility. You can tailor marketing campaigns to different people and purposes, depending on your target audience.

Additionally, content marketing is cost-effective. You can repurpose critical messages from a blog for a YouTube video – or use stats from an infographic in a thought leader article in a magazine. A small investment will take you far, thanks to the content’s adaptability.

Recognizing such advantages, companies are increasingly relying on content marketing to increase revenue and market share. Most content marketers focus on lead generation (85%) and sales (84%).

5 Ways to Implement Content Marketing

Content isn’t just meaningless filler. It will generate revenue – if you know how to use it. Here are some tips for effective content marketing for healthcare distributors.

1. Incorporate Visuals

Technological advances have made modern societies more visually oriented. The age-old moniker that “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never rung truer. Large chunks of text alone don’t catch the eye.

Always include visuals with your content. Even a blog post or magazine article can be broken up with appealing photos or infographics.

2. Hijack the News

The media machine is 24/7. Tap into its power. Use current events to bring consumers back to your product. You can even piggyback off annual events like the Super Bowl or the holiday season to create seasonal marketing campaigns.

News about an upwards trend in heart attacks is a platform to talk about cardiovascular stents. Statistics about an increase in depression due to isolation during COVID-19 can serve to discuss mental health products.

3. Give Something Away for Free

Free content can serve as the first step in grabbing your target audience’s attention. It gives consumers a low-risk way to get to know your company or product. Do it right, and you can convert a curious content-consumer into a buyer.

How? There’s a lot of bad content out there. Make sure yours adds value. Create a well-researched white paper or e-book covering the latest updates in your niche. Whether you distribute ultrasound equipment or hearing aids, you are an expert in your field. Share your knowledge.

4. Embrace Storytelling

People get tired of numbers and statistics. Drowning your target audience in quantitative information can also come across as aggressively sales-like – a turnoff for many consumers. Storytelling is a content marketing technique focused on building trust and loyalty by fostering a more personal connection.

Use stories to back up hard facts. Get patient or physician testimonials attesting to your product’s value. Providing such examples allows potential buyers to connect with your work on a personal level. 

5. Try Interactive Media

Interactive content like clickable infographics or quizzes intrinsically demands engagement. This is an effective way to get people to stay with your content instead of just skimming past it. Some types of interactive content, like surveys, can even be used to collect more information about your target audience, allowing you to better serve their needs.

The Secret to Success: The “S” Word

Creating great content is only half the battle. A strategy is the secret to success. Content marketing in healthcare must be targeted, planned, and measured. Audience targeting allows you to increase return on investment by ensuring you put your marketing money into channels that resonate with buyers.

Planning allows you to get ahead of the market. As a healthcare distributor, you’re at the forefront of innovation. When a new medical technology or diagnostics device is set to hit the market, you’re among the first to know. Creating a content plan before the actual launch gives you the tools you need to promote the product the second it drops.

Measurement is the final piece of any effective healthcare marketing strategy. How many views did that YouTube video get? What was the click-through rate of that Google ad? How many new email subscribers did the call to action in your thought-leader article generate? Such a metrics-based analysis allows you to tweak your content marketing for more positive outcomes.

Learn More About Content Marketing for Healthcare Distributors

Share Moving Media can help you increase healthcare sales with comprehensive content marketing. A full-service media company, we create many types of content, including webinars, blog posts, e-books, graphics, and more. We work with best in class distributors to deliver market share through a variety of services across multiple channels using content marketing in print, video, webinars, education modules, and live events. With this diverse array of healthcare marketing tools, we help your brand grow. 

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about how Share Moving Media can help you plan and create quality content in context. Ready to start creating your content strategy? Contact us today!

4 Ways Marketers Can Successfully Execute Audience Targeting in Healthcare

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The medtech industry continues to grow and is expected to have its worldwide sales reach $522 billion by 2022.

With an aging Baby Boomer population and Americans facing chronic illnesses more than ever before, medical facilities need the right technology to provide quality patient care. For healthcare marketers, this means you have to get your products in front of your niche targeted audience, at the right time, if you hope to land a sale. 

With a growing need and competition saturating the industry, it’s more important than ever for medical suppliers to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that targets the right audience. Marketing to the right audience allows you to develop brand awareness, increase sales, and create trust between you and customers. 

Sounds good, right? But, what’s the best audience targeting in healthcare strategy that drives sales? Let’s take a look at a few ways you can boost brand recognition with audience targeting. 

Why is Audience Targeting in Healthcare Important?

Instead of the traditional one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, targeting specific audiences puts a clear focus on who your products will serve and why. In doing so, you’re able to allocate a budget that’s more likely to produce a high ROI. 

A target audience is a set of customers who share similar needs and pain points that your products will serve. The correct audience targets give you further insight into which customers of yours are long-term and which are one-time only so you can identify your most qualified leads to connect with. 

When segmenting audiences in healthcare, you need to not only consider the hospitals or facilities you sell to, but also their patients. The different ways you can segment your audiences include:

  • Demographic: Age, education, gender, race, etc.
  • Psychographic: Values, interests, personality, lifestyle, etc.
  • Behavioral: Brand interactions, purchase habits, budget, status, etc.
  • Geographic: City, area code, neighborhood, etc. 

4 Ways Medical Suppliers Can Market to Target Audiences

To get started targeting your niche healthcare audience, consider implementing the following tactics:

1. Produce Thought Leader Content

Did you know that 51% of B2B buyers search for educational content before making a decision? With technology that saves and improves the quality of lives across the country, your brand has a story to tell. Use your product’s story to develop thought leadership material that provides solutions to your audience’s pain points.

