Social selling of Medical Devices is hard but necessary

Social selling of Medical Devices is something we don’t talk enough about because it’s hard. That’s going to change soon. You’re probably aware that John Lynn and I are co-chairing the exciting 2nd iteration of the Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (“HITMC”) in May. What you’re probably not aware of is that we’re expanding the audience and sessions to include non-traditional healthcare IT participants — specifically medical device manufacturers. I believe that the distinction of health IT or digital health marketing vs. that of medical devices is a legacy and artificial separation that is no longer warranted.

Just like other digital health and health IT solutions, marketing medical devices across disparate customers and selling into complex health systems has never been more difficult. Identifying the actual buyers of your med device products and services is a challenge these days because:

• The move from fee to service to outcomes driven has more institutions collaborating for value-based reimbursement, making it more difficult to identify who’s making purchasing decisions in the collaboration.
• Health systems mergers and acquisitions are growing, making it challenge to know both who’s running the procurement process and when decisions will be made.
• Care coordination and patient engagement quality metrics have purchasers scrambling for more connected devices and integrated sales offerings.
• Changing business, technology and regulatory landscape is redefining the roles of end user, influencer, the beneficiary and the buyer personas in the healthcare ecosystem

It’s clear that traditional top down marketing or just trying to sell to the end user will not be effective. Instead, digital marketing techniques must be employed so that med device buyers can find you instead of you having to hunt for them. Join us at the HITMC where you’re going to learn how to:

• Use e-mail, social media, and content marketing to better understand procurement roles that will connect you with actual buyers and influencers.
• Understand how digital marketing and social selling techniques generate demand and leads for your complex clinical enterprise devices.
• Discover partnering approaches that will help increase your device’s value to customers demanding more coordinated and complex care for their patients.
• Leverage digital marketing to validate market demand,  solution hypothesis and business model  throughout your product lifecycle using simple comparative market analysis and direct communications
• Understand approaches to identify and test market to the appropriate personas, enabling customized value propositions for each market channel to get fastest and most effective sales impact
• Learn how you can run many marketing campaigns simultaneously across multiple market channels and personas, then use metrics for real-time campaign modulation, thus achieving higher ROI and business impact.
• Re-organize your branding to build customer loyalty through value added knowledge sharing and ideation that helps solve real customer issues, developing trust and creating strong referral and repeat business