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ROI – What Really Matters (And What Doesn’t)

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Gaining value from investments is the main goal of any well-functioning business. However, industry challenges such as supply shortages, staff turnover, and pandemic disruptions have impacted the profitability of businesses in the medical distribution industry.

Practically all business decisions require an understanding of how the decision will impact return on investment (ROI), especially when it comes to creating marketing tactics. Focusing on ROI strategies can guide a brand in the right direction and refocus its overall goals. So, what is ROI, and what aspects matter (and don’t) when it comes to ROI?

Return on investment is a calculation of the value of an investment versus the cost. ROI is a useful measurement to assess the profitability of a particular investment. ROI can be calculated using the formula: (profit minus cost)/(cost).

Many professionals consider ROI tracking extremely important to overall businesses success. Marketing ROI, specifically, is a measurement that attributes profit and revenue growth to the success of marketing initiatives, according to a Marketing Evolution blog.

Calculating return on marketing investment allows organizations to determine the degree to which marketing efforts as a whole, or on a campaign-basis, contribute to revenue growth. Traditionally, ROI is used to justify budget allocation and future campaigns and initiatives. So, what really matters when it comes to marketing ROI?

  1. Determining Marketing Budget

There are a myriad of marketing mix combinations, especially with the recent increase in online marketing. Any form of marketing campaign requires a budget, and that is why having a complete understanding of the profit that marketing generates is important.

  1. Measure Campaign Success

Measuring the success of specific marketing campaigns is crucial to establish a baseline for future strategies. Understanding the impact of individual campaigns on overall revenue growth can help marketing professionals identify the strategies that were most profitable.

  1. Competitive Analysis

Monitoring competitors allows advertisers to understand how their company is performing in marketing compared to other businesses in their industry. Many factors impact marketing success within the medical distribution industry, and so knowing how competing companies compare can guide advertising tactics.

Marketing decisions require a knowledge of ROI trends to ensure that business decision are profitable. What matters most is that a business consistently tracks these statistics, whether it be through Google Analytics/ads, a CRM software, call tracking software, online campaign tracking software, etc.

Keeping track of ROI gives a business valuable insight to use toward a successful marketing strategy. If your business could use assistance with its marketing strategy, Share Moving Media has extensive supply chain industry marketing experience and expertise. With decades spent navigating the industry, SMM can create content for your business that is engaging, creative, and relevant. Call John Pritchard at jpritchard@sharemovingmedia.com to set up a time to speak more about how SMM can help your company improve its marketing ROI.

Leadership and Marketing Strategy

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Reliable leadership within the marketing of med/surg products is a must have in today’s dynamic industry. Brands must have a marketing strategy they can count on to promote their brand, and implementing that takes strong, trustworthy teams.

In order to get noticed by supply chain executives and to set your brand apart, team members must practice and display leadership skills when conducting marketing efforts. Marketing leadership plays an important role in the strategy of attracting new and existing customers.

Leadership as defined by Harvard Business Review, is “the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants, a great leader is one who can do so day after day, and year after year, in a wide variety of circumstances.”

Leadership is a universal business skill and should be practiced not just by the C-Suite and managers, but by all employees within a company. Marketing teams especially can benefit from the critical leadership skills of taking initiative, compelling team action, strong communication, and task delegation.

  1. Taking Initiative

Taking initiative, including exhibiting autonomy, drive, and capitalizing on opportunities are essential leadership qualities for all employees within a business. Encouraging teams to take the initiative will keep each employee on top of current trends, and better ensure that they are best promoting your brand.

  1. Compel Team Action

Marketing teams must encourage and challenge each other to form new ideas, create new content, and continue improving campaigns. This allows marketing teams to stay up to date on industry trends, changes, and ways the business could improve to stand out from competition.

  1. Strong Communication

All team members should actively communicate with each other within the workplace. Clear and concise communication is a crucial skill for all team members whether they are cold calling, writing content marketing articles, brainstorming new ad tactics, etc.