The right content will establish your credibility and further your brand awareness throughout the industry. Types of thought leadership content you can produce include:

  • Articles or whitepapers to demonstrate how your products benefit patients
  • Webinars that dive deeper into relatable subjects
  • How-to or about videos that speak to who you are

2. Utilize Social Media Advanced Targeting

Medical suppliers who are active on social media have a huge opportunity to improve their reputation with potential customers. With 46% of medical professionals engaging on social media, it’s essential to understand what platforms your customers spend the most time on and develop valuable content that speaks to their needs.

For healthcare sales, consider spending time on LinkedIn to connect with niche medical professionals that will buy into your brand. LinkedIn also provides advanced targeting features that allow you to advertise to specific organizations, job titles, and more to ensure you’re reaching the right person. These additional touchpoints will help you increase engagement and improve lead generation to potentially result in a sale. 

3. Develop a Website that Provides Solutions

Dealing with complex technology that saves lives, your website can’t rely on flashy imagery and witty one-liners. It needs to answer who you are, what products you sell, and why your audience should be interested. Within your website:

  • Display your mission statement on an about page 
  • Discuss the features and benefits of your product pages
  • Highlight past customer success stories and testimonials
  • Showcase thought leadership content to display your credibility
  • Drive conversions by allowing users to schedule consultations

Within your content, make sure you’re using search engine optimization best practices so your target audience can find you with a quick Google search. Consider what keywords your audience might search for and use them throughout your website to earn more organic website traffic. 

4. Stay Top of Mind with Email Marketing

Of course, audience targeting in healthcare wouldn’t be complete without mentioning email marketing. Not only does email marketing produce an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, but it allows you to send personalized messages to your leads and customers to build loyal relationships. 

With email marketing, you can send valuable content directly to your customer’s inbox about your brand or products. When targeting a specific audience, utilize segmentation to send relevant messages that speak to their challenges. For example, if you have a consultation with a family doctor, send targeted emails about how your products help family members of all ages. To sweeten the deal, include testimonials from past customers in the same audience segment. 

Additionally, utilize a customer relationship manager (CRM) to create email workflows that automatically send the right emails to a relevant audience segment. 

Target the Right Audiences with Strategic Marketing Campaigns

Developing a marketing strategy for your medical supply company has never been more important. In the ever-evolving healthcare industry, the right audience targeting is the difference in providing patients with the best technology or failing to stand out amongst the competition. 

To start developing valuable content for your target audience, contact Share Moving Media today.

Leverage Your Sales Team’s Customer Insight to Create Great Content

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About a decade ago, healthcare marketers began realizing content creation was an essential part of the modern healthcare business’ marketing strategy. Ever since then, they’ve been working to create content that wins their prospect’s attention and fuels sales.

According to research by SiriusDecisions, sales teams don’t even use 60-70% of marketing content to close sales. This means a huge amount of the marketing budget is going to waste (and content that should be closing sales is being unused).

Content creation is usually run by the marketing team. Healthcare marketers invest a lot of time and money into researching, strategizing, creating, and distributing content. However, there is an untapped area the sales team can use every day to create high-quality content using customer knowledge.

Sales teams are the ones who often interact with your customers the most. You can use these interactions as an opportunity to fuel your content creation.

Here are 3 ways you can get your sales team involved in the content creation process by connecting customer knowledge and sales insights.

1. Develop Customer Personas Before Focusing on Content Creation

Before you can begin to start creating relevant content, you have to understand who you’re talking to.

You may have some generic target market information on your customers, but it needs to be taken further. User Testing Blog refers to a customer persona as “a semi-fictional archetype that represents the key traits of a large segment of your audience, based on the data you’ve collected from user research and web analytics.”

Get your sales team to begin asking your customers questions, doing surveys, and extract that data to create in-depth customer personas. They communicate with prospects, leads, and customers every day, and are familiar with your customer’s motivations, aspirations, habits, challenges, and desires.

If you make content for the sake of creating something, you’ll lose your customer’s attention. By developing customer personas, you’ll be able to create content that resonates with them, keeping them coming back over and over again.

2. Use Frequently Asked Questions To Create Content

There are a variety of questions your sales team gets asked every day. You can use this sales insight to create content around the topics that come up frequently.

Most of these questions tend to be how-to questions. You can use these questions to create FAQ-style content on your site.

One bonus to creating FAQ-centric content is that has a higher chance than other content to get highlighted as a featured snippet in a Google Search.

3. Be Direct with Your Customers About Content Creation

Your customers are more than willing to help answer your questions, especially if they know it will help them, so have questions ready that directly involve the customer in content creation.

Use these 5 examples to start. Then create more specific questions based on your specific business and customer knowledge:

  • Ask them what they’re struggling with
  • Ask them what they want to learn
  • Ask them how they like to receive content (email, push notification, etc.)
  • Ask them how often they like to consume content
  • Ask them what types of content they like to receive (blogs, videos, audio, etc.)

You’ll be amazed at how willing your customers are to help you out in content creation.Instead of guessing on your content strategy, get your customers to give your sales team the answers.

Increase Market Share

  

Share Moving Media is dedicated to providing our customers with the tools to increase their market-share through our publications, educational services and associations for providers, manufacturers and distributors in the business of healthcare.

As a full-service media and content company, we create articles, e-books, webinars, podcasts, blog posts, videos, graphics, and many other types of media. We are passionate about creating and distributing quality content for our customers and our audience.