Marketing to healthcare professionals is no easy task, and anyone who works in medical equipment advertising would be able to tell you why. Healthcare professionals are as varied as they come – some like to stay on the cutting edge of technology while others embody what it means to be “old fashioned”. For this reason alone it can be difficult to deliver a marketing campaign that will appeal to such a broad and ever-changing audience.
With that said, developing a marketing program that can reach professionals in the healthcare vertical is absolutely imperative to the success of medical equipment advertisers. These professionals are the gatekeepers, decision makers, and influencers in this space and being able to have them embrace and recommend your product within their networks is invaluable.
Medical Marketing Tips Targeting Healthcare Professionals
One component of that medical equipment advertising campaign that can help your company reach healthcare professionals is to utilize paid search advertisements. Paid search marketing (sometimes known as pay per click – or PPC) is most commonly understood as paid advertising that appears when a user browses a similar website or searches for a similar phrase/concept. The most recognizable instances of paid advertising include Google (the top “sponsored” search results as well as sidebar search results that appear on countless webpages) and Facebook (advertisements along the side that are not only sponsored, but targeted based on your browsing history).
We experience paid search so frequently in our online experience, and it has become so well integrated into webpages we frequent that we likely no longer recognize its presence as sponsored content – and that’s the beauty of it. When done correctly, PPC medical marketing should become a natural extension of whatever page your prospective healthcare professional is browsing. Using this type of strategy when marketing to healthcare professionals is effective because it positions your medical equipment as the obvious, recognized solution for whatever ailment, condition, or illness that a professional within the healthcare vertical may be looking to learn more about treating.
In this post, we are going to provide 5 tips you cannot miss if you are considering using paid search in your approach to marketing your medical equipment to healthcare professionals.
1. Build A Clear Message
Using a pay per click model in the medical space can be tricky for two reasons: 1) medical equipment advertising – especially marketing to healthcare professionals is so incredibly competitive and 2) the market is so heavily saturated that it can be difficult to make your message stand out through a medium that uses so few words.
That’s why it is so important that your medical PPC ad copy is word perfect. It should be well crafted, consistent with your other marketing media, and unique to your company. While there are a million other considerations that could be made (personal tone, calls to action, location-based content), focusing on the basics will give you a great start into the paid search field.
2. Choose The Right Paid Media
As we discussed, marketing to healthcare professionals is complex. These professionals come from a myriad of backgrounds and experiences and have markedly different approaches to technology. Having a strong understanding of your market through market research and effective segmentation will allow you a better opportunity to reach your intended audience of healthcare professionals.
Once you understand these segments you can identify they best opportunities for paid search marketing – be it through search engines, websites, in apps or through mobile platforms. Regardless of how tech-friendly your audience is, choosing the right media for your PPC campaign will allow you to experience increased success in your marketing efforts.
3. Don’t Set and Forget
One of the most common mistakes that marketers make with respect to paid search advertising is to invest in building the PPC campaign and then never revisiting it again. A successful PPC campaign in the healthcare vertical requires constant monitoring to learn what your audience is responding to, which ad structures (in terms of both copy layout and placement) are working well, and most importantly where you can make adjustments to increase the effectiveness of your medical equipment advertising.
Part of this strategy is also conducting A/B testing. PPC advertising is so incredibly specific that even a single word can make a huge difference in how medical professionals respond to your advertisement. Remember, the idea of a PPC ad is to draw the user away from the page they are currently looking at (be it a search engine page or another web page) and click on your ad because you have convinced them that you will be able to answer their questions and address their concerns. Running similar ads with very minor differences is a popular way to identify the nuances that will allow your PPC medical ads to stand out above the competition.
4. Pay Attention
This tip is similar to the last, but for a slightly different reason. The paid search marketing medium is controlled almost exclusively by the search engine companies, and as a result the rules and boundaries of what marketers can do with PPC is constantly changing. Staying in the know is imperative, because the second you fall behind in the PPC world (especially in the healthcare vertical), your competition is going to take advantage of your mistake.
The second thing to pay attention to is your competition. Understanding what they are doing, where they are doing it, and how they are crafting their message will not only allow you to better understand your market, but also how to craft your message to set your product/service apart in the eyes of healthcare professionals.
5. Trust The Experts
As you have probably gathered, paid search marketing in the healthcare space is an incredibly specific, metric-based marketing program that requires a lot of finesse and experience in order to be successful. Sometimes, consulting with a company who is experienced, stays up to date on the latest regulations, and knows the ins and outs of edging out competition for prime real estate and click volume is the best way to go.
No matter what you decide, understanding PPC marketing and how it can impact your existing marketing programs in the healthcare space is important when it comes to developing strategy to increase your marketing presence, grow your sales, and ultimately connect more healthcare professionals with the medical equipment you are marketing.