medical equipment sales funnel Archives

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!

The healthcare market is enormous – and it’s only going to get bigger. Global healthcare spending is anticipated to increase at a compound annual growth rate of five percent from 2019 to 2023.

Medical suppliers who want to increase their share in an expanding market should act now. The right marketing campaign is the key to success. What’s the “right” campaign? It depends on your target audience.

Suppose you’re a supplier trying to sell medical masks to private physicians’ offices. In that case, your healthcare marketing techniques will be (should be!) different than if you’re a supplier selling diagnostic ultrasound equipment to integrated delivery networks (IDNs).

Buyer personas are integral to guiding your approach. A buyer persona allows you to define your target audience and better understand their buying behaviors, so you can craft your marketing accordingly.

This guide takes you through a simple three-step process to craft buyer personas for healthcare.

Why Buyer Personas Matter

The purpose of a buyer persona is to understand how your customer thinks and acts. With this information, you can better understand the decision-making process that governs what, when, where, and how they buy.

What a Buyer Persona Is

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of who is using your product or service. This imaginary profile covers details like demographics (sex, age, race, income, marital status, educational level), purpose (such as career goals), and motivation.

What a Buyer Persona Isn’t

A buyer persona is not a guess. It’s fact-based, created with detailed market research.

3-Step Checklist to Creating Buyer Personas for Healthcare

The healthcare supply market is exceptionally competitive. A well-crafted buyer persona allows you to stand out with concise, impactful messaging that attracts the buyer’s attention – and keeps it throughout the medical equipment sales funnel.

Here’s how to create buyer personas for healthcare.

1. Conduct Quantitative Analysis

Suppose your product isn’t exclusive to a single market segment (for instance, you target both individual physicians and IDNs). In that case, the first step is to break down your broader market into smaller segments.

Create a list of existing clients and group them according to details like location, contract value, and engagement (as evidenced by the frequency of orders, for instance). With this demographic and revenue information, start looking for trends.

For instance, you might find a correlation between location and an uptick in spending – indicating a gap in the market that you can step in to fill. If a competitor had an area sales rep changeover, it’s a prime opportunity.

2. Complete Qualitative Research

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when crafting buyer personas is ignoring psychographics in favor of demographics. This is where qualitative analysis comes into play. To better understand your target segments, both at the individual and organizational levels, get more intimate.

Reach out to trusted clients to arrange a chat. Healthcare professionals are busy, so keep it short. Emphasize that you’re trying to collect feedback to see how you can better serve them.

During the interview, get a brief description of the business, the individual’s role within the organization, and their main goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Are they looking to cut costs? Have they been tasked with researching new tech? Is efficiency a factor?

Also, refer to your offering, asking what they use it for and, of course, what improvement they’d like to see in your product or service. Remember, retention is half the battle in healthcare sales.

3. Create and Socialize the Persona

You can now create your semi-fictional buyer persona based on the evidence you’ve collected. Say you sell heart stents, for example. A quantitative analysis reveals that private hospitals in the Midwest are your most significant revenue source. Your qualitative research shows that it’s the heads of cardiology departments who are the relevant decision-makers.

So, make your buyer persona the head of cardiology in a hospital setting. Let’s call her Rachel Harding. Dr. Harding will be further along in her career, at least 40 years of age, and highly educated. She must balance providing the best patient care with budget limitations set by higher-ups.

As head of her department, Dr. Harding must stay on top of the latest developments. She does this by reading certain healthcare publications, like Wiley’s Clinical Cardiology, and attending essential conferences, like the American Society of Echocardiography Annual Conference.

Finally, Dr. Harding is busy. She’s overseeing an entire department. Maybe she also has a family at home. Her time is precious. Your healthcare marketing strategy must take this into account.

Now you have an idea of where and how to reach a professional like Dr. Harding best. Thus, the buyer persona makes it easier to sell to your end customer without ever meeting them in person.

Find Out More About Making Buyer Personas Work for You

Share Moving Media helps healthcare suppliers reach diverse buyers through targeted content. Our publications, educational services, and associations cater to distributors, providers, and manufacturers. With our industry knowledge and comprehensive content offering, we help you increase market share.

Sign up for our newsletter for more healthcare marketing tips and tricks. Want to work with us? Then contact us today!

Content Marketing 101 for Healthcare Distributors