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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.

A Guide to Healthcare SEO for Smart Manufacturers

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Search engine optimization is one of the most effective inbound marketing tactics you can employ as a healthcare manufacturer. SEO optimizes your company website so that it ranks higher in search engines like Google, driving organic, unpaid traffic to your primary sales portal.

This allows your target audience to find you naturally on the internet based on their interests. Instead of blindly trying to target potential leads, you will have potential leads coming to you. These leads will already have an expressed interest in your market area, making them more likely to convert.

Done right, SEO can drive conversion rates of 14.6%. Consider that traditional media advertisement has a conversion rate of 1.7% to put that into context. Given those statistics, it’s no wonder that more companies are investing in SEO.

That said, SEO marketing for healthcare sales requires a unique approach compared to other industries. This guide explains the complexities of SEO in healthcare and provides step-by-step guidance to help you improve your search engine page rankings.

How the “Your Money or Your Life” Principal Impacts SEO in Healthcare

Google, the primary gatekeepers of SEO rankings results, is incredibly strict regarding so-called “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sites.

YMYL content is information that could impact an individual’s health, safety, emotional well-being, or financial stability if it’s presented untruthfully, incorrectly, or deceptively. Examples of YMYL content include medical and financial advice.

Smart manufacturers must present their products objectively and ensure any medically relevant information is clear and factual.

A Quick Guide to Healthcare SEO

When someone types a phrase into Google – say “hearing aid manufacturer” – they get many search results pages. Being at the top of that first page of results boosts your website’s visibility dramatically. Research reveals that the first position in the SERPs achieves an average click-through rate of 28.5%. The CTR drops to 15% for the second search result and continues to decrease, with the search result in the tenth position achieving a CTR of just 2.5%.

Here’s how to increase your odds of climbing the SERPs.

Ensure Your Content Meets the E-A-T Principle

High-quality, value-added content is critical to successful SEO, especially in the YMYL category. Your content should meet Google’s E-A-T guidelines, demonstrating expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

You can boost your EAT score by citing high-quality sources, for example. Always provide data for any assertions you make, ideally with citations to reputable “.gov” or “.edu” sources. Medical journals are also a great source.

Make Your Website Technically SEO-Friendly

Your content further needs to be optimized for SEO. This is a way of structuring your on-page content so that Google’s algorithm-driven bots can “crawl” through it, figure out what it’s about, and confirm its relevance and value for internet users.

Here’s a quick on-page SEO checklist to get you started. For each page on your website, you should:

  • Select one primary keyword to include in the content.
  • Choose three to four secondary keywords to include in the content.
  • Add the primary keyword in the webpage’s title tag, meta description, and H1 header.
  • Break up content into scannable chunks with H2 and H3 headers.
  • Include at least one image.

If you want to know more about technical SEO, Google offers a wealth of resources.

Tap into the Power of High-Value Backlinks

Google recognizes a website as trustworthy and providing valuable content to consumers via backlinks – when other websites link back to your website. Getting high-quality backlinks from high-ranking, authoritative sources is a great way to improve SEO results.

Getting backlinks from respected healthcare publications is one option. You can further drive valuable clicks by publishing your blogs, whitepapers, and more on platforms like LinkedIn or Medium.

Infographics are another great trick for generating high-quality backlinks. An attractive visual with relevant, industry-specific facts or statistics is share-worthy. Create your graphic, email it to thought leaders in your field, and invite them to share it. They should include a backlink when they publish it.

Don’t Forget to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Google ranks mobile-friendly websites higher. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, both technically and in terms of content structure. For example, since mobile screens are smaller, it’s best to use larger fonts.

To get you started, Google has a free tool that can tell if your website is mobile-friendly. It even gives you hints on how to improve, for example, by telling you if the text is too small to read or the links are spaced too closely together.

Boost Your SEO Today

Share Moving Media is dedicated to helping medical manufacturers boost sales and increase market share. From blogs to white papers, our value-added content marketing in healthcare can help you climb the SERPs.

Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about digital advertising in healthcare. Want support for your SEO strategy? Contact us.