  1. Task Delegation

Delegation, or transferring authority or responsibility to another team member, can result in better decision-making, autonomy, and increased teamwork and understanding. In the workplace, delegation allows smaller tasks to be completed more efficiently while allowing for increased focus on the overall marketing campaign.

Strong leadership is essential to a marketing team’s success, and individual leadership encourages more efficient work, increased focus on marketing campaigns, and the delegation of important tasks such as content marketing. If your brand could use assistance with the creation of marketing content that stands out in the medical distribution industry, contact John Pritchard with Share Moving Media at jpritchard@sharemovingmedia.com. SMM has over 30 years of experience working with brands to market their products to health care supply chain leaders.

How commercial healthcare providers are helping change the healthcare marketing industry

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With increased consumerism in healthcare, these new participants are changing how healthcare organizations market themselves 

The healthcare industry is witnessing a continued push towards consumerism. Stakeholders are turning to retail, tech and other sectors for innovation to help solve familiar healthcare problems. Enter commercial healthcare providers (CHPs). They can be defined as retail, payor, senior and tech-based providers changing the landscape of consumer healthcare as people seek convenience and quality in their healthcare experience.

In recent years, retailers have delivered products in a more convenient way, changing consumer behavior. An omnichannel approach has blurred the lines. Consumers can easily research a product and maybe even test it before purchasing it. As this approach has become more comfortable for consumers, they are pursuing it in other areas like healthcare.

Some familiar names in retail like Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Amazon can be considered retail-based commercial healthcare providers today. Those and other retail-based commercial healthcare providers are acquiring and investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers in response to the shift in dynamics – both consumer-centric preferences and an aging population.

Payors like UnitedHealth Group and its Optum division are considered payor-based commercial healthcare providers. They are also investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers. Redefining the space is a change to fee-for-value reimbursement models, physician shortages, consumerism and digital disruption.

But how are commercial healthcare providers successfully marketing themselves and their services to the changing landscape? And what can other healthcare stakeholders learn from their entries into the marketplace?

Organizations must constantly expand their footprint in today’s healthcare environment. But there are plenty of barriers to growth like increased consumer expectations of healthcare, greater patient exposure to price, and expanding choices for healthcare consumers. Consumer interest must be stimulated to remain competitive in this healthcare marketplace.

Optum says that to drive sustainable growth, healthcare leaders need to better understand the consumers and patients they currently serve. Every healthcare leader should ask these four data-centric marketing questions:

  1. What customers do we need to reach in order to be successful?
  2. What do we know about our current customers?
  3. How do we ensure our current customers continue to choose us?
  4. How do we attract more of the right customers?

There is more consumer data, patient data and real-time marketing data to generate strategic and actionable insights than ever before. Healthcare organizations must act more like consumer-driven brands in today’s consumer-centric marketplace. Deploying precision marketing makes marketing more effective and more cost-efficient.

Optum helped AdventHealth develop a six-month marketing campaign that led 134,000 patients to the Central Florida health system, instead of its competitor. They discussed it during a healthcare marketing webinar.

They supervised a precision marketing campaign designed to speak directly to the people likely to use their services. But AdventHealth needed digital tools and help from marketing partners to achieve their results. Optum mined digital data to prioritize 850,000 people, dividing them into 11 specific cohorts. Some included young singles without a primary care physician, married couples with kids, very sick people with more than two or three diseases requiring complex care, and people of all ages suffering from unexplained stomach and abdominal pains.

Unique messaging was designed for each group, considering clinical needs, gender, language and culture. People received the messaging through their preferred media channels at the times they were likely to see it.

It led 134,000 patients to AdventHealth rather than the competitor’s emergency departments and the investment yielded a $474 return for every marketing dollar spent, according to AdventHealth.

A focused approach to marketing by reaching out directly to likely customers and engaging them through personalized messaging can provide better results with less wasted effort.

Share Moving Media is experienced with the creation of marketing campaigns that increase SEO searches for companies within the medical distribution industry. We can assist your brand in creating content that is simple, shareable, and that appeals to emotion to effectively promote your company. Visit www.sharemovingmedia.com to learn more.

