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How Can Medical Manufacturers Use Inbound Marketing?

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Marketing is all about engaging your target audience. To do that, you have to establish contact and start a conversation. You might think that the best way to achieve that goal is to target them with marketing materials proactively.

However, flooding people with unwanted information will likely annoy them – and may even leave them distrustful of your brand. The majority of consumers already report that they don’t trust brands or their advertising.

As a marketer, distrust is the last thing you want to inspire in your target audience. This is especially true in the medical manufacturing field. You are responsible for healthcare products that literally change – or even save – lives. So, how do you reach consumers without inundating them with unwanted messaging?

Inbound marketing is the answer. This methodology brings customers to you by offering them valuable content tailor-made to their interests.

Find out how to implement inbound marketing for healthcare manufacturers below.

Inbound Marketing 101

Outbound marketing techniques like phone calls, email spam, and media buys are more likely to annoy than convince consumers. In contrast, inbound marketing attracts consumers organically. How? Content.

Blogs, websites, e-books, podcasts, long-form articles, and white papers can provide valuable information. By creating educational, informative content that meets your target audience’s needs, you can spark their interest — and then drive them to your website, your primary sales platform.

Effective content also helps to demonstrate authority on a subject and to establish trust. Authority marketing is a must in the medical manufacturing field. Healthcare provider networks, physicians, and patients need to trust your company and its products.

Implementing Inbound Marketing for Healthcare Manufacturers

Inbound marketing shares the same end goal of any marketing tactic: to generate leads and convert them to customers – and, ideally, loyal followers. The difference lies in the first step, as inbound marketing subtly attracts consumers instead of aggressively pursuing them.

Here is a step-by-step guide to inbound marketing for healthcare manufacturers.

Know Your Customer

If you’re going to create content your consumers find valuable, you have to know what they want. Understand their pain points, challenges, and motivations. Developing a customer journey map can help you make your content sell even if you’ve never met the end customer.

For example, in the current climate, understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts healthcare providers and networks can help you generate relevant and timely content.

Create Niche-Specific Content

Odds are you work in a highly specific field, whether it’s cardiovascular stents, stethoscopes, or ultrasound machines. Many medical manufacturing professionals will stay in the same sector for years or even decades.

Leverage your knowledge. Content marketing in healthcare should be focused on your area of expertise, allowing you to create genuinely informative blogs, white papers, e-books, and more.

Perfect Your Website

The content you put into the world to attract your target audience should always link back to your leading sales portal – your website. Include a call-to-action with links to your platform, ideally after the content. Promoting upfront can deter consumers.

When consumers get to your website, they should be greeted with a streamlined, user-friendly platform. Create a robust portal that will drive healthcare sales. It should feature straightforward navigation and content that is crisp, clear, and informative.

Finally, make sure to develop a mobile-friendly version of your website. Many people now prioritize smartphones over desktop computers for internet access, and Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher in search engine results.

Automate Your Marketing Processes

Inbound marketing is all about delivering an improved consumer experience. This comes in part from great content and in part from efficient processes. Use marketing automation tools to streamline operations.

Say a consumer visits your website, for example. They download a free white paper on a topic of interest to them – say, cardiovascular stents – in exchange for providing their email address. A marketing automation system will capture, sort, and store that email. It can further be programmed to tailor future mailings according to the individual’s expressed interest (in this case, cardiology).

What does this accomplish? The consumer gets more meaningful content more quickly. Meanwhile, your marketing team saves time and effort, which they can then dedicate to other measures – like creating more great content.

Tap into the Power of Inbound Marketing Today

Share Moving Media is a full-service media company specializing in medical marketing and distribution. From podcasts to e-books, blogs, and more, we can help you create and place valuable authority content to drive your inbound marketing efforts.

Subscribe to our newsletter for more healthcare marketing tools, tips, and tricks. Ready to revamp your inbound marketing? Contact us.

The Changing Face of Content Marketing

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Content marketing in healthcare has changed quite a bit as the world rapidly adjusts to upcoming technologies and all that it has to offer. While digital journals in healthcare aren’t exactly a new concept, they are quickly becoming the expectation when it comes to publishing relevant information in the world of healthcare.  

Digital health is quickly becoming the new norm, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This term refers to the practice of using various technologies to provide data access to everyone in the healthcare industry – patients included. The end goal of digital health is to foster an equal patient-doctor relationship. 

