Tips to Increase Medical Device Market Share

The global market for medical devices was valued at just over $443 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at nearly 5% through 2026. Medical device companies such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Johnson & Johnson dominate the landscape.

Gaining market share can be challenging for growth brands with so many competitors in strong positions but gains can be achieved with laser-focused marketing campaigns and clear strategies for acquiring new customers.

For medical device marketers, four key steps must be taken in order to lift your market share. They each tie into a larger theme of focusing on your buyer.

 

Four Ways to Increase Your Market Share

Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of gaining market share, but this requirement often gets minimized or overlooked as marketers push out campaigns quickly to get in front of their audience.

To boost your market share, you should have a clear idea of who you are marketing to. That starts with building a buyer persona – a conceptual profile that encompasses:

• Personal traits & characteristics
• Job role or function
• Channel preferences
• Behavior patterns
• Personal & professional objectives

Once you understand your audience clearly through personas, you can use that information to drive higher engagement and interest in your brand. Persona building will reveal what is important to the buyer, allowing your marketers to focus on relevant details in their messaging.

 

Message Value to the Persona

While the benefits from your medical device are ultimately enjoyed by the patient, it’s the healthcare professional who has the biggest impact on your market share. Therefore, your value proposition needs to resonate with HCP personas.

Certainly, patient benefits will provide the foundation for building value in your audience’s mind. But unless you are selling directly to the patient, your marketing materials should be designed to convince decision-makers and buying influencers of the broader value to their organization. (You also need to message payers with their distinct value propositions, which often center around cost.)

Furthermore, your message should speak the language of your target persona. It should resonate using value markers that they can identify with, driving them further along their journey to buying your medical device.

 

Create Content for Each Stage of the Buyer Journey

One-size-fits-all messaging is no longer effective. Marketing campaign messaging should be nuanced to meet the needs of your personas at every stage of the buyer journey.

There are generally three core phases of the buyer journey:

1. Awareness – an HCP uncovers a condition that can be treated with a medical device. Their understanding of the issue is minimal at this stage, so the goal here is to provide information that will help them better understand patient scenarios when dealing with the issue.
2. Consideration – now the HCP has a clear understanding of the issue and is exploring possible solutions. Here is where you introduce your device, how it evolved, and how it applies to the situation.
3. Decision – at this point, the HCP has determined the method they believe is best to address the issue. The main goal during this phase is to convince your buyer that the device you offer is the right choice.  This is where the value propositions should be front-and-center in your campaign.

It’s important to note that many, if not most, journeys are not linear. For example, a person may go from exploring solutions in the consideration phase back to learning more about the challenge or concern. So it is critical that your content offers the most value to your buyer at each phase.

Over time, providing valuable messaging at each phase of the buyer journey helps to develop trust and increases the number of opportunities to gain more market share.

 

Focus on Building Relationships

The final tip is an end to the means described above. The prior steps contribute to a broader objective: building sustained relationships.

Fostering solid customer relationships allows you to protect existing market share and gain new customers at the same time. Often, a good relationship will prevent competitors from “stealing” current customers with a hot new offer.

Furthermore, good customer relationships often lead to referral opportunities when satisfied buyers share their positive experiences with their peers, potentially leading to increased market share.

 

The future of medical device sales is likely to be more competitive than ever. Brands that increase their focus on buyer personas, journeys, and targeted messaging for every phase will be in better positions to increase and hold onto their market share.

 

Learn more about the evolving market trends of today and expand your pharma marketing knowledge by following our blog at ELSMediaKits.com.

 

Article Written by: Alex Brown