How Does Health Marketing Work?

Byjames brown

 

Contents            

Health Marketing: How Do Companies Reach Patients, Doctors, Medical Care Centers and Pharmacists

What is health marketing?

Definition:

Healthcare marketing is the marketing of companies in healthcare and consists of sales promotion measures, marketing instruments, and tools used in healthcare. While sales and marketing in healthcare are traditionally clearly separated, digital sales are assigned to healthcare marketing as part of the marketing mix.

Who Does Health Marketing?

Healthcare companies can be broken down into the following categories:

 

  • Pharmaceutical company
  • healthcare service providers
  • Manufacturers of medical devices and software
  • Manufacturer of consumables
  • Manufacturer of surgical and therapy equipment
  • Manufacturers of healthcare infrastructure (hospital equipment, etc.)
  • Health insurance companies
  • Doctors, pharmacies, and medical supply centers

How Do the Target Groups in Healthcare Differ?

The marketing focus represents a significant differentiation between doctors, pharmacies, medical care centers, and other companies. While doctors usually do marketing to gain visibility with potential patients (B2C), many companies, such as pharmaceutical marketing, often deal with it to reach doctors, pharmacies, in a targeted manner (B2B). Doctors, pharmacies, and Health Care Centers essentially play two roles:

  • Doctors, pharmacies, or Health Care Centers are direct customers of the companies (example: billing software for patients of private health insurance companies)
  • Doctors, pharmacies, or Health Care Centers are multipliers or distributors for the products of the respective company (example: prescription drugs that the doctor prescribes to the patient)

How do doctors decide?

  • Why is the exchange with sales staff losing relevance?
  • What are currently relevant interests and information for doctors?
  • Decision-making in practices and clinics!
  • Exclusive study results including case study and action plan for companies

Impact Of Covid-19 On Healthcare Marketing

Traditionally, marketing at companies in the healthcare sector usually plays a sales-supporting role. It is often the task of marketing departments to organize congresses and events, create graphic sales materials, or design the product presentation and the company website. The distribution itself runs primarily via direct sales. Sales representatives maintain direct contact with the respective doctor, pharmacist, and health care centers and present the on-site products or services.

Covid-19 makes it increasingly difficult for the field staff to reach doctors, pharmacists, or Health Care Centers in their practices. Especially since Covid-19, the influence of digital sales approaches in Germany has increased rapidly. Navicosoft is the Best Healthcare Marketing Agency in Melburne, Australia.

While before Covid-19, 64% of appointments with doctors were conducted in person, since Covid-19, 65% of appointments are digital. 1 Also, in the next 12 to 18 months, 74% of doctors anticipate fewer personal appointments than in the pre-Covid period.

 

Added to this is the increasing relevance of digital media in everyday practice.

 

  • 49% of doctors researched information online.
  • 72% of doctors used their smartphone/tablet in their everyday work.
  • The exchange and networking with colleagues are already increasingly taking place online for 32% of the doctors.

With increasing digitization in everyday practice at the customer or multiplier, the relevance of digital formats and channels also increases. It is how the marketing department will become a digital sales team in 2022.

 

Which digital sales measures can be used to reach patients, doctors, pharmacies, and Health Care Centers?

Outbound marketing efforts have long dominated the healthcare market, such as flyers, postal mailings, and articles or advertisements in professional journals. In 2022, however, inbound marketing was more important than ever. 89% of patients actively research health-related topics before seeing a doctor. This research takes place primarily on the Internet using the Google search engine. At 49%, most doctors are already actively researching relevant topics on the Internet.  In the context of inbound marketing, the content marketing approach deals with attracting potential customers or multipliers with relevant and needs-oriented content.

“Anyone who is perceived as a problem solver wins the trust of their customers!”

Content Marketing in Healthcare

Content marketing is intended to attract potential customers or multipliers with relevant content. The aim is to win new customers, improve the brand image, increase awareness of a brand or a product and establish your own company as an expert and problem solver.

In contrast to classic advertising, no advertising message is communicated in content marketing, but valuable content is created for the respective target group. For example, patients with a chronic illness can benefit from information on dealing with their illness mentally. Applying the same example to doctors, for example, in pharmaceutical content marketing, a targeted article on the mental needs of certain patients can add value to the doctor’s treatment approach.

While Digital Healthcare Marketing Agency or companies like to talk about medical topics, it is often forgotten that doctors, for example, have needs that go beyond medicine. Even medically less relevant topics such as practice management can play a major role for the respective doctor and thus offer great added value. The credibility of content created plays a crucial role, especially in healthcare. For example, medical information must be sufficiently supported by study results and experts to be credible and therefore relevant.

Three steps to successful content marketing

1) Identify Relevant Topics

The first step in healthcare content marketing is identifying relevant topics for the respective target group. Here it is usually not enough to look through the first ten search results from Google or read what the medical journal currently considers relevant. To develop relevant topics and not just repeat known knowledge, in-depth web research, quantitative and qualitative evaluation of social media (doctors =, e.g., DocCheck, Coliquio, LinkedIn, Xing; patients = Facebook, health portals) and direct exchange with the respective target group is necessary.

2) Create Well-Researched Content

When creating and preparing the content, the focus is clearly on the added value for the respective target group. The more specifically a problem is tackled, the better the response from the target group and the resulting perception as a problem solver and expert. An appealing graphic elaboration of the content and a writing style that suits the topic and the target group are required.

3) Playout Content to The Respective Target Group

To play out the content to the respective target group, the following marketing instruments are primarily used in the healthcare sector.

  • Challenges in healthcare sales in 2022
  • Free White Paper:
  • Challenges in healthcare sales

Healthcare Content Hub

For companies in the healthcare sector, a content hub often plays a central role in marketing and digital sales.

