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A Trusted Voice: Why Reps Can Rely on Repertoire’s 30-Year Record

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What began as a faxed newsletter to distributor reps in 1993 has grown into a small-but-mighty company dedicated to training suppliers and providers on successful supply chain strategies. Behind that newsletter – now called Repertoire magazine – was Brian Taylor, who, with Chris Kelly, founded Medical Distribution Solutions Inc., or MDSI, publisher of distributor-oriented publications, electronic training tools, databases and more.

“We intended to provide useful selling tips to dealer reps in our area via a fax sheet that included things like CPT codes, reimbursement updates and the like,” Taylor said. “We also knew that our rep business would grow if we created better-trained dealer reps.”

Repertoire, the only publication that serves the healthcare distribution channel, has carried out that mission for three decades by following three key tenants:

History. Think about major events that have affected U.S. healthcare distributors, manufacturers and providers over the last few decades. Managed care. Consolidation. Economic headwinds and tailwinds. Obamacare. Reimbursement changes. The COVID pandemic. Repertoire’s brand has navigated those market changes alongside the distribution industry. Staffed by long-time industry veterans, it is considered required reading for the medical distribution community. Indeed, in the latest reader survey, 71% of respondents said Repertoire was their favorite way to consume industry and manufacturer content.

Perspective. With each content piece, Repertoire writers ask one fundamental question – how does this apply to the day-to-day role of a distributor rep? Repertoire uses several industry experts for columns targeted at high-value segments of the market, including the Physician Office Lab, Hospital/Surgery Center, Long-Term Care and Infection Prevention Sales. Each feature story examines a major topic from the angle of how it affects distribution and the physician customers who you call on. And, our Rep Corner stories highlight the important work and contributions individual reps are making to their families, communities and organizations.

Trust. Repertoire’s primary readers are the 5,400 sales reps, management, purchasing/operations and executives from distribution. Thus the magazine’s agenda is simple – to educate and inform distributor sales teams. The print and digital publications provide helpful, non-invasive content that Repertoire readers can take their time to digest and use in customer conversations. In the process, we align with manufacturer partners who are invested in your success as well. When asked whether they would share manufacturer sponsored content that focuses on timely issues your customers are facing, 96% of recent Repertoire survey respondents said yes. And, 73% percent of survey respondents said they have sold a product or service after reading an ad in Repertoire.

“At 30 years old, almost every rep in the industry today has grown up with Repertoire being their bible,” said publisher Scott Adams. “Reps tell me all the time how valuable the content in the magazine is to their careers and ultimately their end-users.”

Indeed, Repertoire remains the trusted source to tell the stories of today’s distributor sales reps, as well as the best place to reach those reps.

Share Moving Media helps build relationships between manufacturers and distributors through its publications and content. Please contact us at Sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share through distribution.

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!

3 Critical Metrics You Must Measure for Long-Term Brand Loyalty

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Customer loyalty is one element of success for any business. Once you’ve won a client’s trust, they will return to you repeatedly without new sales and marketing efforts on your part. If they love your product or service, they may even recommend it to others, serving as a free brand ambassador for your business. Brand loyalty in healthcare manufacturing is especially critical due to the competitive nature of the industry.

The healthcare marketplace is challenging. You’ve undoubtedly experienced the struggle at some point – having difficulty getting new leads or, even worse, thinking you’ve locked in a new lead, only to have it snatched away by a competitor.

In this business, long-term brand loyalty is worth working for.

But how can you know if you’re succeeding in maintaining that high level of trust that will keep a customer by your side for months, years, or even decades?

You can use a few metrics to check if your brand is resonating with consumers and winning them over.

Understanding the Value of Brand Loyalty

We aren’t alone in our emphasis on the importance of brand loyalty. In the year ahead, retention marketing is expected to be one of the biggest marketing trends. Instead of exclusively trying to attract new customers, professional marketers are refocusing on keeping existing customers happy.

Why the shift?

