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Trends in the Supply Chain Industry

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If you’ve been scrolling through social media and experienced multiple business’ ads integrated throughout your feed, you have experienced a marketing trend. Social media advertising has become popular for businesses throughout many industries. Marketing trends greatly impact advertising tactics and drive consumer behavior especially within the medical distribution industry.

A “trend” is defined as how industry changes or develops over time. The healthcare and medical supply chain industry experiences many phases of marketing trends, and leveraging them has the potential to impact the success of marketing campaigns. Changing a business’ marketing tactics to reflect current trends may be crucial to stay up-to-date and stand out in the dynamic world of marketing.

Many outside factors influence the industry in general and the medical supply chain industry’s success of certain marketing campaigns, such as the higher incidence of chronic disease, the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer demand changes, and more.

To advertise successfully, companies must be aware of these trends and develop marketing strategies with them in mind.

Read on for 3 marketing industry trends and how to leverage them for success in medical device marketing.

  1. Identify Popular Trends and Emulate Successful Campaigns

Research other companies’ marketing campaigns to evaluate what trends and tactics make other brands in the industry successful. Determine what tactics are similar across brands, and develop a strategy as to how you can fit your unique brand message into the trend.

  1. Build brand awareness

Identify your brand’s specific target audience and tailor all marketing and communication efforts toward that goal. This will allow your company to determine what works from a marketing perspective and allows leaders and marketing professionals to gain a better understanding of what is and isn’t popular with consumers.

  1. Know the industry

When leveraging marketing trends, it is necessary for a company’s leaders to be very familiar with the industry. It is important to understand the current state of the industry, its challenges, and the future direction of the industry. This will allow a business to create niche and informed marketing content.

Share Moving Media has worked within the medical distribution industry for over 30 years, and has a thorough understanding of the industry, its trends, and how to create informed marketing content that stands out. If your company could benefit from insight into successful marketing campaigns that work in the industry, or if you could benefit from the creation of blogs, podcasts, webinars, or other marketing content, contact Scott Adams at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to schedule a time to meet.

Sources: 4 Ways to Leverage Marketing Trends for Viral Growth | Entrepreneur

The Power of Omni Channel Marketing

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Technology is integrated into our everyday lives, especially in the fast-paced global healthcare industry. Medical suppliers can use technology to their advantage to create an engaging and sales-boosting marketing strategy with other supply chain stakeholders. 

Omni channel marketing is a brand’s presence across multiple channels. Online channels include websites, apps, social media, and email. This form of marketing exposure also includes face-to-face interaction through traditional brick-and-mortar stores and company events.

Medical suppliers increase their exposure through creation of a consistent brand experience. Omni channel marketing is a customer-centric form of brand promotion, meaning customers can interact with a business on their own terms, resulting in a better overall experience. 

Here are 3 preliminary steps to creating a seamless brand experience:

  1. Start with a website and social media accounts.

Websites are often the primary place a customer checks for relevant information. Websites can outline information, highlight products, and address customer questions. Additionally, posting consistently to social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., increases customer engagement. 

  1. Use the same message across channels.

Brand messaging should be consistent across platforms. The key is to create a concise message while considering the differences between each platform. For instance, LinkedIn is often more professional and concise, while Instagram is more visual and creative.

  1. Create an app presence.

Evaluate your industry and product. Could a mobile device application increase a customer’s positive brand experience? Apps can increase a customer’s engagement and provide a more user-friendly experience. Apps can be developed directly or through hiring a freelance developer.

RepConnect is an example of a user-friendly app with tools, resources, and news that reps can utilize for important health industry information.

Numerous companies have developed a successful campaign through omni-channel marketing, and it has been proven to maintain brand consistency and increase user engagement.

Creating an omni channel marketing strategy assists medical suppliers in providing a consistent brand message. Developing a message across multiple channels can take time and patience, and Share Moving Media, the creators of RepConnect, have the expertise to assist you in gaining more visibility in the medical distribution industry. If you’d like to stay front of mind with over 5000 distribution reps and can market share please contact https://sharemovingmedia.com/.

Medical Distribution Sales in 2023: Do Relationships Still Matter?

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With all of the tools and technology available to med/surg sales reps today, it’s easy to wonder if things have changed for the medical sales process. Just in the last few years, digital tools have become a much more popular platform for making connections and facilitating meetings of all sorts. In addition to plenty of other things, COVID-19 has sort of siloed people from making face-to-face connections.

But should that mean that relationships aren’t a critical component of the sales reps’ repertoire? Do relationships still matter in the sales process?

