Everyone loves a good secret, and B2B healthcare marketing isn’t an exception.
We pursue secrets that simplify our lives, especially as B2B marketing is not as simple as it sounds.
The healthcare industry touches every sphere of life, which creates a complication in every marketing effort, as there’re multiple target audiences and interests.
As a healthcare marketer, you can spend weeks crafting a public relations or content marketing campaign only to realize it doesn’t work as intended.
Sometimes, even the smallest of mistakes can change the whole perception of your marketing message. Healthcare data is abundant, but its interpretation isn’t straightforward.
B2B healthcare marketing involves working with stringent regulations, laws, and an extremely critical target audience. Sales are important for every healthcare organization, but potential customers are not everyday buyers.
Healthcare professionals expect high-quality content with scientific accuracy.
Let’s dive into some B2B healthcare marketing secrets to avoid unnecessary trouble.
Not Identifying Your Audience
The worst mistake you can make in healthcare marketing is to assume you know whom you’re marketing to. You need to conduct deep research and be 100% sure about who will be the recipients of your marketing efforts. A buyer persona is a critical ally that we tend to leave aside from our B2B marketing strategy.
As a B2B marketer, I love crafting an innovative brand strategy or email marketing campaign, but growing a healthcare brand is much different than growing a consumer company.
As a healthcare provider, you deal with many restrictions that other industries don’t face.
B2B healthcare marketing is highly regulated because healthcare professionals expect up-to-date and completely accurate information.
Useful Principle
Healthcare marketing needs to educate first while persuading, making it highly challenging. To effectively target your audience, you must get to know your audience and find out what matters to them.
Not Using Data To Inform Your Healthcare Marketing
B2B healthcare marketing relies heavily on facts, so there’s no room for guesswork.
Even heartwarming stories must be verified, as you can get in trouble for making things up.
Using data to help guide your healthcare marketing strategy will allow you to provide relevant information that your audience wants and needs.
Data can help you pinpoint the best channels for you to market on, create highly engaging content, and develop effective campaigns.
Data is the backbone of every successful healthcare marketing strategy.
Not Using The Right Social Media For Healthcare Marketing
Social media can be one of the most effective channels for B2B healthcare marketing, but this channel doesn’t work as well for some companies.
You can’t just copy-paste a marketing campaign you read about and expect it to work for you.
Learn to adapt to be in the places your audience hangs out.
B2B healthcare marketing needs to be highly nuanced because healthcare professionals use social media for many purposes. And sometimes, they don’t like to be pitched when they’re just scrolling for entertainment.
Be choosy about the social media you focus on. Social media influences decision-making, so your content on social media should be relevant and targeted.
Not Using The Right Content For Healthcare Marketing
Content is the backbone of B2B healthcare marketing. However, you can’t just produce content and expect it to be effective. Without high-quality content, your marketing efforts will fail.
You need to create engaging content that your audience wants. Your content should be compelling and target specific pain points or needs relevant and vital to your audience.
You can’t, or at least you shouldn’t force your content on your community. You need to tailor your expertise to the lives of the people you serve.
Healthcare is all about serving people, and your content is an extension of this high vocation.
Not Testing Your Healthcare Marketing Ideas
B2B healthcare marketing requires an experimental mindset. When bringing a new healthcare product or service to the market, you try different ways of solving a problem until you find the one that better serves your community.
Healthcare marketing is the same. You experiment with different ideas, channels, and mediums to reach your people. You see what works. Then you do more of it.
Many great healthcare companies don’t see the results they crave from their marketing because they don’t try enough alternatives before giving up.
Who Is Your Buyer?
Reaching out to the right people is crucial to any healthcare marketing campaign.
Why? Because your customers and prospects aren’t always where you’d expect them.
To increase marketing success, it’s critical to understand your buyer.
For example, it’s essential to determine who makes purchases when targeting hospitals. Is it the purchasing department? The hospital’s CEO? The CFO?
Knowing who’s in charge of making buying decisions will allow you to create highly targeted content and talk to the people who have the authority to vouch for your product or service.
Not Using The Right Channels For Healthcare Marketing
Healthcare professionals use a wide variety of channels to engage with content. One channel alone will not help you reach your audience.
B2B healthcare marketing must be multi-channel, and you need to choose the proper channels for your audience.
It is not necessary to be active on every social media that emerges. Still, you must create different types of content because sometimes, only by exploring the alternatives, without prejudices, is that you find the right marketing channel to reach your community.
Marketing Automation Is Not Your Savior
Marketing automation can help you scale a successful B2B healthcare marketing program.
However, some marketers mistake of automating their marketing programs before they’re ready.
Automation is complex, and if you’re not careful, you can do more harm than good.
Before implementing marketing automation into your healthcare marketing program, you need to define your audience, create personas, and segment your email list. It’s essential to verify that you have the right content.
Never automate a process unless you understand the people who will receive your communications and their particular quirks.
Not Relying On The Right B2B Healthcare Marketing Consultant
Working with a B2B healthcare marketing consultant can help you speed up your success.
You don’t need to figure out things for yourself.
You want a B2B healthcare marketing consultant with industry-specific experience who can make your life easier by helping you reach the right people.
If you want more clarity and a fresh perspective on using healthcare marketing to your advantage, please get in touch so you can schedule a discovery session with our team.
