MedTech Marketing: Push vs. Pull

MedTech Marketing: Push vs. Pull

Trying to find better ways to inspire engagement with your brand?

Remember this simple fact: no one wants to be told what to do.

In other words, your target audience does not want to be pushed towards contacting you — they want to be pulled. The most effective marketing strategies in the healthcare industry are the ones that make such a strong case for your brand that physicians and clinical decision-makers can’t help but learn more or schedule a demo.

A good way to understand this is to put yourself in the shoes of the provider. They care immensely about personal relationships, as these drive the business necessary to improve patient care and grow revenue. So, if you’re pushing content to your audience in an impersonal and not entirely relevant way, they’ll reject what you have to offer.

Formula for Pulling in Leads

The first step is characterizing your value propositions, possible objections, and the sales process. Be aware of how each element can and will affect provider interest. Identify your ideal customers so you know exactly who to target and how to address their specific needs.

The next step is building assets that take these factors into account. Capitalize on the overlap between provider pain points and your value propositions — this is your best opportunity to generate and convert leads. Decision-makers want to know exactly how your technology will improve their practices. A better practice means higher patient satisfaction, which ultimately leads to greater success for the provider. This is part of the “pull” mentality — presenting interesting and engaging content that doesn’t force their hand. Prospects will spend more time learning about your brand after seeing assets that speak directly to their interests.

The third step is surrounding your audience with content on all relevant social media platforms and online channels. Reach providers in both professional and personal settings — the desire to improve their practices will be the same at home as in the hospital, office, or lab. Tie all social media platforms together so activity on one affects what they see on another, creating a hyper-personalized experience. This interactive digital conversation raises the chances of your prospects accepting calls-to-action.

The final step is following up when your audience engages. This step hinges on the ability to track which assets inspired each prospect to further interact with your company. Monitoring this information lets you see where each provider is in the buying process so you can tailor your assets to meet them where they are. Prospects who engage have clearly liked what they’ve seen so far, so the job of your sales team is to finish strong and convert that interest into a sale.

Set Your Sales Team Up for Success

Center your digital marketing strategies around pulling in leads, but focus your sales efforts on pushing those leads to a sale. After your marketing team qualifies leads and fills the pipeline with strong prospects, your sales reps can take charge and hone in on converting leads to customers.

Empower your sales team by sharing which value propositions (and their corresponding pain points) motivated each prospective client to reach out. When sales reps can dial in on what each provider specifically cares about, their conversations are much more fruitful. Equipping your reps with this information means greater success moving prospects through the sales funnel.

Creating a personal and relevant buying experience lets your audience know that you care about their needs and want to help them succeed.

Pull in qualified leads who are ready to buy. Jairus can help you implement “pull” tactics to attract warm leads primed for productive sales conversations.

Life Science Marketing: Harnessing the Power of Social Media Platforms

Life Science Marketing: Harnessing the Power of Social Media Platforms

Are your healthcare executive prospects now working from home? Are your target accounts denying access to non-patients? It’s a tough place to be.

Thankfully, social media and an omni-channel marketing approach can help with that.

Digital marketing centers around understanding where your customers are and putting your message in front of them — doctors and life science decision-makers use social media just as much as everyone else. These platforms provide valuable opportunities to surround them with your content, regardless of whether your firm sells hip implants, revenue cycle solutions, clinical trial management software, or any other offering.

Clinicians are constantly looking for opportunities to improve their practices, but they are busy during the day….and thus unavailable to take an introductory sales call. That said, they are likely to engage when you reach them in their downtime — when they actually have time to study your content.

There are a number of social media platforms. How do you know which one to choose?
The answer: all of them.