It’s a simple numbers game: With effective retention efforts, you can enjoy steady sales without paying big bucks for lead generation. This allows for a lower cost-per-sale investment overall.

Ideas for Boosting Brand Loyalty in Healthcare Manufacturing

There are a few ways you can nurture brand loyalty in healthcare manufacturing.

You can try personalized cross-selling and up-selling, for example. Check your database of existing clients. What products are they ordering, and what products could they benefit from? Giving customized recommendations for useful items your customers can actually use shows you’re paying attention to their needs.

Think of it like the “Customers Also Bought” function on retail e-commerce websites like Amazon. If you buy a flashlight, do you also need to buy batteries? If you buy leather boots, do you need a leather protectant spray? Those little suggestions are surprisingly useful sometimes.

Another tactic is to boost brand engagement with useful content. For healthcare manufacturers, this could come in the form of information-packed blogs, webinars, or social media content that’s relevant to your target audience.

Notice, we said information-packed – not promotional! Say you sell cardiac stents, for example. Instead of writing a blog that pushes your product, write a blog about the latest stent research or live-tweet an event, like the World Congress on Cardiac Surgery and Medical Devices.

Why do these techniques work?

They show that you care about your consumer and your consumer’s wants and needs.

According to Harvard Business Review, successful modern brands don’t focus on buyers but on users. That means instead of aggressively pushing products – consumers are too savvy for that now – they aim to make the consumer’s life easier. Isn’t that what we all want?

3 Metrics for Measuring Brand Loyalty

So, now you’ve got some idea of how to harness brand loyalty in healthcare manufacturing. But how can you be sure your efforts are working? 

Let these three metrics be your guide.

1. Content Engagement

We talked about using content to engage with customers and nurture their loyalty above. To see if your content strategy is working, you have to check your engagement levels. The precise metric will vary depending on the content format.

For social media, engagement can be measured using figures like clicks, likes, and shares.

Also, don’t forget the comments! A Facebook post with 500 likes but zero comments is arguably less valuable than a post with 300 likes but 100 comments.

Why? Comments show a more active interest. They require more than the click of a button. Comments can spark debates and discussions, allowing your brand to reply directly to consumers. This creates a more personalized engagement situation.

For podcasts, engagement might be measured by the number of listens, downloads, and likes. For webinars, it’s all about how many people tuned in. Email, however, is about the number of opens and clicks your content gets. Metrics need to be tailored to the given format.

2. Repurchasing Figures

Your customers can tell you whether they’re loyal to your brand or not – and they can do it without saying a word. Periodically revisit your sales data and check client behavior over set periods (e.g., monthly, quarterly, annually).

Specifically, look for repurchasing levels. This allows you to calculate the overall retention rate (proportion of returning customers versus new customers).

Analyzing repurchasing metrics may also allow you to regenerate leads. For example, if a customer who was a regular has suddenly dropped off, follow up. Did something happen that turned them off? Targeting issues will ultimately allow you to improve brand loyalty in healthcare manufacturing.

Also, keep an eye out for multiple product purchases. This is a great sign. It often means a customer was happy enough about their product purchase – and their experience with you as a provider – and thus expanded their order.

Conversely, follow up on orders that have decreased.

3. Reported Customer Satisfaction

Last but not least, if you want the harsh truths as to how engaged and loyal your customers are, go to the source: ask them directly.

Inviting your customers to provide feedback shows them you care about their opinion. It also gives them the chance to tell you where they’d like to see improvement – and gives you the opportunity to make changes accordingly.

Survey tools like SurveyMonkey are a great way to solicit feedback.

Keep your survey questions pointed and specific. Don’t just ask, “Are you happy with your experience?” Ask about their satisfaction with particular parts of the customer process, like placing an order, paying, or follow-up customer care.

Get Support for Your Brand Messaging in Healthcare

Share Moving Media is a full-service media company that supports healthcare suppliers in building trust among their consumers and increasing their market share.

