Have you ever thought of introducing webinars into your medical device marketing strategy but don’t know where to start?
Are you struggling to figure out how they would fit in with your other campaigns?
We’re here to talk to you through integrating webinars into your medical device marketing and explain how they can strengthen your digital presence.
We’re going to cover:
- The benefits of hosting webinars
- Integrating webinars with social media
- Integrating webinars into your newsletters and emails
- Integrating webinars onto your website
Why would you integrate webinars into your marketing strategy?
Before jumping in and introducing webinars into your marketing strategy, you’ll need to consider your marketing objectives.
What do you need to achieve and how will webinars help? It may be that they are not a good fit and therefore your marketing budget is best spent somewhere else.
Here are some things to consider:
- Do you want to work more closely with KOLs and benefit from their extensive networks?
- Do you want to help the surgical community expand their knowledge in the specialist and developing areas where your technology or device is used?
- Do you want to promote a product launch or new clinical data?
If yes, webinars could be for you.
There are many areas where webinars can help, but as mentioned above, it’s critical that you’re always aligned to your ultimate objective, which may start with brand awareness but should finish at conversion (getting in contact to set up a trial or to learn more information)
Step 1: Brand awareness and status
Depending on where you are in your commercial journey, webinars can be an excellent way to develop brand awareness, especially if you can add real value to your target audience.
In our experience, this is often achieved by discussing highly relevant topics (e.g., complex surgical challenges, operational gains, new product launches, or new clinical data).
Alongside brand awareness, brand status can also be developed through association with industry KOLs and societies.
Finally, a busy webinar provides an hour-long platform to engage your target audience and start to build a picture of your brand in their minds.
You may not want to talk about your technology or device specifically in a webinar, focusing more on education within your specialist area. As long as the webinar materials are well-branded, this can build trust with your audience—something that has been shown to work time and time again in the medical device field.
A great tip is to send out branded certificates following your webinar. Not only does this reinforce your brand, but if accredited, it can contribute to CPD points, adding more value to your audience.
Step 2: Product launches
Do you have a product launch coming up, or are you releasing new clinical data? If so, webinars could be a great addition to your multichannel launch strategy.
Normally, webinars that are too product-driven have lower attendance. However, if your webinar is clearly positioned as a product launch and promises to provide your audience with interesting and new information, attendance is often significantly better.
Product launches can also be a great way to introduce team members to your audience alongside your KOLs. While your team may not be best placed to discuss the clinical applications of your new device, there is no one better to speak about the features and development of the device.
Step 3: Generating qualified leads
This is probably the most popular benefit of any webinar. If you’ve set up your topic correctly and have the right KOLs speaking, you should have a well targeted audience attending each webinar.
Research has shown that nearly 40% of all webinar attendees develop into leads. What impact could this have on your annual objectives?
With such a high number of potential leads, it’s important that each is nurtured properly. This means collecting the right data from your attendees when they register, so they can be effectively followed up.
This should include their full name, company, job title and contact information.
You could also ask one or two questions about their practice to improve your lead validation process.
Step 4: Establish yourself as a trusted source within your field
Establishing your brand as a trusted source of unbiased information is an excellent way to build value in the eyes of your audience.
Positioning your webinars as a platform for honest and unbiased discussion between experts allows your audience to ask questions, advancing their professional development and solidifying your company as a trusted partner.
Real value can be added to your brand if your audience believes that you not only understand the problems they face but are also there to support them in finding solutions.
A great tip that many companies are already using is to listen to your audience and answer their questions live during webinars. This demonstrates that you’re committed to helping them develop professionally by providing the tools they need to expand their knowledge in areas that matter.
How to integrate webinars into your marketing strategy
It’s great to talk about all the benefits of incorporating webinars into your marketing strategy, but what about the realities of doing it? How do you incorporate webinars into your medical device marketing strategy?
This half of the article will discuss how to practically incorporate webinars into other marketing campaigns that you’re already running, such as:
- Social Media
- Newsletters and emails
- Websites and blogs
Repurposing for social media
Webinars are a fantastic source of content that you can repurpose and distribute across your social media platforms.
Whether it’s breaking down the video into bite-sized clips or pulling out a single quote to build into a static post, there’s a great deal of content you can reuse and share.
Podcasts, videos, quotes, and photos can all be repurposed and transformed for your social media. This is an excellent way to promote yourself and your webinars. By re-posting this content, you can expand your audience and increase attendance at your next event.
As a rule, at Podymos we look to create at least 20 pieces of content from one webinar for social media. Here is an example of the content we will split out:
- 10 sound bites
- 6 video shorts
- 3 quotes
- 1 full version of the video
As each of your posts are not seen by everyone, these will be split up over 1-2 months and imbedded with other content already planned out.
The objective of all this content on social media is to drive people to one of two places. Firstly, the full webinar which could be on your YouTube channel or your website and secondly your website for conversion.
Ideally, you will have a conversion funnel set up on your website so you can guide your visitors to book an evaluation or get in contact for more information. This can, however, take many visits so software like HubSpot can be extremely helpful to understand your buyer’s journey.
If you’re unsure of how to approach social media for your medical device, we explain it all in our complete guide to social media in medical device article.
Newsletters and emails
If you send out newsletters or email campaigns to your subscribers, adding a section about your webinars is good practice.
Whether you add a link to the webinar recording or a sign-up button to join the next webinar, this is great content to be sharing with your subscribers.
This would be in addition to an email sent out to all those who attended your webinar (or couldn’t as they were busy but would like to view it later).
Adding your webinars into newsletter emails will show your audience that there’s more to your brand than just advertising products and that you are looking to have discussions and debates about topics that they are interested in.
You could even update your email banner to raise awareness of your latest webinar series. This is surprisingly effective and fully trackable with UTMs.
Websites and SEO
There are many ways to incorporate webinars into your website.
The best way to encourage user interaction and maximise search engine performance is to have different media types on your site. Search engines such as Google prefer to rank websites that provide the most value to users.
Different types of media open your site up to different users, as everyone absorbs information differently. Incorporating articles, videos, graphics, and photos will draw people to your site and make your information easier to understand.
Video is hugely popular now, which isn’t surprising as it’s so easy to digest. In fact, the human brain processes video 60,000 times faster than text.
Adding webinar videos or bite-sized clips is an excellent way to include relevant content on your website and allow users to consume it on demand.
Transcribing your webinar videos is another great way to share information with users who may prefer reading, whilst also enhancing your SEO. Search engines tend to favour websites that are continually updated with relevant content.
The amount of content that can be created from hosting one webinar can provide you with weeks or even months’ worth of high-quality website posts.
However, if you have all this amazing content on your site, ensure you are optimising it for conversion. Otherwise, you risk increasing your website traffic without converting it into sales.
What is right for you?
If you’re still unsure whether or not to incorporate webinars into your marketing strategy, here are a few takeaways and final thoughts that may help.
Positives
- Webinars should work as part of a multichannel strategy. When done correctly they can generate a significant amount of content and increase traffic across all your channels.
- Webinars can build your brand awareness and status in your audiences’ mind.
- Webinars can deliver very targeted leads.
Negatives
- Webinars take time to organise and can be expensive if you use an agency partner (£2,500 – £5,000 per webinar, plus speaker fees)
- Webinars may not be the best use of marketing spend if you are an earlier stage company as they work best when they are done in a series.