Engage Physicians As Consumers To Expand Your Sales Base

With special thanks to Anthony Luttenberger of DMD who kindly shares the following blog post. DMD will be speaking at the forthcoming TED-style 3rd MedDev eMarketing Summit WEST on May 15-16 2018 in San Diego

 

The 2017 State of Engagement Report, released last year, speaks about the reality of the “Engagement Economy”—the evolving era where everyone and everything is connected. It’s an environment that is opportune for medical device marketers to interact with health systems and physicians, but it also presents challenges.

Physicians are consumers too and just like B2C customers, they should feel wanted, understood, and connected to their brand.

Truly knowing what your potential customers’ desire allows you to create relevant email messaging and website content, build solid relationships, foster brand loyalty, and ultimately expand your sales base.

The report revealed two important insights:

1. Regardless of consumer type, email and websites are the most-used channels consumers use to initiate engagement with brands and vendors.
2. Personalizing content is an approach marketers believe will have the greatest impact on customer engagement.

These factors combined present an opportunity to build increasingly vital relationships with physicians.

Know Your Audience

Before you can personalize content, you must know your audience.

With audience identity management technology installed on your website, you can capture important details about physicians such as NPI number, medical speciality, practice location and hospital/health system affiliation. This technology tags website visitors and reports on their browsing behaviour as they move throughout your site. It can even capture the categories of websites and the types of content they visit across more than 300 medical websites.

You can then use that data to refine your target audience, augment your existing physician email list, and develop meaningful content that resonates with existing and potential physician customers.

 

Meeting Physicians’ Needs

Here’s an example of how an audience identity management platform can be advantageous:

An email you sent out to your base of endocrinologists about a newly released model of a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) has resulted in an uptick in the number of physicians researching the monitor’s smartphone capabilities. Keep in mind, medical device technology is rapidly evolving. While manufacturers have their fingers on the pulse of advanced capabilities, physicians might be lagging in understanding function. Rather than simply touting that your brand has the smartphone capacity, you can proactively reach out to those inquisitive physicians via email with detailed instructions and schematics. You can also provide a video tutorial on your website to provide guidance.

Dietitians are heavily involved in diabetes care, so if you assess non-physician visitors as such, they may require a unique type of messaging.

Remember, you can also follow physicians on their digital journey as they peruse other brands’ sites. If your brand offers perks—such as unique features or cost benefits over competitors—you can use that as an added value in future communications.

By understanding the specific needs of individual consumers, you can deliver the type of meaningful content from which physicians and other customers can find value in your brand, make informed decisions, and be primed to move through the sales funnel with ease.

DMD will be presenting at this years 3rd MedDev eMarketing Summit WEST May 15-16 2018 at the Rancho Bernardo Inn – San Diego. If you are a medical device professional interested in learning how to implement new marketing approaches for you and your team, consider joining us in May. If you are interested in viewing the full program, please download our brochure here.

**Please note the current $1895 rate to attend changes to $2095 on Friday April 6th