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.
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