With digital health on the uprise, does that mean that print media in the industry is on the way out?

Is Print Media Dead in the Water?

Is print media dead in the world of healthcare? Absolutely not – but it has its time and place. In the healthcare field, medical professionals must be able to find information in a moment’s notice, and nothing makes that easier than digital journals. They are also an excellent resource for medical teams to share with their patients when they need answers to their questions.

Here’s the thing – print media is still a relevant option when it comes to healthcare marketing tools. In fact, a study by MarketingProfs showed that print ads were not only easier to digest by the public, but that consumers trusted print ads 34% more than search engine ads – something worth noting when considering digital advertising in healthcare.  

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However, when it comes to creating and sharing relevant information amongst professionals and patients alike, digital media is the way to go. It is the most natural solution as far as digital health is concerned. Digital journals in healthcare give instant access to doctors, marketers, patients, and the general public when it comes to sharing relevant updates in the world of healthcare. 

Not only that, but it’s the perfect solution for medical facilities that are turning their focus to sanitary marketing. Again, sanitary marketing isn’t a new concept; however, in light of the current pandemic, it’s never made more sense. The concept, in a nutshell, is the safe delivery of marketing communications and the sharing of information in a way that informs without manipulating. 

Since more people are now restricted from in-house visits with their physicians and rely heavily on telehealth, it makes sense to have digital journals available. This allows healthcare professionals to share the materials with those who ask for more information or better references. It also helps medical facilities move away from unsanitary marketing practices that leave consumers with more questions than answers. 

Why Digital Journals in Healthcare Make Sense

Now, when we talk about digital journals in healthcare, we are talking about the genre as a whole. When most people think medical journals, they often think of the big wigs, including:

  • The Lancet
  • New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
  • Journal of American Medical Association

These journals have a heavy focus on studies of various practices and theories. What they can lack, however, is the simplicity in language that is required for the general public. The good news is that there are dozens of other reputable digital journals available for the public, including:

The goals of these digital journals are to keep the public informed of the goings-on in the healthcare industry – an industry that can get extremely complicated, very quickly. They break down the complicated jargon and turn the content into something that is not only easily sharable but much easier for the average reader to understand. 

Using Digital Journals to Foster Relationships Between Professionals and the Public

Now, the general public is very unlikely to head to Google and start searching for digital journals to help them with a medical problem. Instead, they’ll likely talk with their doctor and ask them for more information. The medical team will then provide them with relevant sources to help guide them on their search.

While digital journals can be very technical in nature, they are still an excellent source of content when optimized correctly. Remember, the goal of these journals is to foster positive relationships between medical teams and their audience. So, that means these journals need to be answering essential questions that patients are likely to ask and use both a language and tone that are easily understandable to those who will be reading them. 

Translating the complicated jargon used throughout the healthcare industry can be challenging for some, which is why it’s crucial to have the right team on your side to help you break it all down into something that can be shared with your audience. 

Share Moving Media Can Help

Here at Share Moving Media, we understand that creating the right content for your audience can be somewhat challenging. Our team of trained professionals has the knowledge to help you create amazing content to help your business reach its goals. 

Curious how we can help you create outstanding content? Then contact us today to learn more!

Make Your Organization Leaner with Agile Marketing in Healthcare

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Lean organizations are focused on one thing: creating greater customer value while minimizing waste. This type of business model is a natural fit for the healthcare industry, which prioritizes getting patients the best care possible, as quickly as possible, at the lowest cost possible. As a healthcare distributor, it’s worth doing your homework into the lean approach to see how it can enhance your business operations. Agile marketing in healthcare is one way to make your organization leaner.

What Is a Lean Organization?

“Lean” refers to a type of organizational structure. It’s all about using as few resources as possible to achieve the best outcomes for customers.

In a lean model, every member of the organization will find ways to improve daily processes. When small tasks performed by individuals become more efficient, the organization as a whole becomes more streamlined. The end result is the ultimate lean goal stated in the introduction: more value for customers, less waste for companies. Everybody benefits.

Can this business model really make that much of a difference? You’d be surprised. Some big names in the business world subscribe to the lean methodology, including Toyota and Intel. 

