3 Best Practices for Medical Device Marketing in a Digital World
The medical device industry has traditionally relied on face-to-face, sales rep-driven marketing, but as digital has come to the forefront in personal and professional lives, medical device marketers are changing their tactics to be where their customers are and where their customers are is increasingly online and mobile.
If your company is continuing to rely upon face-to-face meetings and print support materials to reach physicians, you’re about as viable as the dinosaurs before “Jurassic World” came along. Here are three best practices to get you out of the Jurassic Era of marketing.
Make Sure Your Websites are Mobile-Optimized
According to Grey Matter Marketing, mobile is more than a channel or strategy. “Mobile is how we behave. It’s how we live, research, document, and communicate.”
And it’s not only physicians who are looking at your sites. Google Think Insights found that hospital administrators and other decision-makers are looking at your sites as well. More than half of hospital administrators go online to research vendors. And buyers use mobile devices to research on the go, with 50% using a mobile phone and 27% a tablet. For those using their phones, 38% read product reviews, 34% request product information, and 30% read peer reviews and testimonials.
And if your website isn’t mobile-optimized now, take the time to do so before potential customers get frustrated and find their way to your competitor’s mobile friendly site.
Make Sure All of Your Content is Mobile Optimized and Easily Found
Whether it’s being accessed by the customer or your sales reps, all of your content should be mobile optimized. Content may include: product or procedure videos, interactive animations or visual aids for face-to-face meetings between reps and doctors, or case studies and other materials in an follow-up e-mail.
All of the hospital administrators and decision makers surveyed by Google watch online videos to see product demonstrations, with 68% comparing products and 63% watching the product perform a procedure. No matter what the content is, to reach the 45% of physicians viewing your content on mobile devices, you can’t ignore this form factor. If you have product demo videos on your website and they are not optimized for mobile viewing, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Though a buyer’s first contact with your company may be through online means, your sales reps are still an important key in your digital marketing strategy.
Make Sure Your Reps Have the Mobile Tools They Need
Sales reps succeed when they have the right tools for selling. With the right tools, a rep does not have to be tied to a laptop, digging through separate portals and servers trying to put together an e-mail and answer a customer’s questions.
Furthermore, in face-to-face meetings, some customers will use their mobile device and online search to fact-check what a sales rep is saying. With the proper tools housing the proper content on their mobile devices, reps can instantly respond to any customer concerns with accurate and compliant content.
By providing your sales reps with mobile optimized content and the tools they need to access and share that content, you’re on your way to a more productive team. When you’re ready to for solutions, we’ll be here.