Social media marketing isn’t about choosing one platform over another; use each to put content everywhere your prospects are looking. At Jairus, we primarily use four social channels to catch the eye of decision-makers:

‍Facebook
One of the most popular social media sites, Facebook is a leader in medical and life science marketing. Take advantage of the time your audience spends scrolling here in their downtime. With wide-reaching capabilities, Facebook boosts ad views, content downloads, traffic to landing pages, and more. Jairus has had major success using Facebook for the medical side of our marketing outreach efforts, reaching doctors at home, in the office, or between patients. Facebook is often the most effective paid tool for lead generation in healthcare.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn was built for networking — it’s much easier to go “viral” here than on Facebook. Gain traction with an organic following that is both effective and cost-free, leaving your marketing budget intact for very targeted campaigns. Jairus uses LinkedIn for the business side of life science marketing, as decision-makers look here for innovations to improve their labs or practices.

Twitter‍
Use Twitter for brand awareness and thought leadership, circulating content that promotes familiarity with your brand as an expert and leader in your field. Focus your outreach efforts less on lead conversion and more on informative content. Twitter can effectively capture the attention of the decision-makers who will advocate for the adoption of your technology. You want to be right there, waiting for them, with strong assets that appeal to their pain points and prove how you can solve them.

Youtube‍
We all know YouTube is the place to go for videos. You name it, Youtube has a video for it — your audience knows this, too. Upload longer video pieces, 3 to 5 minutes, that are informative and engaging. Examples include product demos and client testimonials. Integrate your videos into ads or landing pages so your audience can learn more without any extra effort. If prospects are not ready to schedule a demo, YouTube provides a strategic alternative that allows you to showcase the same content that builds toward engagement.

With the right content on the right platforms, you can effectively broadcast your brand to your audience right at home. They can see exactly what you have to offer with no extra steps or face-to-face interaction. If your prospects aren’t busy in the lab or distracted by patients, they’re more likely to dive into your content to evaluate if you’re a good fit. Don’t let the recent changes in the industry keep you from valuable sales opportunities — make the move to digital with social media marketing.

Reach decision-makers like never before. Jairus crafts personalized outreach strategies to envelope your prospects with relevant content where and when they want to see it.

Three Characteristics of Successful MedTech Companies

Three Characteristics of Successful MedTech Companies

Over the past two years, my company, Jairus Marketing, has worked with dozens of medical device, healthcare IT, and medical service companies in this new era of business. There are three things that separate the companies that are succeeding from those that are struggling. These three characteristics will help your MedTech company take flight and keep it soaring.

1. Mindset

Companies that are waiting for things to go back to how they were are faring substantially worse than those that have embraced this new environment as something to explore and thrive in. We are in a period of testing and learning – so much has changed, and the winners are those who are trying to build relationships through new channels, educate prospects in new ways, and deepen penetration in existing accounts with new approaches.

2. Metrics

There are several critical metrics companies should measure to understand the health of the pipeline. While the specifics may vary slightly, there are a few that are universal:

Share of Wallet

How much of a current account’s business is being captured by the company?

Lead to Customer Efficiency

This is a simple measure but an extremely valuable insight into the effectiveness of the company’s sales and marketing engine. To calculate this, divide the number of new customers by the number of leads generated over a set period of time. It is a lagging indicator since the sales cycle takes time, but it is extremely valuable to understand the investment made into the front end of the business. A leadership team can look at this metric by salesperson to understand differences in selling skills or by product line to determine which are most ripe for growth. They can also look at this as a measure of marketing efficacy by channel – which efforts develop into customers versus just wasting money. The insights are endless.

Length of Sales Cycle (by Step)

I find that most companies have a vague sense of their sales cycle but are frequently wrong about how long each step takes to complete. By tracking new opportunities across the various steps of the sales process, bottlenecks and gaps become very clear, very quickly.

Cost per Lead

This is a commonly measured metric and a good one as it relates to marketing investment. The actual number isn’t a full enough story, though. To use this metric, it’s critical to view it in the context of close rate. To illustrate the point, if the lifetime value of a new customer is $100,000 and 10% of leads become customers, a cost per lead of $150 versus $200 is irrelevant. Instead, the company should invest as much as they can into generating new leads, even if the cost per lead doubles or triples.