A lean organization benefits your employees, customers, and company alike. Here’s how:

  • Employees: Lean can boost employee accountability and engagement within your organization, as the onus is put on individuals to find ways to improve processes.
  • Customers: Since Lean is ultimately all about improving customer value, it forces the company to get into the customer’s shoes. This means placing value on customer opinions, soliciting feedback, and acting on it. By catering to customers, the company can better meet their needs.
  • Company: Lean promotes growth by paring the business down to the essentials, using readily available resources without over-extending beyond existing means. Plus, more engaged employees mean improved performance, while happier customers whose needs are being met drive sales – ultimately boosting profitability.

Agile Marketing 101

How can agile marketing in healthcare contribute to a lean organization? First, let’s define agile marketing.

A Quick History of the Agile Mindset

The agile approach was initially developed as an approach for software delivery in 2001. It’s characterized by its iterative process, which is what gives agile its defining trait – flexibility.

In the past, developer teams conceptualized a product and then concentrate their efforts to deliver that final product as they had envisioned it. In contrast, the agile approach requires development teams to assess value at every development stage – not just once they’ve crossed the finish line.

What sets the agile approach apart (and made it so groundbreaking when it appeared) is the flexibility it insists upon. Agile development requires a continual feedback loop. The software development team doesn’t just define a product and deliver that end product to the market. They continually seek feedback throughout the development process, tweaking things as they go along.

This results in more innovative development and, ultimately, a more user-friendly product. Agile development has proven extremely successful in the software industry and is still used to this day.

Agile Marketing Defined

So, what’s all that got to do with marketing?

Let’s get back to that defining trait mentioned above – flexibility. This is likewise a defining characteristic of agile marketing campaigns.

Marketers have recognized that they can’t just create campaigns and shove them down consumers’ throats. By consistently soliciting feedback from their target audience, marketers – including in the healthcare industry – can craft campaigns that truly resonate with that audience.

Agile marketing is about more than just collecting feedback, however. As a tactical marketing technique, agile requires teams to:

  1. Collectively identify high-value projects and then focus collectively on those projects.
  2. Measure the impact of those projects.
  3. Tweak their efforts to incrementally yet continuously improve the results of the project.

This marketing model supports a lean organizational structure because it improves value for the customer (creating marketing campaigns that engage clients) while reducing wasted time and resources for the company through constant feedback, measurement, and tweaking.

Tips for More Agile Marketing in Healthcare

Implementing agile marketing in healthcare is easier than you might think. These tips can get you started.

Implement Sprints

Agile marketing teams rely on sprints to drive cooperative and efficient collaboration. A sprint is a short, predefined period in which teams jointly focus on a single task. For example, you might ask your team to implement a new pay-per-click ad campaign within X days or weeks.

Hold Daily Stand-Up Meetings

Agile’s flexibility means projects are always evolving. It’s thus smart to check in with your team’s progress regularly. A short, 15-minute (maximum) stand-up meeting every day is a great way to do this. Team members should bring up issues and bottlenecks (e.g., that PPC campaign isn’t performing as hoped) so they can be addressed quickly. The entire team can then collaborate on the solution.

Use a Board to Track Progress

Another key trait of agile is that it relies on visual progress tracking. You can go old school and use a whiteboard and sticky note to track progress. Alternatively, you can use a digital Kanban board. This is also a great way to enforce accountability. You can update the board together as a team during stand-ups to see who is doing what.

Measure, Measure, Measure

As mentioned, feedback is critical to agile success. Now, that doesn’t mean that marketers have to continually ask their target audience, “Hey, what did you think of that campaign?” or something similar. Modern marketing tech and tools make it easy to get feedback.

For example, the success of social media influencer marketing can be measured by metrics like shares, comments, and likes. The success of an email marketing campaign can be measured by opens and clicks.

Ramp Up Your Healthcare Marketing

Share Moving Media can help you tap into the power of agile marketing in healthcare. A full-service media company, we help our clients create content and campaigns that deliver real value to their target audiences. Our goal is to help you increase healthcare sales.

Subscribe to our newsletter to learn about the latest healthcare marketing tools, tips, and tricks.

Contact us to collaborate.

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.

5 Ways Healthcare Marketers Need to Adjust to the Post-COVID Reality

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COVID-19 has changed many aspects of our modern world, from how we work to how we shop – and even how we greet other people. In 2020, the elbow bump has unofficially become the new version of shaking hands.

