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Lead Scoring in Healthcare: How to Build an Effective Qualification Model

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While generating leads is an essential goal for all healthcare suppliers, qualified leads that convert are critical to a company’s success. Knowing where prospects are in the sales journey— whether they’re motivated to buy or are at the right time for a follow-up— helps build a reliable sales pipeline.

Lead scoring in healthcare provides useful insights to help you rate your sales leads for a more efficient and effective sales process. An effective lead scoring qualification model can help you hone in on qualified leads with a higher likelihood of completing a sale. This allows you to increase sales and grow your business faster.

Lead Scoring in Healthcare and Why It’s Important

Lead scoring in healthcare enables you to gather data for a particular lead and use that information to assign it a point value. Typical models use a scale of 0 (least qualified) to 100 (most qualified) to determine which leads are most engaged with your brand. The more you learn about each lead, and the more they interact with your business, the higher their score should rise.

Lead scores rely on five main data points:

  • Demographics: Qualitative and quantitative information, from age and gender to purchase behavior and job title, guide campaign strategy and retention efforts.
  • Business details: Company size and revenue can impact the language you use to communicate with your prospects as well as the products and price points you promote to them.
  • Online presence: Monitor chats and discussions on websites and social network forums. Look for pain points and opportunities to solve their problems with your products.
  • Social network: If your leads are on social media, consider communicating with them in a more casual, conversational format to build a deeper, meaningful relationship. 

Once leads achieve a particular point threshold, they are deemed qualified and can be directed to the sales department. When a sales team receives a notification about a qualified lead, they follow up to help convert the prospect to a customer. 

The insights you gain from lead scoring and the process of qualifying leads are critical to your success. The more you know about your prospects, the more you can do to create a positive customer experience for them while guiding them through the sales funnel. From customized messaging to useful promotions and educational materials, understanding your audience gives you the leverage you need to build trust, rapport, and solidify brand loyalty for sales growth.

7 Tips for Building an Effective Lead Scoring Qualification Model

For the most effective results, lead scoring should be accurate and consistent. Use the information gathered from the lead scoring data qualifiers to develop a model that follows these seven guidelines.

1. Establish Your Minimum Criteria 

Determine what you require from a lead before they can become a customer. These steadfast qualifications could be age, location, or job title. Maybe you only sell to people in hospital distribution or group purchasing networks. Whatever the criteria, it must be essential to passing them through the funnel. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be considered here. 

2. Identify Your Target Market 

Identify the characteristics of your target market. Unlike your minimum criteria, these are common traits typically held by your preferred audience but are not mandatory. The goal is to identify prospects that are most similar to your existing customers. The more comparable they are, the more likely they are to be interested in your products.

This is a simple process if you’re familiar with your current customers. If not, your marketing team should know these characteristics from their research in developing custom content. You can also rely on your sales team for input since they encounter your audience daily and are in touch with your customers’ needs.

3. Define the Ideal Customer 

In a perfect world, what does your dream customer look like? Think about traits like job title, field of expertise, typical turnaround demand, and budget size. Seek input from your sales and marketing teams to build a more well-defined snapshot of your ideal lead. Once you know what your desired customer looks like, your leads can achieve a higher score.

4. Assess Customer Engagement 

Understanding customer behavior is crucial in assigning point values. Consider all of the opportunities a prospect has to engage with your company.

Assess behavior such as:

  • Website clicks
  • Email opens
  • File downloads
  • Social media comments
  • Completed CTAs

Evaluate website analytics to find such details and observe customer behavior. Critical conversion behaviors, like requesting more information or watching a product demonstration, are indicators that a lead is interested in becoming a customer. The score for these behaviors should carry more weight when you begin assigning points. 

5. Set the Parameters for Your Scoring System 

Although a scoring system of 0-100 is straightforward and widely accepted, incorporating more digits in your structure can help categorize your leads. Consider adding a thousandth digit to signify company size. Weed out weak leads by assigning a certain number of points for leads that meet your essential criteria. If they don’t meet the threshold for quality, they don’t make it to the sales team. 

6. Assign Points 

The point of lead scoring is to identify characteristics and actions that result in a closed sale. Assign points to behaviors accordingly. It is rare that a lead who registers for blog updates becomes a paying customer. That behavior should earn a low score. Leads who click on downloadable files do tend to convert, so they should get a higher score. 

