Have you ever heard that sharks will die if they stop moving? It’s actually true. Sharks use movement to gather oxygen in their gills, requiring them to be continually moving in order to survive. The same is true for your MedTech business. In order to grow, you need to be continually on the move, building lasting relationships with your customers that keeps them coming back for more.
But how can you do this, exactly? You have a website, an email address, and a phone number. What more could your potential customers possibly need?
A lot more, actually. That’s where inbound marketing comes in.
Inbound marketing is a digital strategy that ultimately positions you as a guide for your customers. Unlike other types of marketing, inbound draws potential customers in with high-quality content, clear calls to action, customer-centric sales strategies, and supportive design features that eventually turn them into advocates for your brand.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a way to gain customers and clients by providing them with tailored, high-quality content and experiences. Unlike outbound marketing, which interrupts potential customers with cold calls and other unwanted sales tactics, the inbound methodology focuses on building relationships with potential customers to guide them further down the sales funnel.
Baker Marketing Laboratory is an award-winning digital marketing agency that utilizes HubSpot in multiple facets of our work. Click here to discover what we can do for your business!
How to Grow Your MedTech Business With Inbound Marketing
Your MedTech business will be dead in the vast ocean of the internet if you aren’t growing your customer base. This is especially true for small businesses that need to grow in order to outpace their competition and stand out from larger companies.
Q: But how exactly can inbound marketing help business owners grow their companies?
A: Through the three-step process of Attract, Engage, and Delight.
The success of your business depends on the success of your customers or clients. Long-term success isn’t achieved by closing a sale. Rather, it’s achieved by fostering a long-term relationship that gradually converts visitors into brand advocates. To achieve this, you’ll need to attract, engage, and delight your customers so that they view you as a partner in their success.
Attract
In the first stage of inbound marketing, you will identify your target audience and learn what’s important to them. You’ll then use that information to create valuable content that establishes your company as a trustworthy guide.
Think of the attract stage as a first date. You don’t want to come on too strong, but you do want them to know that you have something to offer. The key to success at this stage is conversation. You can engage your audience with conversations on topics they care about and let them know that you have the answers.
Engage
Your first date went well, and they want to see you again. Now begins the engagement stage of the inbound process. In this phase, you’ll want to deepen your relationship with your audience as you identify their problems and provide solutions.
The engagement stage is all about experience. You’ve done your research and have learned your target audience’s pain points. Now it’s time to address those pain points with an experience that they will love. You can do this through customer-centric website design as well as marketing and sales.
Ultimately, it’s all about what your customers want and need. This way, they will be much more likely to purchase your products or services. We’ll cover specific ways you can do this later in the guide.
Delight
The third stage of inbound marketing, called the delight stage, is when you’ve moved from being a vendor to a valued guide for your customer. You’re now their go-to source for help and support, becoming a source of empowerment and success for their business.
At this point, you and your customer have become a package deal and they have become an advocate for your brand. Whether it’s at a local networking event or a national medical technology conference, you can be sure that they will be singing your praises. More importantly, other people will see the results of your partnership and want it for themselves.
Curious to learn how Baker Marketing Laboratory can boost your business? Click here to see how we’ve used HubSpot to help improve customer support for one of our clients!
The Importance of Word-of-Mouth for Your Business
Brand advocates, also known as brand evangelists, will open up a whole new door for your company when it comes to lead generation. While digital marketing strategies are vital for building brand awareness, nothing instills confidence in a product like positive word-of-mouth.
Check out these statistics from SEMrush, a powerful tool for gathering marketing insights, on what word-of-mouth can do for your healthtech or medical device company:
- 90% of people are more likely to trust a brand that was recommended to them, even by a stranger
- 88% put a high level of trust in a brand recommended by a family member or friend
- Word-of-mouth yields 5x more sales than paid ads
- 25% will avoid a brand if they hear something negative about it
- 21% will lose trust in a brand based on bad word-of-mouth, whether they’re a customer or not
With numbers like these, it’s clear how important word-of-mouth is for your business. However, you need a strong digital marketing strategy in order to reach that level. That means pouring your efforts into attracting, engaging, and delighting visitors so they become advocates for your brand.