 

It provides content for patients, doctors, or even your own sales staff and ensures that the digital interactions can be measured and evaluated.

While it is impossible to measure how many addressees have read a brochure sent by post for content in the Content Hub, it can be precisely traced how many potential customers or multipliers read the content and interact with it and where it is coming from. In this way, content can be continuously evaluated and further adapted to the target group’s needs.

Marketing Function:

  • Content hosting and management
  • Consolidation of data flows
  • Tracking and evaluation of engagement

Healthcare SEO

SEO, i.e., search engine optimization, which deals almost exclusively with optimizing your content for the Google search engine, is a central marketing tool, especially for communication with patients. A large part of the sick population is actively looking for symptoms, therapies, and treatment approaches. Depending on the product or service, SEO can also play a pivotal role for businesses in generating leads.

Marketing function:

  • Lead generation (primarily patients)
  • Positioning as an expert and problem solver

Social Media in Healthcare

While target groups such as doctors are difficult to separate from end-users through SEO, social media such as LinkedIn offer effective targeted targeting of the desired niche. For example, certain groups of doctors can be specifically addressed and won as leads. Navicosoft is the Best Healthcare Marketing Agency in Melburne, Australia.

 

Marketing function:

  • Lead generation (doctors, pharmacists, Health Care Centers)
  • Positioning as an expert and problem solver

Healthcare Seminars And White Papers

As nice as it is to win leads to the potential target group, it is necessary to collect so-called opt-ins to be able to address the leads. A target customer may only be contacted by email if he has consented to this.

An effective way to gain opt-ins is to provide quality content in downloadable white papers or online events and seminars. The more valuable the content in question appears to the target group, the higher the likelihood that they will leave their email address and agree to be contacted with an opt-in. Continuing education courses that pay into the continuing education account of physicians who are required to undergo further education in the form of CME points create an additional incentive for physicians.

 

Marketing function:

 

  • Opt-in Generation
  • Positioning as an expert and problem solver

Healthcare Email Marketing

Email marketing will remain one of the most relevant marketing tools in 2022. It applies particularly to communication between companies, doctors, pharmacists, and Health Care Centers. A constant exchange of information with potential and existing customers can occur via targeted email campaigns. Your positioning as an expert and problem solver in the market can expand.

Marketing function:

  • lead nurturing
  • constant contact with the target group
  • Positioning as an expert and problem solver

How is the success of digital marketing measures measured?

As a rule, the success of digital marketing measures in the healthcare sector is, of course, measured by the sales generated. However, this is often not directly attributable to marketing measures – this makes it difficult to show tangible results. . Are you looking for the best Digital Marketing Agency in Melbourne, contact Navicosoft.

An easily measurable metric is the number of necessary contacts with a potential customer until the contract is concluded or the prescription is made. This number can be reduced by supplementing the contacts of the sales staff with digital contacts.

Digital contacts can significantly increase contact frequency in the pharmaceutical sector, where sales employees are primarily measured by the number of contacts with relevant multipliers (appointments, discussions, product presentations).

In this way, the frequency of contact with doctors who the sales representative visits once a month (A customers) can be doubled with a relevant monthly newsletter. With B customers, who are visited every six weeks, or C customers, who are only visited every 12 weeks, the digital contacts can easily increase the contact frequency by several hundred percent.

How Can Digital Measures Support Direct Sales?

In addition to increasing the frequency of contact with potential customers or multipliers, the digital sales approach can also directly support direct sales.

For example, content created for digital sales can be used by sales reps to develop new relevant topics of conversation for their contacts. In this way, the respective sales employee can bring in innovative and exciting topics in addition to general product information and thus increase the relevance of the visit.

The digital processing of such content in the form of e-detailings or interactive PDFs supports the sales staff in illustrating and structuring discussions.

Orchestrated Customer Engagement (OCE) – The Future of Healthcare Marketing

Orchestrated customer engagement means addressing customers across all channels in an interest-driven and coordinated manner. Digital and personal contacts are optimally coordinated.

In this way, after a personal appointment with the field service, sales management can provide a doctor with further information on the topics that were particularly interesting during the conversation. On the other hand, the sales staff can receive information in advance of an appointment as to what content a specific doctor has read in the monthly newsletter. In this way, the conversation can be optimally tailored to the individual interests of the doctor.

In constant data exchange, an individual profile is created step by step for each target and existing customer and further refined with each contact.

Tailor-made solutions for small to medium-sized companies in the healthcare sector through to solutions such as IQVIA for medium-sized and large companies provide the basis for evaluating collected data and the central control and distribution of content.

The Biggest Mistake in Digital Communication

The biggest mistake in digital communication in healthcare and B2B marketing, in general, is often losing sight of customer benefits. It is assumed that sales success can only achieve if the offered products are also discussed. However, what is forgotten here is that the foundation of successful sales is always the trust of the customer. Trust in the salesperson, the brand, and the company! If you only spam your customers with advertising, you lose more trust than you gain. Are you looking for the best Digital Marketing Agency in Melbourne, contact Navicosoft.

Expert Comment

“In B2B sales, many companies have understood that digital sales are part of a comprehensive marketing approach. Since Covid-19, we have also seen a clear increase in the relevance of digital sales and marketing measures in the healthcare sector.

Many of our customers notice that they can no longer and do not want to rely exclusively on the field service to reach their customers. Even after Covid, it is becoming apparent that the world of sales will continue to digitalize. Today, 67% of companies in Australia say that digital sales channels are as effective or even more effective than conventional sales approaches.

We expect that a mixture of personal contacts in practices and at congresses and events and remote appointments in combination with digital sales measures will ultimately prevail in the long term.”

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