We help our clients leverage top-quality content to boost brand loyalty in healthcare manufacturing. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Marketing Minute, for more best practices.

Want help with your healthcare marketing? Contact us.

Online Reputation Management in Healthcare: What It is and Why Your Company Needs It

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It’s no secret the internet has changed the way companies do business. In 2019, 1.92 billion people shopped online. 

While ecommerce has put many bricks and mortar retail stores out of business, it’s been a great help to the healthcare industry. The internet and ecommerce have reduced the strain on healthcare practitioners as non-emergency patients can seek solutions online. Additionally, selling and distributing healthcare products to suppliers and medical institutions have never been easier. 

For online sales, a company’s true success lies in its online reputation management (ORM). To generate leads and boost revenue, healthcare companies need to understand ORM in healthcare and apply it to their digital marketing strategy.

What is ORM?

When prospective customers search your company on the internet, your online reputation is the perception they gain about you from the information they find. ORM is a combination of strategic SEO, public relations, and marketing tactics to protect your company’s online image while promoting your business and services. 

Several factors impact your online reputation. Whether you realize it or not, people are talking about your company online. From social media mentions and public review comments to the content you post online, the amount of positive and negative visibility your business maintains determines your online reputation.  

Cycles of ORM in Healthcare 

People rely heavily on the information they find on the internet. 90% of online consumers depend on reviews for their purchase decisions. Your company’s online reputation is primarily under the control of your digital audience, since it’s their feedback and input that others will see when researching your company. 

ORM can follow one of two cycles:

  • Vicious: Your website has outdated content or consumers leave poor reviews about your company. Prospective customers find this through search engines and click on it. That information is promoted, and social media perpetuates the negative feedback. Follow-up commentary or online gossip further spreads the information, and the cycle continues, damaging your online reputation.
  • Virtuous cycle: Current, meaningful website content earns you high search engine rankings. Prospects click on your website for meaningful information. Search engines see you as a valuable resource and continue to promote your website. Social media magnifies engaging content, and positive reviews create more traffic to continue the cycle. Business soars.

Through these cycles, it’s easy to see the impact of your company’s online content, and how important it is to manage your business’s online reputation.

Why Your Healthcare Company Needs ORM

ORM is important for healthcare companies. People purchasing for the healthcare supply chain need to know they can depend on the products they buy from your company. That means they need to feel they can trust you. 

ORM enables companies to do this in several ways.

Online Reputation Has a Long Shelf Life

If someone leaves a negative review about your company, it can have a lasting impact on your business. This is especially true in the healthcare industry. Healthcare is an extremely lucrative market riddled with competition. To stand out from other manufacturers, brand management is essential. ORM can help solidify your position as a dependable company providing reliable products.

Mitigate False Information

Healthcare is a social hot topic, so people are highly sensitive to misinformation. If a product doesn’t do what it claims or has unreported negative effects, the results can be detrimental to the end user. ORM ensures you’re posting the most current, accurate information possible. 

As a manufacturer, customers look to you to be an expert in your industry. They need to trust that you’re providing safe, effective products that they can verify to their clients. This is to protect their reputation, and they surely won’t do business with a company that could jeopardize it.

ORM Empowers You to Impact Your Online Reputation

With ORM, you’ll realize you have some power over how people view your business online. After all, the most effective ORM in healthcare is prevention. Be proactive in maintaining your online reputation to ensure your business is held in high regard among current and prospective customers.

The healthcare industry is ever-changing. ORM provides the opportunity to make sure your website content reflects recent healthcare trends. It drives you to check that your product listings include useful descriptions, accurate imagery, and current pricing. 

ORM also inspires you to assess your website links, ensuring they lead to existing articles and resources. It challenges you to think about load time and the function of your checkout process. ORM also entices you to optimize your website for mobile users, since 82% of online shoppers purchase from their mobile device.

Ultimately, ORM helps you to provide an enjoyable user experience. Enhanced UX, in turn, yields positive feedback, thus boosting your online reputation.