Inbound Marketing Strategy Examples
You’ve read the theory, but you’ll need concrete examples if you want to get the most out of your inbound marketing strategies. An inbound marketing campaign comes in different phases, all designed to achieve different goals. However, they all serve to continue supporting the inbound methodology for a consistent funnel of customers to help grow your business.
Content
Remember our shark metaphor from earlier? Well, this is where it really comes into play. A shark that stops moving is dead in the water, and so is your business if you’re not regularly publishing creative content. Your content needs to be valuable to your audience, but most importantly, it needs to be consistent.
This can be in the form of content such as:
- Blog posts
- Video content
- Social media posts
A blog post can come in different formats, whether it’s short news articles or more long-form content such as an ebook. For better organic search results, implement an SEO strategy along with on-page SEO to focus on keywords your target customer will be searching for. This helps search engines know what your site is about and grow your website traffic.
Video content is another powerful content marketing tool you can take advantage of. As HubSpot pointed out in 2018, 54% of consumers want more video from the brands or businesses they support. Combine that with the fact that YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world and you have a good reason to invest in video marketing.
Social media posts are another way to create lead-generating content. With social media marketing, you can post links to:
- Blogs
- Testimonial graphics
- Live videos
- Giveaways
In this way, social media management can help guide potential customers across your various marketing channels. Just make sure to include a call to action in every piece of content you create to nudge them along.
Communication
Once potential customers have explored your useful content, the next step is making contact. This is an opportunity for your sales team to follow up with leads and begin building relationships with them. Empower your team with engaging scripts full of information highlighting the value your products can provide customers to make their lives easier.
Encourage your customer service reps to focus on nurturing prospects when making inbound sales calls. Train your sales team to focus on solution selling rather than upselling your products. This emphasizes customer-centric service where sales benefit you and your customers, laying the groundwork for future interactions.
Support
You’ll begin to take on more of an advisor role as the relationship with your customer develops. At this point, you’ll be in the position to assist them at any point during their journey through the inbound marketing method.
Two important ways to do this are with chatbots and surveys. Chatbots can provide customers with assistance any time of the day. Surveys and forms help them to provide feedback about how you’re doing and provide you with actionable goals as you better understand their needs and concerns. They also give you a way to automate your customer service without requiring more manpower.
Make sure that you fine-tune and update your chatbots and surveys on a regular basis. See how customers interact with your bots and adjust their scripts accordingly. Also, send out surveys six months after a purchase for feedback. Not only does this help you improve your offering, but it makes your customers feel heard and appreciated.
Hubspot is an excellent source for chatbots as well as other tools to support your marketing. It’s the customer relationship management platform (CRM) that pioneered the inbound marketing methodology. It’s the perfect tool for guiding visitors to your site from strangers to promoters of your business.
Baker Marketing Laboratory — Your HealthTech Marketing Solution
Baker Marketing Laboratory has nearly a decade of experience in medical marketing. We’ve worked in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, vet clinics, practice management software, and with medical practices, helping to grow their businesses. Inbound marketing is at the core of everything we do. From blogs to sales scripts to chatbots, we can help you take your business to the next level.
Are you ready to boost your medical technology business with digital marketing? Book a free marketing review today!
Unlike other marketing strategies, inbound’s ultimate goal is to position your business as a guide your customers can return to again and again. Baker Marketing can be your guide to this process so that you can be an effective guide to your own clients. You’ll begin by focusing on content such as blogs, video, and social media to draw prospects in. You will then create sales scripts that provide leads with information about how your product can help address their pain points. From there, you can follow up with them through surveys and provide automated chatbots to answer their questions 24/7.
Baker Marketing Laboratory has spent years helping healthcare businesses find their footing in the digital world. Through a combination of inbound digital marketing and powerful messaging strategies, we help you craft a marketing campaign that resonates with your ideal customer. Contact us today to schedule a call and learn the difference we can make for your business.
