The medtech market is swimming in undifferentiated products, bloated value propositions, interchangeable messages, and unprecedented numbers of medical device competitors in all categories.

Try attending the RSNA or HIMSS annual trade shows. You’ll be assaulted by sameness on a colossal scale. The sales process is longer and costlier than ever, and margins are dropping. Start-ups are getting crushed with a near 100% failure rate. Never has there been a more urgent need for medtech CEOs to invest in marketing and begin reversing this trend.

The medtech device marketing discipline has become devalued

• Many CEOs see marketing as overhead. As a cost center. As a waypoint you rotate in and out of as you climb the company ladder to bigger and better things
• They don’t see it as a strategic differentiator, a business driver, or a competitive advantage
• Many CEOs come from sales. They see sales as a strategic leader, and they expect marketing to play a supporting role, instead of the other way around

Medtech Marketing revaluation action plan
Pilot a new approach—one in which your marketing department and CEO elevate their commitment to each other—and to your organization. Document your progress. Establish momentum. Go horizontally across your organization. Hone your process along the way. Follow this model to revalue your marketing department. Over time, after consistent success, a CMO role might emerge. Even better, your next CEO might emerge from it.

step 1

Sell the CEO on the difference-making potential of marketing. Commit to performance that:

• Nullifies your medical device competitors’ agendas
• Drives demand for what you uniquely offer
• Shortens the sales cycle
• Improves close rates and margins
• Attracts top talent
• Nurtures customer and sales rep loyalty
• Creates a quantifiable ROI
• Becomes a competitive advantage that competitors recognize as a threat

step 2

In order to get the performance outlined in Step 1, the CEO must commit the following to marketing:

• Expectations of a multi-year strategic plan
• Culture change (e.g., more planning, less reacting)
• Up-leveled staffing (e.g., more strategic marketers, fewer tactical marketers)
• Appropriate marketing budgets
• Investment in digital
• Accountability to both the top and bottom lines

MAKE SHIFT HAPPEN

It all starts with building a marketing plan – presented to the CEO – for your organization’s future performance with strategic marketing leadership. It’s a big undertaking that you need to get right, but you don’t have to go it alone. As a specialized medtech marketing agency with fourteen years of industry experience, VIVO is here to help,

Reach out today – and start making your shift to being a marketing-led organization.

What exactly is the “narrative”?

It is a concise story that frames your unique strengths.

Why is it so important?

• If the medtech purchasing committee’s selection criteria match your strengths, you win
• If they match your competitors’ strengths, you lose

How do you create a winning narrative?

Step 1
ID your most important product strengths—those that best address your customers’ biggest needs

Step 2
Promote the problems that your strengths uniquely solve, thus creating attention and urgency

Step 3
Weave your product strengths together into a very short, easily recitable solution narrative

How do you promote it?

Online!
Prior to contacting reps, buyers use search engines to gather information

“Patient centric” is the most overused phrase in the history of healthcare marketing. Yet today’s marketplace demands that you give it meaning, and position your solution as uniquely activating it. That’s because readmission penalties, quality scores, and chronic disease management are placing greater emphasis than ever on patients.

don’t:

• Give lip service to patient centric care
• Make marketing all about your medical devices

do:

• Market the problems that patient centric care solves
• Show how your medical device uniquely enables patient centric care
• Market a vision of patient centric care in practice, with problems solved and benefits realized

MAKE SHIFT HAPPEN
Moving from product-centric to patient-centric marketing is not easy. But you can make the shift with VIVO. As a specialized medical device marketing agency, we’ve been driving breakthrough marketing for the last fourteen years.

Contact us and see how our experience can make the difference for you.

His weapon of choice

Trump is a master at using contrast to differentiate himself. He regularly sets himself apart from his predecessors—including Bush, Obama, and Clinton—even though he already won the election. It’s almost as if he’s still running! He calls out what he labels as policy failures, like China trade, North Korean missiles, the Iranian nuclear agreement, or the Afghan war, and he positions himself as trying to solve them with bold, unexpected approaches. For example, early in his campaign, he gained an edge by saying repeatedly that Jeb Bush was “low energy,” thereby implying that he himself was “high energy.”

The contrast effect

Psychologists call this the contrast effect. By calling out failures or limitations, and contrasting them with your new solution, you give your solution greater meaning and urgency.

Put the contrast effect into action

Don’t:

• Market shades of gray, incremental improvements, or easily missed nuances

Do:

• Define how you are dramatically different and therefore desperately needed
• Commit to market black and white