7. Adjust as Necessary

Once you’ve determined your scoring system, try it out for a month. Then reassess and see how effective it’s been. Look for any surprises, like low-scoring leads that converted and high-scoring leads that didn’t. Make adjustments to your system as necessary until you develop a model that yields positive results.

Let Us Help You Build an Effective Lead Scoring and Qualification Model

All businesses in the healthcare supply chain can benefit from an effective lead scoring and qualification model. With this model, you can target the prospects most likely to convert and allocate your resources most effectively. Share Moving Media specializes in helping healthcare businesses generate qualified leads and reach their marketing goals for increased market share.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you close sales and generate revenue with an effective lead scoring and qualification model.

Master the Growth of Your Healthcare Digital Marketing Program: A Guide to Digital Marketing in Healthcare

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The world of marketing is constantly evolving. From technological advancements to updated research findings, marketers must continually adapt to the latest trends and platforms to most effectively reach their audience. This is especially true for businesses in the healthcare supply chain. With ever-changing medical advancements, government regulations, and healthcare research, companies must adjust their messaging to deliver timely and relevant information to their audience.

A digital marketing strategy should be evaluated and updated on a fairly regular basis. To ensure that you are meeting the needs of your audience, delivering current information, and maximizing marketing efforts, keep your campaigns up to date— both in strategy and execution. For maximum impact and best results, learn how your healthcare digital marketing strategy should evolve with this e-guide on digital marketing in healthcare.

Why is a Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy Important?

Your healthcare digital marketing strategy helps set your business apart from the competition. Whether you are in hospital purchasing, group contracting, or hospital distribution, an effective digital marketing strategy enables you to communicate with your audience. 

A healthcare digital marketing strategy helps healthcare suppliers:

  • Identify your audience: Through research, you can discover qualitative and quantitative data, from traditional demographics like age and gender to job title and medical product needs. This guides your content strategy and how to reach your prospects for the best results.
  • Build trust and develop relationships: Useful content helps to build trust with your audience while personalized messaging enables you to develop meaningful relationships with your readers. This equates to more purchases and referrals.
  • Earn more customers: A well-developed and intuitive website can serve as an invaluable resource for your users. Strategic content can guide visitors through the sales funnel and convert them to customers.

To ensure you’re getting the most out of your healthcare digital marketing strategy, you must perform occasional housekeeping to maintain up-to-date information and practices for ultimate success.

7 Ways to Update Your Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy

Maintaining a current healthcare digital marketing strategy is essential to building your online presence and overall business success. Here are seven ways to update your strategy for maximum results. 

1. Reassess Your Current Strategy’s Effectiveness 

Take some time to review your analytics and see what areas of your digital marketing strategy are working and what areas need improvement. This data provides insight into your audience, your company’s strengths, and your business in general. You can use these metrics to fine-tune your strategy and make any adjustments for future growth opportunities.

2. Implement New Technologies and Platforms 

There was a time when pay-per-click ads were the height of technological marketing. Now, there are constantly new apps, plugins, and digital features to help promote your business. Chatbots can streamline sales and marketing processes, and social video marketing engages audiences like never before.

The addition of new platforms to the digital space is also revolutionizing digital marketing. More people are connecting through social networks. To reach your audience where they are, you must stay on top of the latest platforms people are using. That’s where they’ll share your information, ask product questions, and discuss and review their experience with your company.

3. Try New Advertising Methods

Traditional advertising like magazine ads and billboards aren’t so traditional anymore. Today, more than 80% of Americans use social media. Consider allocating your marketing budget for ads and promotional notifications on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Look into other opportunities for digital marketing that you may not have previously considered. By leaving less effective advertising methods behind, you save money and reach more of your targeted audience.

4. Evaluate Channel Performance

A digital marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a complete failure to be considered ineffective. Sometimes a marketing plan is delivering results but isn’t functioning at maximum capacity. Take a closer look at the channels used in your marketing campaigns. 

If you find they’re doing great, they may not need any improvements. But for channels that aren’t bringing the results you want  to see, consider re-evaluating those options. Update your approach, or pull out of that channel altogether. Those resources can be applied elsewhere to strengthen your campaign and maximize your efforts.

