Do you want to spend the next 12 months meeting with people who won’t buy from you? No? Keep reading.
B2B healthcare demand generation is a difficult mission.
Healthcare companies are immune to advertising or aggressive marketing techniques. Health professionals are busy, and accessing them is a challenge. Lead generation in B2B healthcare is expensive. Just one healthcare lead costs $162.
Stop wasting your money, and learn what works to generate demand in the healthcare sector.
1) Are You Prepared to Generate Healthcare Leads?
Are you an expert in your prospects’ lives? Do you know the problems that keep them awake at night? Without buyer personas, you don’t.
B2B lead generation is a marathon. It takes between 12–18 months to move a lead through your sales pipeline hoping the journey will lead to a sale.
Don’t you and your Marketing team want to speed up this process?
Create buyer personas. A buyer persona is the model of a decision maker or user of the product you’re trying to sell. Your goal is to understand your prospects and discover what makes them buy.
To sell products to Procurement Tom, Chief Medical Officer Sally, and other healthcare professionals with their private worlds, you must dive into persuading them to buy from your company.
Why do you need buyer personas?
- To create thought-provoking content that captivates your target audience.
- To enter your prospects’ lives by speaking their language.
- To find your ideal customers on social media.
- To convert leads by tackling problems they care about.
- To create Public Relations campaigns that target the correct journalists and media outlets.
- Your Sales team doesn’t have time to waste with unqualified prospects. A quality lead comes from adequate targeting.
Buyer personas are the foundation of your demand generation strategy. You need them as a compass to navigate B2B healthcare marketing over the newest lead generation tactic or trendy social network.
Without buyer personas, you’re a ship without a destination, and your campaign is betting on hope. Hope is not a recommendable marketing strategy to increase sales or generate brand awareness.
2) Is Your Website Costing You Money?
YDigital marketing has come a long way.Your organization’s website is a lead-generation asset, not a digital brochure. It’s an essential resource for announcing your thought leadership in the healthcare industry.
Healthcare marketing is about trust. Does your website speak with authority to a potential customer? Is your content relevant to an influential decision maker?
Your sales funnel will pay the consequences for a mediocre website.
Healthcare providers won’t risk their patients’ lives doing business with a company that doesn’t pay attention to detail.
That means content marketing is a necessity, and your website is the heart of your content strategy. Your website is how you present yourself to the world.
Dress up for the occasion.
3) Stop Wasting Your Time
B2B demand generation can be frustrating. You spend months nurturing a prospect, and nothing happens. It feels like you’re going backward.
What’s going on? First, before finding a healthcare buyer, you must kiss many frogs. Second, you’re wasting your time with unqualified prospects.
How can you increase your sales productivity? You pursue a qualified lead by learning the art of saying no.
Just Say No
Disqualify prospects who aren’t a good fit for your product. Ask yourself these questions:
- Does your product solve a problem in its operation?
- Can they afford your product?
- Do they have a budget this year?
- Who makes buying decisions?
- Who benefits from using your product?
- Does your product make someone’s job easier?
- Whom do you approach first?
Establish a disqualifying process. Without one, prepare yourself for countless meetings and no sales commissions.
Healthcare lead generation is about saying no to most of the market to focus on your ideal prospects.
4) The End of Research Anxiety
Picture this: You spend six hours researching a B2B healthcare prospect. At 5 p.m., you feel like you haven’t learned anything. Sound familiar?
Research is essential, but it’s easy to overcomplicate things and spend days googling, suffering, and not selling!
Qualify a prospect account; if they’re a good fit, take action! Decide whom you’ll approach first and find their contact information.
The Email That Wasn’t There
You don’t need a Ph.D. in archeology to find an email address.
There are dozens of B2B lead generation services, and no one is 100% accurate. Find the best one for your business.
Try different providers until you find one with the most relevant information on leads you want to target.
Research is essential, but it can be an excuse to stay in your comfort zone. Don’t let inaction steal your sales commissions.
5) The Person You’re Calling No Longer Works for Us
The chief medical officer who advocated for your product left the company. You feel defeated—time to convince a new executive of the benefits of your product.
B2B healthcare is a dynamic industry in constant evolution. Keep an eye out for these changes:
- Mergers and acquisitions.
- Administrative changes.
- Budget cuts or extensions.
- Movements of decision makers.
- Remodeling of customer facilities.
Healthcare marketers are members of an innovative sector. Change is part of the job. What matters is to be adaptable and to build a lead nurturing program that meets your market’s needs.
6) Love Blinds You
B2B marketers fall in love with their products.
In your mind, your product blows away the competition, and you want to shout it from the rooftops.
Healthcare executives don’t care about love. Decision makers are looking for ways to save money.
There’s no way around it; you’ve got to face reality to succeed. This doesn’t mean you should sell a cheap product or offer massive discounts.
Thinking like a Healthcare Executive
Saving money in B2B healthcare means treating more patients, simplifying hospital workflows, and providing the highest level of customer service.
If your product can help healthcare organizations accomplish these goals, let them know.
Statistics about the economy don’t persuade health care executives. They care about their companies. Can you help them cut costs? Will your product improve its customer’s experience?
Show your prospects that buying from you is the best business decision for their company.
Your Turn to Generate Healthcare Leads
Generating demand in the B2B healthcare sector is a challenge. Traditional marketing techniques don’t work.
What works is being passionate about understanding your prospects’ lives to help them save time and money or deliver an outstanding customer experience.
B2B healthcare demand generation is not about your product; it’s about announcing that your company is the solution your prospects’ businesses need to succeed.
If you want to create content that addresses your customers’ headaches, please contact me.
