Why Medical Device Marketing Teams Underperform in 2021
Medical device marketers face a number of challenges in today’s hyper-digitized market. They are tasked with creating personalized experiences for HCPs, providers, patients, and payors while continuing to improve content productivity and speed.
More field emails and longer virtual visits in 2021 require a healthy pipeline of relevant, compliant content that can be created, reviewed, approved, and distributed in record time. However, this need for speed introduces compliance risk in the review and approval processes and requires marketing teams to rethink how to accelerate the full content lifecycle.
Let’s take a look at why medical device marketers may be struggling in 2021 and explore options that can help.
1. Outdated And Disconnected Marketing Processes & Systems
One of the most difficult challenges for medical device marketers today is that outdated, disconnected marketing processes and tools are slowing down the production and distribution of content. Every medical device marketer can relate to the pain of how long it can take internally to produce even the simplest marketing brochure. These problems are exacerbated by the increase of mergers, acquisitions, and globalization in medtech, resulting in varying legacy processes and systems conflicting with one another across organizations.
These technology constraints create numerous headaches for the would-be content aggregator as they struggle to find out where information is stored, which is the latest portion, and who is responsible for what task. The lack of data integration and synchronization ultimately impacts compliance, as marketing teams are often left with no way to create a complete audit trail and fulfill a regulatory requirement. The good news is there are modern content management solutions that provide a centralized, single source of truth with automated workflows and approval processes that can enable marketing teams to distribute compliant content faster than ever before.
2. Your Competition has Become Your Audience’s Preferred Channel of Information
In an ever-increasing digital world, medical device and diagnostics marketers are faced with an increased number of competitors producing and distributing content that engages the same target audiences. The sheer number of companies that have emerged in recent years is indicative of the intense digital competition for the attention of HCPs, providers, patients, and payors. As marketers are now encouraged to create personalized experiences for these audiences, it becomes incumbent on them to be more creative when identifying ways to keep their audiences engaged and constantly coming back as a preferred channel of information.
The need to evaluate, approve, and distribute content in near real-time has increased the importance of an omnichannel distribution solution. With an omnichannel solution, engagement is higher because it allows you to seamlessly update content so you always stay relevant to your viewers. When audiences find outdated or irrelevant content they are less likely to return, but when they consistently consume relevant and timely content that meets their needs, that leads to a stronger brand reputation and a preference to use you as their preferred channel for information.
3. Tight Marketing Budgets Demand Efficient Solutions with Strong ROI to Produce, Approve, and Distribute Compliant Content Globally
As medtech marketing budgets are being squeezed more than ever, companies need to explore options for cost-saving strategies that can also yield a higher return on marketing investment. One strategy is to review your content lifecycle and identify the optimal strategy for production, approval, and distribution, and then reuse to optimize efficiency.
The entire lifecycle of content is important because it can dictate how quickly you produce compliant collateral, where the limits are on approvals, and who approves which type of content (depending on your quality and regulatory requirements) as well as what channels distribute that material. The right commercial solution will be able to meet the needs of your company with a content lifecycle that maximizes efficiency and productivity.