Healthcare Manufacturers’ Top Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2021

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Successful marketing relies on planning. Strategizing is even more critical in the competitive healthcare field. The medical device market alone is expected to reach $208 billion by 2023, and many companies are competing to dominate this lucrative market.

Getting ahead of the healthcare marketing trends in 2021 can help increase your market share.

5 Essential Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2021

Marketing will increasingly take a consumer-first approach. Businesses now recognize that by meeting consumer demand, they foster loyalty and encourage engagement, which ultimately boosts the bottom line. 

As you create your marketing strategy for the year ahead, take these consumer-first healthcare marketing trends into account.

1. Voice Search is Gaining Ground

Improvements in artificial intelligence and modern voice recognition technology (Alexa, Google, Siri, etc.) are reinvigorating voice search marketing. Instead of typing queries into search engines like Bing and Google, consumers are making requests verbally.

Traditional search engine optimization is geared towards writing. Modern SEO must be geared toward talking. Voice queries are lengthier and more conversational. Instead of typing in “new medical device 2021,” a person might ask, “What new medical devices are coming onto the market in 2021?”

Cater to the consumer desire for voice-driven tech by adapting your SEO – one of the most impactful content marketing techniques you can use. By driving organic traffic to your website, SEO attracts leads that are already interested in your content.

2. Retention Marketing is the New Priority

Retention marketing is expected to be one of the dominant marketing trends for all industries in 2021. This strategy focuses on fostering loyalty among existing customers instead of attracting new customers. This allows for continual sales at a lower cost per sale since you don’t have to invest in lead generation.

Retention marketing techniques like cross-selling and upselling are critical to success. If you have a customer that’s currently only buying one product from your company, look at ways to maximize that profit. Are there other products relevant to their field? Is there a chance to up their existing order?

You can also nurture your customer relationships and boost engagement through non-sales activities. Providing educational opportunities like webinars is a great way to give your clients added value that keeps them coming back.

3. Content is Still King

Content will remain a critical cornerstone of successful healthcare marketing strategies in 2021. Content marketing can include everything from blogs to thought-leader articles in healthcare publications, social media activity, and more.

The key to success is consistency. You have to publish regularly, creating value-added content rooted in keyword research that reflects your target audience’s needs. A mix of long- and short-form content is ideal, allowing you to cater to different media platforms, e.g., a medical magazine versus social media.

To take your content to the next level in 2021, make it interactive. Interactive content captures the user’s attention span for longer. Quizzes, videos, and infographics are all great ways to engage users actively. Visually driven content is also popular and highly shareable.

4. The Chatbots are Set to Take Over

AI technology has improved the functionality of chatbots immensely. In the past, this tech could do little more than give a standard greeting and then direct the user to an alternative resource (like a customer service email) for real help.

Today’s chatbots are fast, responsive, and intelligent. Need proof? The technology is so advanced that it’s been used to conduct COVID-19 risk assessments in 2020, alleviating the burden on overworked healthcare professionals.

Incorporate chatbots into your website to provide your clients with an improved online experience. A chatbot offers immediate assistance, decreasing wait times and increasing customer satisfaction.

5. Nostalgia Marketing Has Customers Looking Back

So far, this list has been all about modern approaches, with a heavy emphasis on tech. Consumers don’t just want what’s shiny and new, however. Nostalgia marketing is a significant trend to watch out for in 2021. This emphasizes human connectivity and authenticity.

To make the most of the nostalgic mood, capitalize on the moment’s cultural trends – or consider reintroducing a discontinued product or service. If you previously held informational podcasts about your product line, for example, consider bringing this back.

Prepare Your Healthcare Marketing Strategy for 2021 Now

Share Moving Media can help you harness the power of 2021’s top healthcare marketing trends. As a full-service media and content agency, we help medical manufacturers keep their marketing current to boost healthcare sales. Our quality content includes blog posts, podcasts, webinars, ebooks, and more.

Sign up for our newsletter for the latest healthcare marketing trends. Want support for your 2021 strategy? Contact us today!

How COVID-19 Has Turned Healthcare Sales Practices on Their Head

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The healthcare industry is in the global spotlight due to COVID-19. Analysts expect the healthcare market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% from 2020 to 2027, reaching $520.6 million. For those in healthcare sales, business is set to boom.