5. Interpret Current Data 

There are several tools available for analyzing and interpreting data. If you’re assessing campaign performance and can’t make sense of the metrics you’re seeing, consider purchasing a tool to assist with this process. Information still over your head? Hire a company to handle this aspect of your marketing for you. This information provides invaluable insights into campaign performance and company success. You want to be sure you can track it accurately to shape an effective digital marketing strategy.

6. Maximize Engagement 

Engagement is an important element of marketing. It aids SEO, guides your content development, and helps build brand loyalty and recognition. When people visit your website, you want them to click through your pages, spend time reading your information, and perform a call-to-action. On social media, you want people to share and like your posts and comment on your updates. 

If your website isn’t gaining attention or your social media account isn’t receiving any interaction, it is time to make some changes. Revamp your content. Survey your audience. Somehow, you’re not delivering information that they’re finding useful. When you know how to reach them and with what details, you can improve engagement and drive interest.

7. Stay Current on Algorithms 

A marketing strategy that’s worked for a long time may suddenly stop delivering results. Content may be failing to attract your audience or you may find your business listed lower in SEO rankings. This can be an indicator that something online – a formula, an algorithm, or a process – has changed. 

You’ll need to find out what it is and adjust your strategy to meet the requirements necessary to succeed. Using the same healthcare digital marketing strategy for too long will lead to an outdated program that loses impact, declines in performance, and becomes stagnant.

Develop a Professional Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy 

To keep up with the ever-changing trends, updates, and technological advancements in the healthcare industry, it’s important to continually update your digital marketing strategy. A full-service company, Share Moving Media uses media and content to help healthcare businesses like yours reach their marketing goals.

Contact us today to discuss ways to improve your healthcare digital marketing strategy for maximum results.

5 New Diagnostic Tests for Patient Experience Optimization

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Patient experience is essential to the success of businesses within the healthcare supply chain. Assessing a patient’s journey to ensure a positive experience is important to quality lead generation and revenue growth. After all, people who receive treatment that meets their specific needs and preferences are likely to become loyal patients who spread the word about their experience. This expands the reach and helps drive more business to the healthcare provider. 

As healthcare professionals analyze their services, they must evaluate their diagnostic tests for patient experience. By assessing these tests, medical professionals eliminate unnecessary procedures and provide the most positive patient experience possible.

What is Diagnostic Testing?

When a patient has a medical concern, physicians use diagnostic testing to rule out and confirm various ailments and determine their progression. Diagnostic tests and tools guide physicians in developing a treatment plan and measuring the treatment’s effectiveness.

Some diagnostic tests are invasive, where tools are inserted into the body, as in: 

  • Biopsies
  • Blood samples
  • Colonoscopies
  • Endoscopies

Sometimes invasive procedures are the only way to access the information needed for doctors to diagnose a medical issue. Alternatively, they can use non-invasive diagnostic tests, where it is not necessary to penetrate the skin to diagnose. 

Common non-invasive diagnostic tests include:

  • MRIs
  • X-rays
  • Basic eye exams
  • Mammograms
  • Sonograms

Non-invasive testing typically requires equipment that creates pictures of soft tissues, organs, and bones.. These images let doctors know if more invasive steps are required to diagnose the issue.

Like any medical procedure, diagnostic testing is subject to inaccuracies, cost, risks, and benefits. That’s why it is  important to evaluate testing procedures and streamline processes to ensure patients have positive experience.

5 New Diagnostic Tests for Patient Experience 

A closer look at which diagnostic tests are issued and how they are conducted can help doctors meet the medical needs of their patients while avoiding excessive costs, saving time, and minimizing risk. All of this helps to provide an improved patient experience. Here are five new diagnostic tests for patient experience optimization.

1. COVID-19 Rapid Diagnostic Tests 

While people wait to receive their COVID-19 vaccine, accurately and quickly diagnosing the virus is critical in minimizing its spread. Two new rapid diagnostic tests have been developed for people to detect COVID-19 variants and differentiate from illnesses with similar symptoms.

Much like an at-home pregnancy test, these COVID-19 rapid tests use commercial reagents for nucleic acid detection. The first test can be conducted in the comfort of one’s own home and results are revealed in roughly an hour. The second test uses the same sample but must be analyzed by a professional. 

