With digital consumption rapidly increasing, it is extremely important that you are leveraging social media platforms to reach your target audience. There are a variety of platforms that are available today, and it can be a bit overwhelming when deciding which ones to choose and where to start. Many companies get hung up on whether to immediately adopt the most popular platforms, or utilize those that are most commonly used for the medical device industry. We’re here to help provide some insight for you.
In general, social media is becoming more complex with advanced technology, requiring more knowledge about how the algorithms on each platform work and how to target the right audience. First step is to truly consider the basics; where, what, when and why? Let’s start with why.
Why is it important for Medical Device companies to use social media?
Social media platforms are mediums that you can reach your audience for free and when done correctly you can find insightful information such as engagement metrics. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, there are so many benefits that come from using social platforms with the right strategy. It starts with selecting the right platforms, targeting the right audience and being noticed at the right time.
Medical Device Lead Generation Strategies & Social Media Metrics
Another benefit that social media provides, is it is extremely measurable and can provide a large amount of data that shows all interaction activities that occur between medical device brands, and target audiences. No matter where audiences are in the buying cycle, social media serves as an avenue to share content when leads are researching medical device companies in early stages, or attempting to further engage in conversations about specific industry topics.
In both the B2B and B2C realms, social media audience engagement and metrics, can help you identify customer trends and build customer bases. When audiences engage with likes and comments on the content that you are distributing on various networks, this creates opportunities to nurture prospective customers and get them further down the buying cycle. Your social media content strategy is a critical element to make your brand stand out, and make a noteworthy impact in order to stay top of mind for customers.
Building Brand Personality
Online users and prospective customers want to engage with brands that are prominent, empathetic and that they can connect with. This allows medical device companies to develop a personality and character, as you use social media to interact with your audience in a conversational manner. Your company’s brand is what is used to differentiate you from your competitors, so you want your medical device brand to incorporate your company’s strongest values while having a consistent presence across all social media platforms.
Capitalizing on First Impressions
In many cases, social media is the place where you make a first impression with your target audience. You want to appeal to your audience in an emotional way that makes them feel, and connect with your content. When developing content that is credible and trustworthy, this helps build brand equity and trust.
Gathering Customer Input
Majority of social media environments are informal and allow individuals from diverse backgrounds to engage in conversations with little barriers. When you can gather customer input, praise and testimonials to utilize on your social media accounts it helps build credibility with the power of social proof. Members of your audience may comment on specific products and services, which will allow you to engage whether it involves positive or negative feedback. Either way, this will show others that your business cares enough to interact with your audience and may encourage others to start conversations.
Customer input also provides insight on strengths and weaknesses within your medical device company’s products and services. This will help you make proper adjustments and continuously improve the way your business is perceived both on and offline.
Where should my medical device company post?
PRIMARY PLATFORMS RECOMMENDATIONS
- Linkedin - The medical device and healthy industry is filled with medical professionals that are actively looking to connect and push innovation forward. Your company should have a professional optimized company page that is a proper representation of your business and is inviting to your target audience.
- Youtube - When your medical device company has the opportunity to showcase videos, you should absolutely host them on Youtube. This is a great place to host company overviews, product introduction videos, company updates, etc. You can also optimize your content in your video titles and descriptions so that your video content can be found on google and other search engines.
SECONDARY PLATFORM RECOMMENDATIONS
- Twitter - Traditionally twitter has been one of the platforms that your medical device company can release content quickly and cut through the noise with hashtags. There are a variety of healthcare groups that have a larger audience base on twitter, as your content is more likely to be shared when it is relevant.
- Facebook - Facebook is another tool that you can use for organic content, but it should not be your primary focus. Facebook’s larger benefits revolve around Facebook ads and the ability that it gives you to retarget your website visitors and other groups. There is more control of how much money you allocate and where your spend is going.
- Individual Healthcare Sites - Healthcare specific sites like Sermo, Doximity and QuantiaMD are all resources that can be used to interact with and target medical professionals. There are a lot many platforms like these that are still upcoming and gaining adoption.
There are many variables to consider when deciding which social media platforms such as:
- Relevance and where your target audience is
- Time allocation available from your internal team
- Creative and technical support bandwidth
All of these factors play a key role in which platforms you should adopt and how many. You want to ensure that you have the appropriate amount of support, withhold your social media efforts. This is not a case of “a little is better than nothing”. If your company wants to be successful on social media, then you need to dive in and be consistent with the content that your medical device company is developing.
Selecting the right content to feature
It is important that you vary your content on your social media platforms. Everything you develop should be relevant to your company or industry. It is important that you create content that is educational, and provides value for your target audience. Within the medical device industry, your prospective and current customers want to view and read content that they can resonate with; especially on LinkedIn. A medical device company sets its sights on innovation, and how you can solve problems within the industry. This helps set your company and brand apart, to become memorable as you appeal to your audience's emotions.
When to post and how often?
Just like many aspects of business; timing is key with medical device social media marketing. You want to optimize your posts to drive engagement and lead generation. Timing of your post can directly impact your performance, visibility and overall engagement. For example, there are times when medical professionals are more likely to be browsing specific platforms late at night, and others that they will be on early in the morning. Knowing some of these details can improve your content engagement dramatically. You can learn more about timing on specific social media channels here.
Remember industry trends are always changing, so having up-to-date data readily available, can be very beneficial as this will help you create the best content possible. It is also important that your posting frequency is strategic and differs on each platform. Each platform has a different audience, different metrics and expectations. You should post as consistently as possible in order to drive engagement, but you should also consider not over posting because you do not want your content to become oversaturated. To help with this strategy, we recommend putting together a social media schedule to keep everyone organized.
In the end, if your medical device company isn’t taking advantage of social media marketing then there is no better time to start! Don’t fall behind, contact one of our medical device social media experts today, to see how we can develop a social media strategy that is tailored to your business goals.
