Medical digital marketing has completely transformed how the industry approaches its buyer’s journey, demonstrating that traditional in-person sales tactics, such as visiting hospitals or attending trade shows, are no longer the sole methods of engaging with your target audience.
While traditional marketing and sales will always be prevalent in the medical device sector, with 44% of millennials preferring not to engage with a sales professional during their buying process, digital marketing has become increasingly important.
In today’s marketing landscape, audiences seek meaningful connections with brands, which can be most effectively cultivated through content marketing strategies specifically targeted towards healthcare professionals and decision-makers.
That is why we've put together this comprehensive guide to medical device digital marketing, to help you create tailored campaigns for the healthcare industry. We'll explore best practices for creating impactful websites, leveraging social media marketing to increase brand awareness, using paid ads to boost your SEO, and utilising email marketing.
How can websites enhance your digital healthcare marketing strategy?
Websites should be the central hub of your medical digital marketing efforts—the primary touchpoint that all your other marketing channels should direct your audience towards. On this platform, you should host all your content, from product information and articles to blogs, medical videos, and more.
A website is an ideal host for the majority of your marketing content because it’s a dynamic platform that can provide your audience with all the necessary resources to help them take the final step in their journey—reaching out to you or making a purchase. Its multifunctional content-hosting abilities allow you to organise all your content marketing in one place, educating your audience and giving them a cohesive and positive experience.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the practice of improving your website’s rankings on search engines through selective content creation and technical support. While it might seem like a challenging process if you don’t have a background in websites or computing, optimising your website is essential.
Here are three best practices to help you optimise your website and achieve top rankings on search engines:
Keyword research: Use a variation of selective and high-ranking keywords on your pages to tell search engines what your content is about. The more keywords you use, the more relevant your page will appear to search engines. However, be careful not to overdo it, as search engines will penalise you for keyword stuffing (placing keywords where they don’t belong).
Adding multimedia content: Incorporating different media formats, such as images, videos, audio recordings, and external and internal links, will encourage search engines to share your content with a broader audience, benefiting your SEO.
Technical SEO: Technical SEO involves ensuring that everything behind the scenes of your website is working as it should. This includes checking that all your links are functioning correctly and that you’ve added alt text to all your images.
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How can social media boost your medical digital marketing?
Social media marketing is a powerful tool for expanding your digital presence and supporting your overall marketing strategy. It is particularly useful for increasing brand awareness, connecting with your audience, and driving traffic to your website.
In operating rooms, medical device sales professionals with a personable and relatable demeanour tend to excel. This human touch is equally essential in the digital realm. Despite fewer in-person interactions, your brand’s authenticity should shine through. Social media marketing not only offers a platform to showcase your medical devices but, more importantly, enables you to convey your brand’s values and ethos, explaining why engaging with your healthcare brand is meaningful.
What are the best practices for medical social media marketing?
Target your audience: Identifying and reaching your audience on social media is crucial. Without this focus, your efforts might feel like shouting into an empty room. There are many ways to find your audience, such as selecting the right social media platforms or using hashtags. If you need help targeting your audience, check out our social media guide.
Add variety to your content: Varying your content topics or formats will help engage your social media audience more effectively. Videos, animations, and graphics contribute to your online persona, showcasing to healthcare professionals and patients that you’re a dynamic organisation that creates exciting content.
Consistency: Maintaining consistency on social media is one of the most important rules when conducting a social media campaign. It’s estimated that your audience needs to interact with your brand 15-25 times before they take action. If you keep changing your brand’s message or appearance, you reset that counter back to one.
How can paid ads benefit healthcare providers in their medical marketing?
Paid ads are often praised as the fast-acting component of digital marketing for medical devices, offering immediate visibility and measurable results upon activation.
These advertisements typically fall into two categories: search ads on search engines and display ads across social media and various websites.
These ads are triggered by specific keywords associated with digital marketing to physicians or by aligning with certain demographic profiles. Companies participate in a bidding process for these keywords or demographics, opting to pay per click or per impression, depending on their strategy. Ad platforms are designed to efficiently utilise budgets to achieve the best possible return on investment.
While paid ads are an effective means of broadening your reach and swiftly driving traffic to your website, the key to their success lies in careful optimisation. This ensures that every pound spent on medical device marketing is an investment towards achieving your brand’s marketing objectives.
Email marketing in the healthcare industry
Email marketing, renowned for delivering one of the highest returns on investment, is particularly potent in digital marketing for medical devices. It involves sending curated content to a list of subscribers, ranging from special offers and newsletters to company news and event invitations. By this point, the potential customer is already aware of your brand, and the goal is to nurture this relationship until they are ready to make a purchase.
What makes email marketing so effective is its ability to reach an audience that has already shown interest in your offerings, providing continual value with minimal associated costs, aside from the expense of an email service provider.
However, challenges such as compliance with GDPR regulations and managing email open rates must be navigated. To address these effectively, it’s essential to continually assess and refine your email marketing strategies. Our comprehensive guide on digital marketing to physicians includes resources to assist you in executing successful email campaigns, complete with an overview of prominent email service providers and their capabilities.
How does this all fit together into one digital marketing campaign?
Medical digital marketing isn’t just about casting a wide net—it’s about weaving a network of targeted campaigns that guide your audience precisely where you want them. Imagine it as a GPS system, with all roads leading to your contact form, and each turn bringing your audience a step closer to conversion.
The beauty of digital marketing lies in how different strategies support each other. For example, the content on your website isn’t just there to climb the SEO ladder; it’s a launchpad for your social media and email campaigns. And those tweets and newsletters? They’re not just friendly updates—they’re signposts pointing back to your website, where the magic happens and browsing turns into action.
Once visitors land on your site, you’ve got the opportunity to bring them back for more. Perhaps with a free guide they can download in exchange for an email, adding them to your mailing list. From there, you’re not just another company—you’re the one that keeps showing up with something valuable. That’s how separate platforms work in harmony, hitting all the right notes in your marketing symphony.
Ensuring that every aspect of your digital marketing is connected is key to a successful medical campaign. Every interaction must have a purpose and a corresponding action, every message must encourage your audience to take the next step. Without a call to action (CTA), your healthcare audience may be lost and unsure of where to go next.
Where will healthcare marketing take you next?
We hope this guide has given you a better understanding of the medical industry and what you can do to enhance your digital marketing campaigns. As long as you remain specific in your marketing efforts and consistently connect each campaign or message, you have nothing to worry about.
If this has raised more questions than it has answered, our specialists are here to help. As a medical device and healthcare digital marketing agency, we understand the industry better than anyone else, so book a 30-minute call with us to find out more.