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Creating advocacy in medtech


Healthcare professional speaking at event

Creating Promoters and Advocates in MedTech


In the competitive medtech industry, having promoters and advocates can significantly boost your business. These individuals or groups can amplify your brand, increase credibility, and drive growth. This article covers the different types of advocacy, how to leverage ambassadors as part of your marketing plan, and provides ideas on cultivating your relationship with them.


Linking Advocacy to Business Needs


Before developing brand and product promoters, it’s crucial to define where advocacy can have the biggest impact on your current and future business. Is there a part of your portfolio that is especially reliant on peer reviews, or are you launching innovative technology that requires the approval of key industry leaders? Do you need advocacy in one specific geography or worldwide? Answering these questions helps you understand what business needs are supported by an advocacy approach.


What Type of Advocacy Should I Invest In?


Advocacy can be organic or formal. Organic advocacy comes from naturally enthusiastic customers who recommend your solutions without any formal agreements. This is more common in the consumer industry but can occur in B2B, especially if you have a unique and innovative product.


Formal advocacy involves agreements where customers or hospitals speak or post about the positive effects your technology has had on their outcomes.


Within healthcare there are different types of advocates, so you will need to select an of ambassador that has the biggest impact on your business goals. For clinical sales, peer-to-peer advocates such as physicians are ideal. For broader topics like value-based care or sustainability, thought leaders who can engage diverse audiences are more effective. You may however be looking for a key opinion leader on a specialist topic like the HIE.


Steps to Creating and Leveraging Advocates


1. Focus on the customer experience.

There’s no foundation for advocacy without your customer being first convinced about your product, so it’s important to ensure that your customer is always getting the most out of the innovations they have invested in.


Helping end-users optimize their technology is an ongoing process, where continuous education and support is key, this includes delivering a comprehensive and robust onboarding process with tutorials, training sessions, user guides, and face-to-face support, as well as ongoing continuous and prompt support for the lifetime of the product.


As most users only ever end up utilizing a fraction of the systems they buy, it’s also crucial to tailor a learning program that helps caregivers use the relevant advanced features at a point in time that makes most sense. How-to platforms such as those from www.simpi.com/medical are ideal for on-the-job and in context end-user support allowing caregivers to benefit from the full value of your solutions.


2. Select the Right Advocates

Based on the completed assessment of what type, expertise, speciality and location of advocate would have the most impact for your business, you can now develop some key selection criteria and start your search.


Think also about how you will leverage the individuals, which channels will you use to reach your customers, and what type of content your potential clients are most likely to engage with from your thought leader.


With these criteria in mind, make a short list of potential ambassadors , review their capabilities against your needs, and start approaching your preferred advocates to discuss a potential collaboration.


3. Leverage your ambassadors!

Promote!


One approach is to empower your advocates to promote themselves as well as your technology. This can be as simple as providing images and written content for them to amplify, but can extend to a comprehensive promotional plan that includes videos, speaking opportunities, and more. Providing platforms such as a user group hub and supporting their sharing of expertise via case studies, webinars, and industry events is another effective strategy.


Invest in research and product development


Collaborating on research projects with academic institutions and industry partners not only benefits the healthcare industry as a whole but also strengthens the credibility of your advocates.


Including advocates in your continuous product development processes is another crucial step. Ambassadors typically like to have their voices heard and feedback incorporated into the latest innovations. This involvement benefits both parties and allows your advocate to speak more authentically about why your technology is having an impact.


Partnerships


Finally, putting strategic partnerships in place with hospitals and individuals can help formalise the agreements and provide a clear roadmap and metrics on which to take the plan forward.


Ethical considerations


Ensuring advocacy programs adhere to industry regulations, standards, and ethical guidelines, particularly for medical professionals is crucial. These rules are constantly being updated and can differ per country but some key ones to refer to are the USA’s sunshine act, the European Union’s EFPIA disclosure code, and the MECOMED guidelines in the Middle East.


Compliance is not just a legal requirement, it also fosters trust and ensures that your advocates are seen as authentic and reliable sources of information.


Don’t forget your internal teams!


There is an abundance of highly qualified experts within Medtech corporations. These individuals can also be used as thought leaders, as well as product and brand ambassadors, so they should be included in any advocacy plan.


Conclusion


Creating promoters and advocates in the medtech industry starts with a great product experience. Selecting the right advocates for your business needs is also key. Leveraging your ambassadors using the outlined strategies will cultivate strong, long-lasting and authentic advocacy and drive significant growth.


For further ideas on building your approach and optimizing the role of advocates in your marketing plan, reach out to Unplain Jane. We’re here to help you develop and leverage your promoters effectively.

Understand how Unplain Jane can help transform your business

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Sarah Morton

Sarah has over 25 years' experience in the healthcare industry. A former Philips employee, she held a variety of leadership roles from marketing strategy, and engagement to sales excellence and customer education . Sarah is an advocate for continuous innovation in the customer journey.

Originally from the UK, Sarah has been based in the Middle East for the last decade, and is a keen creative writer and amateur stand-up comedian.

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