“The role of marketing in Med-tech is an evolving one. How the company thinks about customer outcomes is fundamental to the growth strategy.”
Agreeing to every word, the transformation in the medical technology’s panorama, their healthcare strategies along with a refined financial mechanism, and their holistic efforts in transfiguring the patient’s profile have harnessed their growth in the Med-tech industry. Innovation brings in the responsibility to serve and commercialize.
Alivecor is the leading brand in the space of medical technology with a vision of saving lives, adopting the right marketing spirit to elevate its brand. Their Kardia mobile 6L sparked up the spirits of Digital marketing, proving that it acts as a catalyst to Med-tech marketing. Serving in the right spirit at the right time is the need of the hour. The major challenge we faced was educating the people about the need for medical technology. Moreover, educating them about the authenticity of the product and the company.In India, caregiver’s confidence on the med-tech products holds more value than patient’s. The patient’s recovery is in the hands of the caretaker and the caretaker’s acknowledgment of the technology suffices for our existence.
Med-tech marketing strategy
Digital marketing is quite a vogue. It is a type of marketing through online platforms to reach a wider range of subscribers and connect to millions of audiences. Getting the best results with multiple clicks is what everyone wishes for and online marketing corresponds to this vibe. Not only does it parameters the email, web-based advertising, and social media but it also canopy multimedia messages for marketing channels. The B2B relationship that it serves constructs a strong bond.
To build an empowering marketing strategy for Medical Technology one has to face various business challenges. The most primary acquaintance to this strategy is to make companies focused on value innovation more than feature innovation.
Value innovation targets solving an important customer problem, whereas feature innovation focuses on the product and adding more features to it. The value innovation is more rigorous and impactful. The portfolio strategy value proposition, development of the new product, and lifecycle management including retirement. Focusing on value innovation will allow Med-tech to evolve from a product-focused mindset to a solution-focused mindset.
Focus on solutions, allowing for faster, cheaper, and more nimble development could be through a product, service, or software. For instance, a cure for Diabetes would not just be the invention of a better glucose strip or meter for better measurement, but a glucose control and healthy interaction with the patient. Serve the customer’s needs by providing an actual cure to the disease.
For a synchronized procedure of marketing one must keep in mind the following thing:
- Constant interactions with healthcare professionals(HCPs) are the fulcrum. HCPs are the prime user of technology and play an instrumental role in brand marketing.
- Subject to Internet marketing- it encapsulates all content marketing, targeting, branding, analytics, and social media marketing.
- It is essential to create a buyer’s persona through managing the challenges, goals, solutions, common objectives, and aligning with demographics and identifiers.
- A brand book is access to all subscriptions that maintains consistency, establishes credibility, and increases efficiency to generate a profit.
This article will simplify your query about the Medtech marketing procedure.
Content Strategy
Launching a content marketing strategy could present the transparent goals of the brand to the audience. It enables the brand to build an emotional connection with the target or ideal customer that further leads to trust. Content leads to the sales funnel. Creating content that is sustainable and scalable captures the eye of the audience.
- Creating a monthly publishing editorial calendar will secure planning, demonstrate scalability and accessibility.
- Building up an interconnected marketing engine will comprise the website and social media interactions.
- Social media marketing is a way to communicate your brand message through blogs, posts, videos. Article centric to clinical data.
Email marketing can synthesize the long procedure of onboarding new patients, it can also help in retaining the old patients while acquiring the new ones as old patients are a huge asset to the company when leads on acquiring new ones seem low. Since trust is the most important factor in healthcare marketing and hospital review matters a lot, email marketing is the most convenient way to send a newsletter and new agenda aspiring to be their topmost priority.
Portfolio Strategy:
From new product development to lifecycle management of the device and its retirement, portfolio strategy includes the commercial data of the product since the time it entered the market. Commercial management includes the building up of the strategy and its execution. Formulating the annual global marketing plan to promote and tabulate the marketing and content as well.
The mobile app implementation could pump up the product promotion.
Building up empowered marketing capabilities is often overlooked to address Med-tech’s business challenges. The portfolio strategy will sort things down to new product development, establish product launch, and portfolio management. Despite being the best ongoing technology of the era, it still receives a disconnect between the needs of the customer and how Med-tech is addressing them. The R&D refers to the fact that many Med-tech leaders have expressed their concern regarding their current approaches in bringing their technology into the market. Since the primary focus is on the technical requirements and not on the commercial requirements. Med-tech marketing is much more than the traditional product placement and clever ads strategy as it tries to structure data to have a better connection with the customer, so they get the care they need when they need it. Also, the legal formality can be seen as a long journey.
Legal nuances
Approval of India-based devices:
India today holds 400 medical devices out of 5000 that are regulated. The list of 23 products includes 15 medical devices and 8 items which are notified as drugs by Central Drugs Standard Control Organization. The CDSCD approval is our utmost priority to bring our medical device to market. All the products must be registered with the group that oversees drugs and devices. It takes 6-9 months to complete the medical device registration process in India if the technical presentation is not required. Technical presentation or SEC(Subject Expert Committee) takes another 3-6 months.
Approval of Foreign-based devices:
- Only those imported products or devices can be sold in India if they have the U.S. European, Canada, or Japan authority approval and have been in the market for more than 2 years.
- Appointing a licensed importer by a foreign manufacturer in India to provide registered application and necessary documentation is highly important.
- Getting a regulation on your device by CDSCD is the first step of Med-tech marketing.
- Submit all technical documentation to be reviewed by CDSCD. Also, register all your device manufacturing facilities.
- Once the device fits in the categories and asses classification, prepare the proper documentation for CDSCO.
- FDA approval is another important requirement. The pathways begin with the division of the devices into Class1,2 and 3 categories according to the risk ascending from low, moderate to high.
- FDA follows the pattern of listing the medical device that is safe and effective in use. Adulteration performs the check for the presence of any poisonous substances. Misbranding takes control of the manufactures that are distributing without any FDA approval.
- The high-risk device requires special labeling that fosters the performance standards, pre-market surveillance. The DGCI (Central Licensing Authority) performs the duty of investigating medical technologies, managing the import of devices, and providing acceptance to these devices.
During the time of the Pandemic, multiple oxygens concentrators, medical devices, and oxygen cylinders were being manufactured without any government-sanctioned channels. The demand for the same opened channels to black marketing and endangered the lives of the patients. The desperation overlapped the authenticity and resulted in risk-taking. Thus, providing an organized marketing strategy imbibes credibility to the brand.
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