Mobile health, health IT, wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalized medicine are transforming patient care. One in three smartphone users monitor health and fitness through their phone and over half of Americans are comfortable with virtual consultations. Digital technology is changing the fragmented healthcare system to center around consumers.
The American Medical Association identifies three key trends rising to the top of the digital health landscape include:
- Consumerization of healthcare: the retail healthcare model is being highlighted as the future of patient care.
- Access for underserved communities: access to healthcare remains a significant challenge for many individuals in the U.S.
- Application of big data: healthcare data is a highly sought after commodity, with organizations increasingly seeking to harness and interpret what they, and others, collect.
These trends are providing opportunities to bring digital solutions to the healthcare marketplace. To do that, organizations must create go-to-market (GTM) strategies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the marketplace, the target market and a potential product’s place in it.
The most common challenges when launching GTM strategies for digital solutions, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), are the lack of experience selling or positioning and measuring value. Successful GTM strategies include defining the benefits, creating value frameworks, identifying relevant stakeholders, developing value messages, determining the right channel mix and content type for each stakeholder, and then building a strategy.
Traditional stakeholders usually include patients and clinicians, and non-traditional stakeholders might include specialty healthcare providers and others. They demand a transformation of marketing and customer engagement led by customer needs. Identifying their digital acumen helps identify those needs.
For example, PwC highlights four physician personas that differ in the level of digital savviness:
- Traditionalists: physicians who only use digital tools available when necessary.
- Digital Explorers: physicians who start to realize the benefit of digital tools.
- Digital Adopters: physicians who try to use digital tools as often as possible and are quick to get started.
- Next Normal Champions: physicians who are among the first to use digital tools and encourage others to use them.
PwC says it’s important to define must-win moments and value messages for each. This can be a physician willing to support patients with treatment-related information despite having limited time with patients. Organizations can position digital solutions as valuable to physicians because they help patients access treatment-related content without the physician.
Measuring the value of digital solutions is challenging. Sales numbers can struggle to depict it. Organizations need to put value frameworks in place in order to highlight stakeholder value over sales numbers. Qualitative KPIs like outcomes, engagement and activity can measure the effectiveness of communication strategies and the perception of brand reputation.
How can your organization get creative with your marketing campaigns for 2024? At Share Moving Media we help best in class manufacturers build relationships with the industry’s decision-makers. Please contact us at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share through distribution.