The Value of a Trusted Industry Newsletter

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In today’s marketplace, the email Inbox has become a coveted place for marketers to try and pique the interest of supply chain leaders.

According to Templafy, 86% of professionals named email as their preferred means of business communication and email ranked as the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences – topped only by colleague recommendations and industry-specific influencers.

In the same blog, Templafy revealed that the average office worker receives around 121 emails  every workday. Indeed, to truly grab the attention of supply chain leaders, healthcare marketers will need to find a way to stand out.

One powerful digital marketing tool is a well-regarded newsletter. These are much more personalized – and informative – than a marketing email. Newsletters are useful tools to educate and inform readers, all while building an audience that will come to depend on the platform for news, insights and tips on how to do their job better.

However, newsletters need compelling content and repetition in order to gain the trust of healthcare supply chain leaders. It can take months, or even years, to build that kind of value for today’s readership. That’s why partnering with a trusted industry newsletter is a good strategy for brands looking to get in front of, and stay in front of, their targeted audience.

Share Moving Media’s flagship newsletter, the dail-eNews, is a real-time email newsletter for those involved in the business of healthcare. It has been delivered on a daily basis to over 20,000 decision-makers in GPOs, IDNs and the manufacturing and distribution segments of the healthcare industry for more than a decade. Each edition of the dail-eNews provides an opportunity for healthcare marketers to gain the attention of supply chain leaders via banner ads, announcements of new product launches, features, initiatives, and more.

Share Moving Media also produces several other newsletters including National Accounts Weekly, the Medical Device Council, and Supply Chain Hub. For more information on SMM’s digital publications and how to partner, visit sharemovingmedia.com.

Growth in Ads

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The pandemic impacted many aspects of daily business, including the marketing and advertising industry. During the pandemic, the advertising industry experienced rapid growth, and now that the world is moving forward, and continues to be higher than average.

According to a forecast by Brian Wieser and published on AdWeek.com, the advertising industry in the United States is projected to grow 5% in 2023. Total ad revenue will grow 2.0% to $363 billion in 2023. In 2024, there is an expected surge of 8.1% projected ad revenue growth.

The growth of the ad industry has steadily increased in the past decade due to access to cheap capital that provided “vast sums” of money for companies to use toward advertising pursuits, according to analyst Brian Wieser, media and advertising analyst/consultant.

So, how has the industry changed? And what do those changes mean for the medical supply chain industry? Read on to learn more:

Why did the ad industry expand during the pandemic?

Advertising during the pandemic was unpredictable. During COVID-19 lockdowns, many advertisers took the time to pause and reevaluate their marketing strategies to develop more engaging and creative ads. Now that the world is beginning to normalize post-pandemic, there have been many changes and differences in the primary ways that companies advertise, such as an increase in digital advertisements such as with content on social media, website, podcast, etc.

How popular is digital advertising?

Digital platforms such as social media, YouTube, commerce/retail media, and companies like Apple account for 64% of all advertising. This influence is expected to grow 11% this year in 2023, according to Wieser. Retail media is also on track to grow by 20% in 2023, led by companies such as Amazon.

What does the increase mean for the supply chain industry?

The supply chain industry can greatly benefit from taking advantage of digital advertising in their marketing efforts. Advertising content published on platforms such as online and social media can promote a brand to a wide audience and gain invaluable exposure. For companies in the medical supply chain industry, digital advertising is also beneficial because it can provide a platform to promote a company to hospitals or industry execs.

The advertising industry is expanding and increasing, and that dominance is only expected to grow in the coming years. If your brand could benefit from assistance with creating content for a strong and successful marketing campaign, contact John Pritchard with Share Moving Media at jpritchard@sharemovingmedia.com. SMM has over 30 years of experience advertising within the medical supply chain industry and can help your brand take advantage of the rise of digital advertising through content creation. Contact us today to set up a preliminary meeting session to learn more.