Entrust Your ORM in Healthcare to Share Moving Media

To solidify your online reputation in the healthcare industry, use ORM to maintain current and reliable information on your website and monitor online mentions and comments about your business. ORM takes time and effort. Contact Share Moving Media today for help developing an ORM strategy for your healthcare company.

The Proof is in the Pudding: Who is Talking About Your Product?

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As a medical supplier, you may cater to everything from integrated delivery networks to private physician practices. Whether you’re selling ultrasound diagnostics or personal protective equipment, you want to ensure your product branding in healthcare is effectively reaching your target audience.

How can you know you’re succeeding? You need to identify exactly who is talking about your product and just what they are saying – or if they’re saying anything at all. As I’ve said before, if you aren’t visible, you’re irrelevant.

Why What People Say Matters

Keeping up with consumers’ expectations and better meeting their needs is more critical in healthcare than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic has left end-users in the medical sector holding brands to a higher standard. Knowing who is talking about your product and what they are saying allows you to focus your branding efforts better.

It can also help you save money. To raise awareness about your products, you likely engage in various marketing and advertising techniques. For example, your company may participate in healthcare conferences or leverage a corporate blog and social media to support a content strategy for healthcare.

Such initiatives cost money. You want to ensure you are investing wisely and that these efforts are effectively building brand recognition. Towards this end, you can gather quantitative data (e.g., number of product mentions in medical journals) and qualitative data (e.g., physician reviews).

As an added benefit, you may also be able to pinpoint new audience segments worth targeting, allowing you to grow your market share. Consumer feedback can even give you insights into unexpected product benefits. Remember, the blockbuster drug Viagra was initially developed to treat hypertension!

Finally, knowing what people are saying about your company and products can drive smarter brand messaging in healthcare. There’s an old saying that “perception is reality.” You may craft messages that seem to address your target audience’s needs and wants. However, that’s your perception. Real-world feedback confirms whether or not this is the case. As they say, the proof is in the pudding.

How to Find Out Who is Talking About Your Product

Ready to find out what “the word on the streets” is about your products? Use these techniques to gather the data you need to improve your product branding in healthcare.

Set Up Google Alerts

Start simple. Put essential keywords like your product and company name into Google and see what comes up. If there are recent news reports about adverse events related to your product, for example, you want to know about this so you can practice reparative public relations.

To stay abreast of updates in the future, set a Google search engine alert. You input keywords (like your product name), and Google then delivers automatic updates when these keywords appear online.

Scan Google Scholar

Reputation and trust are critical in the healthcare sector, where products directly impact patient lives. New research about products, drugs, and interventions is continuously published in medical journals and healthcare magazines, which can guide industry trends.

Instead of the basic Google search engine, input your product name into Google Scholar. If there is a mention of your supplies in medical or scientific journals, this will help you discover them.

Practice “Social Listening”

Social media is a powerful platform, and you want to know if people are talking about your products on these forums. These days, everyone has an account: physicians, patients, patient advocacy groups, hospitals, insurers, and more.

Practice “social listening” to see what they’re saying. Hootsuite is a great way to monitor social media mentions in real time.

Scan Industry Website RSS Feeds

Use If This Then That to monitor industry websites in your healthcare niche. You can use the IFTTT tool to scan the RSS feeds of multiple industry websites at once and set it up to send you emails alerting you if your brand has been mentioned.

Pay for Media Monitoring Services

Don’t have the time or energy to deal with the above steps? Media monitoring services like Cision can provide daily reports compiling the latest headlines, news, and mentions about your product. You provide specific keywords (such as your company and product name) to guide their reports.

Product Branding in Healthcare: How We Can Help

If you want to improve your product branding, Share Moving Media can help. We are a full-service media company creating everything from webinars to blog posts, e-books, infographics, and more. Our high-quality healthcare marketing tools will help your brand grow and boost your bottom line. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest news on product branding in healthcare. Ready to revamp your branding strategy? Contact us now!