Replacing the human element

One of the main things to consider about relationships and sales is what the human element will look like with a digital approach. Sure, relationships can be built through tools like Zoom, but it’s really difficult to replicate the authenticity and trust that can be built through a face-to-face sales interaction.

Personal relationships are the foundation on which business is built. In a recent survey conducted by Repertoire Magazine, 82% of medical distribution reps said they highly value the relationship with the manufacturer reps in their territory.

The digital tools are a great supplement to what you already have at your disposal, but it’s no replacement for the real thing. Even if the landscape doesn’t look the way it used to, it’s important to remember that the human element isn’t going anywhere – use it to your advantage! With a huge shift towards digital selling, cultivate a personal touch that will separate you from your competition. Personalization is a great way to build better relationships with your customers.

How to build better relationships

Utilizing a personal touch is only one way to build better relationships in the medical sales process. Here are some other key ways to developing stronger relationships with your customers:

●        Build a rapport – Take the time to establish and cultivate some common interests with your customers. All good relationships are built on commonality, and that starts with having something to talk about. Additionally, make sure to research the needs of the company to help you better identify pain points that your products can address.

●        Respond promptly – If you want your customers to feel valued, don’t leave them waiting on a response from you. Prompt communication is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your customers trust you and feel heard.

●        Provide value – A relationship with your customers will mean nothing if you can’t consistently provide value. Every interaction should leave the customer with something that they can use. Be sure that you understand what your genuine value is to the customer, as differentiated from your competitors in the customer’s mind. With the right skills and tools to communicate value, you can continue providing that value throughout the customer lifecycle.

Even with today’s Amazon style of buying the number one reason someone buys a product or service is when it’s recommended by a friend or family member. To the health care medical device buyer, that friend or family member is their distribution sales rep. Here at Share Moving Media we help best in class manufacturers build relationships with 95% of the distribution reps in the US.  Please contact us at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share through distribution.

The Marketing Minute Podcast – What is content and how can you leverage it to achieve success in IDN contracting and distribution sales

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Content is everywhere and it can be almost anything. Journal of Healthcare Contracting publisher John Pritchard and Repertoire publisher Scott Adams explore how best in class brands are using content to achieve sales success. If you are in the business of selling into the healthcare setting, tune in to learn how to contextualize information to the market you are trying to stimulate.

5 Reasons Why Medical Suppliers Should Blog

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The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the global healthcare supply chain. New viruses and supply shortages made it arduous for providers to procure supplies for quality patient care. But after three years of tackling new challenges and making the healthcare supply chain more efficient, providers are now seeking more resiliency from black swan events like COVID-19.

Medical suppliers must work in a more coordinated way with health systems moving forward to create a more integrated healthcare supply chain. One way medical suppliers can communicate their effectiveness and resourcefulness to health systems is through blogging.

Blogging allows medical suppliers to stay in front of provider audiences and show their expertise about industry trends. Using blogs as part of a multichannel marketing strategy allows them to reach current or potential customers along the healthcare supply chain.

Here are 5 reasons why medical suppliers should blog:

1.     Build trust with the healthcare audience. The best performing blogs can answer common questions about a product or service. This helps establish medical suppliers as more knowledgeable, and industry education is a top customer retention strategy. 

2.     Educate and engage. Medical suppliers can use blogs as a touchpoint with the healthcare industry to show their expertise. Each post shouldn’t focus on their products, but be a reliable source of information on the healthcare supply chain.

3.     Expand the brand. Blogging can help customers understand medical suppliers’ day-to-day business. It can also provide entry into a more personable side of the business that customers enjoy connecting with.

4.     Drive website traffic. Medical suppliers with a blog can drive traffic to their website. It keeps their website updated with fresh content through advice and tying in relevant products.

5.     Increase SEO. New content, keywords and indexed pages can improve medical suppliers’ search engine optimization (SEO). The key is quality content and new posts relevant to the healthcare supply chain. Creating blog posts naturally broadens medical suppliers’ use of industry keywords.

Blogging can help medical suppliers provide better understanding about their products, business and place within the healthcare supply chain. It can offer a touchpoint to providers and other customers along the supply chain with informative content, and allow customers to find new and existing products from medical suppliers.

Blogging in many cases can become like homework and easily get pushed to the bottom of your organization’s to-do list. Share Moving Media has developed the tools, resources and expertise to assist.  We write blogs for several of your peers in the medical device world.  Contact sadams@sharemovingmedia.com today to learn about our SEO blog programs and start drawing customers to you.