According to Fortune Business Insights, the global medical devices market was expected to grow from USD 495.46 billion in 2022 to USD 718.91 million in 2029. The demand for medical devices will rise. But sales? Making them will be more complex than ever. Here’s why.

• Medical technologies have advanced in the past few years; competition is greater, and it may be challenging to stand out
• Doctors, healthcare professionals, and patients are doing more research before buying a device
• The sales cycle is long, and the devices are expensive, making it harder to sell a product easily

This is why medical device manufacturers need a fool-proof marketing device strategy to reach their sales targets. And this blog goes into the five pillars of a successful medical device marketing strategyin 2023.

The Five Essentials of a Medical Device Marketing Plan

1. Mapping Out Buyer Personas

Developing marketing tactics geared towards doctors is most appropriate when selling medical equipment. After all, they are in direct contact with patients, have the power to recommend products, and influence buying decisions even at hospitals. But are they the only target group? Absolutely not. Here’s the thing.

• Nurses spend much longer with patients, often developing trusted bonds with them. This puts them in a better place to provide product recommendations.
• Medical assistants routinely use hospital equipment and understand how to evaluate products.
• Hospitals tie up with particular product distributors to service equipment and request new ones, while office managers often oversee the use and maintenance of equipment.

So, if your current marketing approach isn’t targeting all these target groups, you’re missing out on possible conversions. This is why you need to map out your buyer personas before creating a marketing plan.

Ideally, you want your market research to guide you. Who are your most frequent customers? What are their demographics? What are their goals? And what are their most pressing problems? Answering these questions will give you a broad perspective of your target market. Now, you can look for common characteristics to create personas. These are the blueprint of what your potential customers look like.

Now, you can create a marketing plan to target each of these personas.

2. A Stand-Out Value Proposition

Once you’ve identified your target market, you must make sure your product stands out. So, the next step in creating a knock-out marketing strategy for medical devices is to create a compelling value proposition. To be compelling, your value proposition must clearly show three things.

• How your product solves the customer’s problems
• What makes it stand out
• Why your customer should choose your product against the others.

Simultaneously, it should be easy to understand.

For instance, LABOMED, a microscope manufacturer, for instance, has the following value proposition for its medical microscopes.

“LABOMED delivers quality and reliable performance across a diverse set of needs. Microscopes today find use in investigative as well as surgical procedures in Dentistry, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology, and Gynecology. We provide optimum microscopy solutions for all those needs.”

3. Relationship Marketing

Like it or not, buying expensive medical equipment is as much an emotional decision for patients and healthcare professionals and health administrators as a rational one. Sure, they research vigorously and look for substantial evidence. But they also make a purchase decision only when they are convinced the product is a good buy. Relationship marketing can help you make them arrive at this conclusion faster. Here’s how.

Say, you’ve made a successful sale to a hospital chain. Traditional marketing approaches will tell you to focus your sales efforts on new customers. But when you use the relationship marketing approach, you engage with the hospital managers even after the sale. You provide them with relevant resources and maintenance best practices and even offer them regular maintenance checks. This helps you cultivate trust with them.

Now, when they want to place a new order, you are not only on top of their mind but also the first person they contact, given the great after-sales experience.

4. Content Marketing and SEO

Traditional medical marketing approaches like product demos at conferences or cold calling may have been effective previously. But medical professionals today are researching medical equipment providers online.

One way to do this is to lean into content marketing. You can upload informative blog posts that answer frequently asked questions about your product or equip them with valuable information. This will create brand awareness for your product. But that isn’t enough.

Believe it or not, studies have shown that the first organic search result has an average click-through rate of 28.5% on Google. That CTR progressively decreases with every search result. And by the 10th search result, the CTR is just 2.5%. In simple terms, you need to feature on top so that they recognize and buy from you. And You can do it by implementing SEO best practices.

Select keywords according to your audience’s search intent and include a mix of short and long-tailed keywords. Then, use them in your title tags, headings and even your alt-text to rank better.

5. Email Marketing

Now, even implementing the best SEO strategy cannot guarantee you sales. After all, ranking on top requires you to have a fair bit of luck and follow the best SEO practices. But more importantly, rankings change over time. So you need a way to reach out to your prospects that isn’t as intrusive as a cold call but helps you convey your value succinctly. And emails can help you with it.

An email is shorter and easier to digest than a long-form blog post. It is also more personalized, affordable, and has a broader reach. The only catch? You need to have an email list of people who are interested in your niche and willing to consider your product. You can do this easily by creating high-quality gated content for your audience. And then initiating your email drip campaign according to their stage in the sales cycle.

In Conclusion

Medical professionals are among the most demanding audiences to market to, given they don’t waste time, need high-quality content to make purchase decisions, and have long consideration stages before buying. But you can design medical device marketing plans and campaigns tailored to them, depending on their intent, needs and where they frequent, without wasting their time with the above tips. HCM provides vetted email data lists to help jumpstart your email marketing campaigns. These lists are frequently updated and therefore can guarantee you over 75% campaign success. Visit our website to learn more, and click here to book a demo.