These new tests are more convenient, more comfortable, and produce results more quickly than previous COVID-19 diagnostic tests. They would certainly improve the patient experience. Scientists are currently seeking licensing for release of these diagnostic tests to the public and healthcare professionals alike.

2. Microneedle Patch with Fluorescent Nanolabels 

Blood draws are one of the most common diagnostic tests conducted by healthcare professionals. Unfortunately, they can be inconvenient, painful, and are difficult for patients who can’t handle the sight of blood. A new alternative is a microneedle patch covered in fluorescent nanolabels that detects protein and antibodies in the interstitial fluid that exists between cells.

Microneedle patches are covered in tiny needles that only penetrate about 400 microns deep into the dermal layer of skin. They don’t touch sensory nerves, so they don’t cause any pain. Although antibodies in interstitial fluid are generally low in concentration, the fluorescent nanolabels boost the detection and make them easier to identify.

For patients who dread having their blood drawn, microneedle patch diagnostic testing can be a preferred option. It is  painless, convenient, and yields reliable results.

3. RESP Lung Monitor 

Monitoring lung sounds is an important step in diagnosing numerous respiratory issues. RESP, a new device developed by Strados Labs in Philadelphia, is a wearable technology allowing healthcare providers to monitor their patients and track data remotely.

RESP adheres to the chest and listens for lung sounds like wheezes and coughs. Data is recorded and stored remotely, and physicians can  access the information at any time. Sound editing can eliminate outside noise, accurately track lung sounds, and reveal trends and patterns in the lungs’ performance. 

Patients don’t have to make multiple trips to their doctor’s office for assessment or monitoring. They simply wear the non-invasive device and go about their daily routine. It’s a convenient way to monitor lung health and track medical progress.

4. VitalSight Remote Patient Monitoring 

Although annual check-ups only occur once a year, they are fairly inconvenient. Patients have to take time off from work, navigate traffic, and sit in a waiting room with potentially sick people before they’re even seen by a doctor. A new diagnostic test created by Omron allows doctors to monitor their patients remotely.

VitalSight is a system that connects Omron’s weight scales and blood pressure monitors to an EMR through a special hub. Patients simply plug in the wireless hub to a power outlet and they can measure their own data from home. All readings are recorded, routed to their medical records automatically, and reviewed by healthcare professionals. Any abnormal results send an alert to staff for a follow-up.

Remote patient monitoring is easier for patients as it doesn’t disrupt their daily routine. They can still receive the same great care from the comfort of their own home.

5. BIOMONITOR IIIm Cardiac Monitor

The BIOMONITOR IIIm injectable cardiac monitor (ICM) has been on the market for a while, helping cardiologists remotely diagnose cardiac issues. The ICM now features a Vital Data Sensor that measures body temperature and can detect signs of fever. This is important for cardiac patients who are at a higher risk for infection and who have a harder time recovering from systemic illnesses. 

Recognizing the onset of fever can indicate early signs of infection which helps patients receive treatment sooner. Remote monitoring also minimizes in-person contact. This protects these at-risk patients from possible illnesses. The ICM with Vital Data Sensor is a diagnostic test that brings ease and comfort to the patients who use it.

Send the Right Message with a Professionally Developed Marketing Strategy 

Whether you’re in medical sales or hospital distribution, your products and services play a vital role in the overall patient experience. Let your customers know you’re ready to help. Share Moving Media is a full-service media and content company that helps healthcare businesses reach their marketing goals.

Looking to help your customers maximize their patient experience? Contact us today to develop an effective marketing strategy that can help increase your market share. 

5 Steps to Determine Blog Frequency to Grow Your B2B Healthcare Site’s Web Traffic

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The goal of every healthcare supplier’s website is the same: drive traffic, engage an audience, and convert customers. The way to do this is through search engine optimization (SEO), and the key to effective SEO is content. The more high-quality, relevant information you post on your site, the more material search engines have to scan and index. When a site is useful to its visitors, search engines will grant it higher placement in rankings. This means more visibility and more traffic.

