Healthcare B2B Marketers in the Medtech are leaving behind a struggling 2020: cancelled medical events, shifting priorities and an accelerated rush to digital.
Alongside with dramatic challenges in the medical sector, a report from Bain & Co. published on hospital buying found the number of procurement officers as primary decision-makers in centralized purchasing had doubled.
When you combine both trends with a comprehensive study on purchasing decisions conducted by Google Insights and HIMSS, it’s clear committee buying is the new norm for hospitals and clinics. The outlook for 2021 shows the desire for physical sales meetings has reduced dramatically since the inception of COVID-19. Many medical professionals believe restrictions will become the ‘new normal’:
Even without restrictions, the desire to interact in-person among sales reps has dropped:
So where do they go? Online. Having a bold digital presence ensures your brand and value proposition are being seen and heard in the social-distancing age.
Most product and seller research is done online
Source: Google , HIMSS Analytics and Blue Business
Digital is the best way to influence vendor selection. According to the Google Insights study, most hospital administrators go online to research equipment and vendors.
How do MedTech and healthcare businesses cut through the noise?
2021 represents an unprecedented opportunity to grow share of voice in digital marketing and become a proven revenue growth driver. The challlenge for B2B brands in this time of digital ubiquity is to ensure they make it to the short-list. There’s lots of vendors, and hospital administrators can’t deal with all the options. Research is conducted to limit the number to the top 3 – 4 vendors, limiting risk to the top brands in each market.
The roadblock for healthcare marketing is that advertising medical solutions to the public is illegal, so they need to be filtered out. Account based marketing solutions like B2B display advertising can help healthcare businesses get their message to sales teams directly, ensuring compliance with the law, targeting exclusively medical professionals ( doctors, physicians, hospitals, and labs).
It’s clear committee buying is here to stay. With ABA, you can bypass gatekeepers and get your value proposition straight to the decision-makers. It is the way to effectively market medical in the digital space.
It looks as though there will be a big shift online as the preference for physical meetings declines. Using ABA with data, insights, and reports tracking the customer journey, you can direct your sales team to the highest quality leads online.
Check out our B2B Healthcare Success Story to see how B2B Display Advertising works in practice.
