When people think about marketing, they often only think about advertising and promotions. It is so much more than that.
Marketing sits at the intersection of:
- customer success
- product management
- sales
- business strategy
It also responsible for upstream functions like:
- positioning
- branding
- messaging
- pricing
- packaging
This is especially true for start-up and scale-up companies. They rely on the industry expertise healthcare IT marketers bring to help drive them towards their growth objectives.
In this blog we will explore three aspects of product marketing that early growth company leaders should understand. Keep these tips in mind when developing go-to-market plans.
1) Found product marketing in education
Advertising and promotions within product marketing can be educational. Yet, product marketing is mostly about educating your market.
In healthcare IT, this means educating your target audience about the problems your company and products solve. It should also include the benefits they provide to various stakeholders. For example:
- physicians
- biomedical engineers
- IT personnel
- even patients themselves
A good example is when a novel and innovative solution is being introduced to challenge the status-quo of a long-standing healthcare workflow. Stakeholders may not even be aware there could be another, better way to do things.
This involves developing a variety of content. Such content should raise awareness of your company and paint a clear picture of challenges with the way things are. It should tell stories about how much better things could be when using your solution.
Content takes on many forms. Short-form messaging is quick and easy to digest:
- website messaging
- social media
- infographics
- blogs
Longer-form, more informative content includes case studies, white papers, and webinars.
2) Product marketing requires a deep understanding of the product, its benefits, and market needs
Producing educational, informative content that captures the attention and interest of busy healthcare IT decision makers is not easy. It requires a deep understanding of each persona, their workflows, and the problems they face. An effective healthcare IT marketing leader must understand the language of all the relevant healthcare personas. They can then communicate how your company’s products map to each one’s unique problems and needs using familiar terminology and relatable scenarios.
Marketing also plays a key role in lead generation and sales enablement. Astute product marketers understand that in healthcare IT, procurement cycles can be lengthy. Many different purchasing processes and priorities create unique and unexpected complexities. To be effective, marketing content should address each stage of the customer’s buying journey. Consider the unique requirements of healthcare organizations and decision-maker roles.
3) Marketing strategy should be part of the go-to-market strategy
Your go-to-market strategy must include your marketing strategy, along with your sales and customer support strategies. The sales channels you choose when planning your commercialization strategy are only going to be successful if you have a product marketing strategy to support them.
Healthcare IT is complex—especially if you’re solving a problem for the first time or in a novel way. You need a realistic product marketing strategy that anticipates the challenges your sales channels will encounter. As a result, it takes more time (on average 6-12 month) to:
- get traction
- educate prospects about the problem
- build credibility about the viability of your solution
So, it’s important to incorporate strategy into a product’s overarching go-to-market strategy. Product marketing provides key input into many strategic launch activities like:
- Branding, messaging, and content development
- Identifying key competitors and differentiators
- Informing sales strategy (e.g. partnership [B2B] or direct, or “big bang” launch vs. phased roll-out)
- Preparing sales personnel to communicate product positioning and value propositions to key decision-maker personas
- Ensuring you tailor product demonstrations to each unique healthcare IT decision-maker/influencer
- And much more…
Putting These Three Considerations Into Practice
Product marketing plays a key strategic role in helping healthcare IT organizations achieve their strategic business and growth objectives. As such, your marketing strategy must be well thought out and incorporate input from those with experience in healthcare IT. Experienced healthcare IT product marketers lead this process. They incorporate it into the overarching go-to-market strategy. And, they root strategy in targeted, educational content that elevates both awareness and credibility of your company’s solutions.
Are you looking to augment your team with healthcare IT product marketing expertise? Our product marketing experts can help you craft an effective marketing strategy focused on accomplishing your growth objectives. Contact us to learn more.