However, COVID-19 has wholly upended the healthcare sales cycle. Face-to-face interactions have decreased. Conferences and other large-scale industry events have been canceled. As medical providers and facilities come under financial strain dealing with a widespread pandemic, buyers are reassessing how to best invest their money.

It’s a moment of massive upheaval. You can either adapt and leverage the current changes to your advantage — or stay stagnant and let the sales opportunities pass you by.

This blog examines changes in healthcare sales in COVID times and provides practical pointers on how to increase your market shares in the evolving landscape.

How are Healthcare Sales Changing in COVID Times?

The sales sector has changed in every area. A survey of B2B sales businesses spanning 11 countries identified trends in three key areas:

  • Change in spending: In general, companies are decreasing expenditures. However, specific sectors, including healthcare, are seeing a rise in spending.
  • Emphasis on digital: Across the board, B2B companies anticipate more digital interactions. Traditional sales interactions, like face-to-face meetings and mingling at conferences, are expected to decrease in importance.
  • Increased remote work: As of April 2020, nearly 90 percent of sales had moved to video conferencing, phone, or website models. Compared to previous skepticism, confidence in such models has increased.

These trends become even more pronounced in the medical field. For instance, physicians report that patients are increasingly embracing telemedicine over in-person appointments due to fear of COVID-19 infection.

As a result, healthcare organizations may consider redistributing budgets to invest in improved video conferencing capabilities. Healthcare practitioners will be required to become more tech-savvy in this field. As a sales professional, it’s essential to understand such changes in supply and demand in healthcare.

4 Tips for Effective Healthcare Sales in COVID Times

Understanding the changes in the sales industry is only half the battle. You have to take this knowledge and adapt accordingly. Here’s how.

1. Identify Your Audience’s New Burdens

Whether you sell ultrasound diagnostics equipment to integrated delivery networks (IDNs) or patient data management software to group purchasing networks, your target audience has undoubtedly experienced changes since COVID-19 began.

Educate yourself on the new burdens your target audience faces. For instance, healthcare practitioners have had to change treatment protocols, while organizations grapple with supply chain disruptions. Surveys are a great way to identify barriers — and then determine how you can help address them.

Knowledge of your audience’s needs also allows you to adapt your sales pitch and messages accordingly.

2. Master Virtual Communication Tools

When touching base with existing clients or having a first-time meeting with a new client, odds are the exchange will be virtual. Be prepared to adapt to your customer’s needs. Acquaint yourself with the most popular virtual communication platforms, including Zoom, WebEx, and Google Hangouts.

This way, you can always quickly adapt to your client’s preferences. With COVID-19 draining healthcare resources — including time — you don’t want to demand more of your clients by asking them to download or learn new video conferencing technology.

3. Take Advantage of Digital Events

Conferences used to be a prime spot for building relationships in the healthcare sales space. While some events are continuing with new COVID-19 safety measures, others are moving online (an excellent opportunity for digital advertising in healthcare). Do your research on what events are ongoing.

There is also a new opportunity in the digital space. You don’t have to attend enormous conferences. Hosting a webinar or a virtual round table discussion on a niche topic in your field is a great way to reach your target audience and establish yourself as an authoritative knowledge source.

4. Monitor Your Success and Be Prepared to Pivot

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of adapting. Major companies have gone from housing employees in offices to having them work from home. Fitness buffs have taken their workouts from the gym to the living room. Schoolteachers have found ways to engage kids via remote learning.

If you want to succeed in healthcare sales in COVID times, you need to be ready to make changes. To enact positive changes, you need information on what works and what doesn’t. You get this by gathering granular data about your methodology.

For example, if you host a webinar, how many people tune in? How many are existing clients versus new leads? How many of them convert to sales when you follow up with those leads via one-on-one video conferences? With such meta-analysis, you can adapt your sales strategies and improve outcomes.

Get Help Enhancing Your Sales in COVID Times

Share Moving Media can help you find new ways to succeed in healthcare sales in COVID times. We help our clients increase their market share through our full-service media offering, including targeted publications, educational services, events, and more. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest healthcare sales and marketing news. Want help revamping your healthcare sales processes? Contact us today!

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!