Blogging is the most logical way to add valuable content to your website. Today, more than 31 million Americans host a blog and post at least once a month. That’s a ton of content. The question is, how many blog posts does it take to grow B2B web traffic in healthcare? 

Quality or Quantity: Which is Better?

When it comes to content, quality will always win over quantity. You must post meaningful information that brings readers value. A single, high-quality blog post will outperform a dozen mediocre fluff pieces every time. As long as you’re producing valuable content, you can then start strategizing blog frequency to help drive traffic to your site and increase your conversion rates.

The number of blog posts it will take to boost traffic depends on several factors. Every business is different, and the needs of every target audience are unique. What works for one company may not work for another. Details like how and when an audience prefers to receive information, company size, and blog length are all contributing factors to a blog’s success. Before you can begin to develop an effective blogging strategy, you’ll need to do some research.

Understanding Google’s Approach to New Pages

To schedule a blogging plan that works, it’s helpful to first understand how Google ranks pages based on content alone. Google uses a ranking factor called QDF (query deserves freshness) that prioritizes news stories based on these types of searches:

  • Current events: timely articles that talk about things happening right now.
  • Regularly recurring events: the latest information about anticipated events.
  • Frequent updates: the most current details surrounding information that changes often.

QDF means that websites that post fresh, updated content can outperform their competitors. Whether it’s an older site that’s maintaining the relevancy of its past posts, or a new page releasing brand new authoritative content, Google rewards sites that remain consistently current.

Updated posts are especially important for healthcare blogs. Research findings, regulations, and new products are constantly changing, and people in this industry want the most up-to-date information. By consistently posting fresh content, you can increase brand awareness, position yourself as an authority in the healthcare supply chain, gain higher Google rankings, and drive more traffic to your site.

How Many Blog Posts Does It Take to Grow Your B2B Healthcare Site’s Web Traffic?

Research shows that organizations that consistently post 16 blog entries each month drive more traffic than those who don’t. While that may be a good starting point, determining the right frequency for your organization depends on several factors. Even if you were to blog every day, it can take time to develop an article that resonates with readers and drives tons of traffic to your site. 

How Often Should You Post on Your Blog? 5 Steps to Know

Here are five steps to determine how many blog posts you should publish to grow B2B traffic in healthcare.

1. Determine Your Marketing Goals 

Know what it is you’re trying to achieve with your blog posts. Identify how you can attract an audience and provide them with a positive experience. Maybe the way to do this is through guest blogs, or video content, or infographics. Find out what’s best for your audience. A plan without clearly defined goals is far less likely to succeed.

2. Assess Your Previously Published Content 

A website that already has some great cornerstone content doesn’t need to post new content as frequently. Take a look at the number of posts you already have on your blog. Of those posts, identify which ones helped you reach major traffic milestones. This will help you find the relationship between the number of blogs and how many visitors they gained. Use this pattern to plan future posts for continued success.

3. Tune In to Your Traffic Channels 

The two most prominent sources for blog content are social media networks and search engine visibility through Google rankings. Social media posts generally last for about a day. For that reason, you can’t rely on a single post to drive ongoing traffic to your site. However, search engine rankings are much more reliable. If you can create evergreen content that gets you on the front page of their listings, you’re more likely to reach more people and drive more traffic to your site.

4. Know Your Audience 

Write with your audience in mind. That means you must know their needs and preferences, like how often they want to hear from you. Some companies who increase their blog post frequency actually see a decline in traffic. Their audience doesn’t want to see so much new content so frequently.

You also need to know what kind of material is the most useful to them. Promotional posts that contain pieces of content like ebooks, webinars, or downloadable resources tend to generate the highest number of leads.

5. Sometimes It Simply Comes Down to Trial and Error 

Once you determine a blog post schedule that you think will work, give it a try. Implement different times of day and days of the week. Try various approaches to the type of content. Remember your plan isn’t set in stone. If you’re not getting the results you’d hoped for, rethink your strategy and try something new. While you want to post frequently to stay front of mind and continue to be viewed as an authority in your field, quantity should never jeopardize quality. 

Drive Traffic with Share Moving Media’s Expert Blog Strategists

A healthcare company that knows its audience and adheres to its marketing goals can create a content strategy that earns high search engine placement and drives traffic to its site. Share Moving Media is a full-service media and content company that provides healthcare suppliers with the tools needed to increase their market share. 