Healthcare marketers are facing unique challenges in light of these changes. How can you market medical supplies when you don’t see your clients face-to-face? How can you present new product developments when medical conferences are canceled? Most importantly, how can you make sure that your medical supplies are penetrating the market and reaching the patients who need them?

Although the way healthcare marketers do business is changing, the healthcare marketplace itself is thriving. Global healthcare spending is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 5% through 2023.

The world isn’t going to return to its pre-COVID state anytime soon, if ever. Now is the time to adapt your healthcare marketing strategy to the new post-COVID reality.

This guide provides five tips for successful healthcare marketing post-COVID.

What Will the Post-COVID Reality Look Like?

The COVID-19 crisis has made it clear that you can’t anticipate every scenario, be it in business or beyond. Just one year ago, nobody predicted a global pandemic putting the world on pause.

There is no surefire way to know what the “post-COVID” world will look like. That said, a few trends are already evident in the healthcare market:

  • Digital is gaining ground: Healthcare is no longer shying away from digital technologies. Telemedicine has become increasingly valuable as people are worried about COVID-19 infection, for example. As healthcare becomes more open to digital tools, healthcare decision-makers, from doctors to hospital administrators, will become more tech-savvy.
  • Remote is the new norm: Companies across the United States have put in place work-at-home measures. In July 2020, Google announced that its employees would work from home until summer 2021. The move towards remote is also evident in healthcare. Med students (future doctors) are learning remotely, for example, while medical conferences are taking place online.
  • Spending shift: In light of the two points above, healthcare providers are shifting their spending. Hospitals may put more money towards video conferencing tools in the future, for example.

5 Tips for Successful Healthcare Marketing Post-Covid

The above trends will have a lasting impact on the way that the healthcare industry functions. Understanding the implications as a healthcare marketer will give you a competitive advantage. Here are some healthcare marketing tips and tricks for the “new normal.”

1. Build Virtual Relationships

Tap into the new remote environment and use it to build virtual relationships. Find online conferences and events that are relevant to your distribution field to attend. You may be able to identify new leads from the program’s list of panelists and participants, for example.

You can also build virtual relationships via social media. One option is contacting people via LinkedIn. A direct message can lead to a video call – and even a potential sale.

2. Boost Your Touchpoints

In marketing, touchpoints refer to an effective action spurred by some form of human contact, physical interaction, or communication. Your customer’s experience is a collective group of touchpoints.

With marketing becoming more digital, you have a greater variety of touchpoints to use than ever before. There are blogs, online magazine articles, social media, digital events, and more. Since in-person opportunities are limited, focus on boosting touchpoints through these media.

3. Embrace Social Media

Social media is one of the most valuable healthcare marketing tools you have at your disposal. You can use it to establish your brand as an authority in the industry, connect with others in your field, and foster those virtual relationships mentioned above.

Some healthcare marketers remain wary of social media because of the highly regulated state of their industry. Before you dive in, consult HIPAA’s social media guidance to ensure you don’t go astray.

4. Enhance Your Digital Presence

Social media isn’t the only digital platform you have at your disposal as a healthcare marketer. Take a look at other aspects of your digital presence – such as your corporate website. If you don’t have a company blog, now is a great time to incorporate one into your web presence.

Why do blogs matter? They establish your healthcare company’s knowledge and offer a platform for engagement with others (via comments). They can also reiterate your authority status, paving the way for further opportunities – like thought leader articles in healthcare magazines.

5. Prioritize Analytics

One of the best parts of digital and social marketing tools is that you can easily measure their success. For example, you can see how many people engaged with a social media post, visited your website, or read a blog. You can even see how much time people spend on your website.

Take the time to analyze your marketing efforts in the post-COVID-19 world and see where you are succeeding – and where you could use improvement. Analytics gives you the knowledge you need to tweak your marketing strategy and perfect it.

Learn More About Content Marketing for Healthcare Distributors

Share Moving Media offers comprehensive marketing solutions for healthcare distributors. We are a full-service media company, creating blogs, e-books, webinars, and more. As you adapt your healthcare marketing post-COVID, we can help you grow your brand and boost your market share.

Sign up for our newsletter for the latest healthcare marketing trends. Want help adapting your healthcare marketing strategy to the post-COVID reality? Contact us today!