3. Marketing

Historically, the only person with insight into prospect engagement was the sales professional. Marketing’s job was to make brochures for the sales team. As we’ve been forced online, we can now leverage tools to see what a prospect is doing over time without having to rely on manual reporting. Companies who see an investment in marketing (most notably, digital) as worthwhile are seeing substantial ROI from those investments. To make marketing work, it’s important to target correctly with a value proposition that the prospect cares about. Additionally, it’s critical to store information on prospect engagement in the CRM or a marketing automation system. This sets the company up for long-term growth with its prospects.

Over the next five years, we are going to see continued upheaval in the industry. By aligning to these three factors, you can prepare yourself and your organization to win.

Medical Device Success podcast: Innovating physician marketing

Medical Device Success podcast: Innovating physician marketing

In today’s crowded media marketplace, there are hundreds of options for placing your marketing budget, and it can be challenging to sort through the clutter to identify the best channels for your specific target audience.

It’s widely recognized that social and digital platforms offer great ROI with effective targeting strategies and the ability to pinpoint success with robust metrics. But do those opportunities translate to successful B2B outreach, especially for niche audiences such as physicians? In today’s post-pandemic world, the answer to that question – how to effectively reach medical providers – has become more critical than ever.

Scott Alexander, CEO of iVelocity Marketing and Jairus Physician Micro-Marketing, recently shared insights into that question and others related to targeting physicians on the Medical Device Success podcast.

Listen now: https://5pvit.r.a.d.sendibm1.com/mk/cl/f/pJu7oNXmkOFsr_sSZESKbqxQ_A_gTRcyWDXrhslC_cA5GXdcH0wjQTLzc-u04AYb9OcPyI15ESL3lW4uQ9YRn_6wO2ZyhGNPii8WOAwKqZbEPj7F43No61wngTRojAJv74ml3SwKiFngVOIudnd7ZsX-KpcjpGqojibJ

Moneyball For Your Dental Practice

Moneyball For Your Dental Practice

Day 2 / ROF Schedule Rates:
How many of your consults book to come back to hear the treatment plan? This is the best stat available to determine the effectiveness of the consult process for the office. Patients are never more motivated to come in for a Report of Findings than at the end of their initial consult. The office should be targeting an ROF Schedule Rate between 75% and 90% within 3 business days of the consult, exam, and X-rays.

Day 2 / ROF Show Rates:
How many of the patients that come in for an initial consult/diagnostics work-up return to hear about the care plan? This is a clear indicator of the emotional connection and urgency built in the initial consult. North of 75% is good. Less than 50% suggests there are opportunities in the initial consult to build more emotional buy-in to the treatment being discussed and the fact that the office is the right provider. We also have stats that prove that when a spouse is booked to come to the Day 2 Report of Findings, more people actually close on care.

Close Rate:
How many of your Report of Findings (ROF) / Treatment Plans end up with a patient moving forward with care? The key here is to count every opportunity, not just the “qualified” ones – there is a natural tendency to want to pad the stats when it comes to close rates and to exclude ROFs from the stats because there was something “wrong” with the patient (“They didn’t have any money.”, “They were just a tire kicker.” etc.). Fight that urge. There are financial options for nearly every person who is motivated enough to get the care being offered and very few people will go through multiple steps of the care planning process because they have nothing better to do. If you present a care plan, include it in your statistics.

I’ve sold and been around sales for all of my career and when I hear that an office closes 95% of the treatment plans they present, I don’t think, “Great job!”. No, I think that office is either being too conservative in who they are presenting to or isn’t being honest with their stats. If an office is closing on more than 75% of the treatment plans presented, it needs to get more prospective patients through the funnel and take more shots on goal.

On the other side, a close rate under 50% usually points to an opportunity to strengthen the presenter’s sales/closing technique. Our sales coach, Lisa Berthelsen, is available to help with that, we offer monthly group sales technique conference calls, the ResourceHub has dozens of tools to help, and there are countless books that can help with the topic.