From hospital purchasing to hospital distribution, healthcare companies can benefit from Share Moving Media’s services in developing an effective blog post schedule that meets audience needs. 

If you’re ready to increase visibility and drive traffic to your site, contact us today.

Email Marketing for Healthcare: Reaching the Right Audience

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For the healthcare industry, email marketing is an effective way to communicate information about your services to current and prospective customers. From manufacturing processes and new product introductions to policy changes and event announcements, email marketing for healthcare is a convenient way to reach a large number of people with minimal effort and expense.

When used correctly, email is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Not only is it a leading method of communication (3.9 billion people worldwide used email last year), but it also allows you to target a specific audience,  reaching the right person at the right time. The key to improving open rates and increasing ROI is personalization. 82% of marketers who used email personalization saw an increase in open rates. 

Many people have difficulty navigating the healthcare supply chain. With so many products and services available to the industry, making decisions for hospital purchasing can be confusing. That’s why digital marketing in healthcare is important. Your customers appreciate receiving information to inform, educate, and help them make the best decisions to benefit their business and their end users. 

Email marketing is only effective if you reach the right audience. Through custom content and careful planning, your email marketing campaign can engage your readers, generate new leads, and increase your healthcare manufacturing business.

5 Steps to Reaching the Right Audience with Email Marketing for Healthcare

Today’s consumers have come to expect a certain level of personalization. Without customized content, recipients are more likely to delete unread messages – or worse, mark them as spam. 

Though highly effective, email personalization only works if you understand your target audience. Here are 5 steps to creating personalized content and reaching the right audience with your email marketing campaigns.

1. Gather the Right Data 

Any successful email campaign begins by gathering user data. 

Carefully consider the information you want to collect from your audience. After all, your contact list will only be as strong as the information you put into it. 

What details about your audience would help you personalize a message for them? Identify those qualifiers and be sure to capture that information in your registration forms.

2. Familiarize Yourself with Your Audience 

Take some time to explore your contact list. Note things like company, gender, end users, and manufacturing needs. 

Identify which people share commonalities and determine whether you can group them together. Use that information to create personas for your most frequent customers. Use quantitative categories like age and employment as well as qualitative data like behaviors and interests.

3. Use Audience Segmentation

Categorize your audience into like groups. Develop and test messages to them based on their common traits.

Whether you use information you’ve deduced yourself or data you’ve collected through surveys or questionnaires, consider segments like:

  • Demographics: Narrow your audience by commonalities such as age, gender, job title, and medical field.
  • Consumer cycle: People have different needs based on where they are in their journey with your business. Current customers might like emails about updates to your shipping policies while new customers would rather hear about introductory offers. 
  • Prior campaign history: Determine how people responded to previous email marketing campaigns. Look at open rates, engagement, and testing, and use that data to develop effective follow-up emails.

Audience segmentation can help you create tailored email content that your readers will find meaningful. Customize your emails for each segment so you touch on what’s important to them. This will boost engagement and increase conversions.

4. Employ Audience Mirroring 

Email marketing for healthcare is effective in maintaining your existing following as well as attracting prospective customers. 

By gaining a complete understanding of your current audience, you can create segments that mirror those groups. Create content that has been successful with your primary audience and simply use that to target new groups. 

Audience mirroring not only allows you to increase your marketing channels. It also helps you generate like-minded leads with minimal effort.

5. Personalize All Content 

Consider every aspect of your email message, from the subject line to the body text to the images supporting your text. 

Emails are full of opportunities for personalization. Use readers’ first names in subject lines or to begin the body text. Avoid stock images and instead, incorporate images of the readers’ location. This can increase click-through rates by 29%. 

You can even customize the From field in your campaign. All these details provide a tailored message that resonates with readers and makes them feel valued.

Develop Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns with Share Moving Media

For the healthcare industry, email personalization is key to reaching the right audience. Leave email marketing to a full-service media company like Share Moving Media so you can focus on running your business. 

Share Moving Media develops and distributes compelling, quality content that prospects want to read. Let us help you raise your market share in the healthcare industry with an email marketing campaign that gains new followers faster. 

Contact Share Moving Media today for help with your next email marketing campaign.