As a business that sells to the healthcare sector, it can be hard to reach the people you really need to reach in order to show them the benefits of your product or services.
By understanding how hospital administrators buy new products, you can create content helping them to make their buying decision. Also by understanding the problems and challenges they face, you can create inbound marketing that is helpful.
But how do we know how hospital administrators research products? How can we use inbound marketing to improve your healthcare marketing?
Recently, Google conducted a survey of 700 hospital administrators which included interviews with 69 key decision makers. This gives us some great insight in how to reach your target market. So let’s take a look at how we can improve your marketing to reach and help these potential customers.
The part search plays in their buying decision
You first of all have to understand that doctors and administrators are no different to you and I, they do most of their research online.
In fact more than 90% of hospital administrators rely on search engines to identify vendors and product options to do their research.
They spend large sums of money so research is very important to them.
Over 50% of their buying decision is already made before they even contact you. According to Google the reason they do it this way is because they want to limit the number of vendors they speak to, so they only deal with 3 instead of 50.
By conducting their research they are able to ask the right kind of questions to the vendors which helps to speed up the process (hospital administrators are very busy people). As they look for a deeper education, 75% of them said they looked for clinical data and 82% said they looked at product reviews and comparisons.
50% said they used a smartphone while making their buying decision and one in three of them used their smartphone to conduct research. They looked at product reviews, customer testimonials and requested product information.
What was also surprising in the data was that 100% of them used video in their research. Some of the kinds of videos watched were:
- Product procedures
- Product comparisons
- Demo videos
The benefits of them watching these videos were that they could see how equipment looked in a room and how people interacted with it. Over 63% of the administrators shared their experiences with others.
How you can benefit from their search behaviour
As your target market or buyer persona is conducting their research online to find answers to their sales questions, you need to be the one providing the answers. By using inbound marketing you can create content that helps your buyer persona to make their decisions.
As they are doing their research online, to be better informed you need to understand what it is they are searching for. Luckily for you, you already know the things they are searching for as you hear it every day when your sales team make contact. They have questions and you need to answer them. They have pain points, you need to address them.
You need to help them at every buying stage.
The kind of content you need to create is:
- Educational blog content
- Training video
- Comparison charts
- Product demos
- >Cheat sheets
- Analyst reports
- Eguides & ebooks
- Whitepapers
- Vendor comparisons
- Case studies
- Product literature
The above list matches the needs of your buyer persona and by using email marketing and face-to-face interactions you can move them through your sales process and help them to make their buying decisions.
As over 50% of the administrators that were surveyed said that they used smartphones to conduct their research, you also need to make sure your website is mobile responsive so it works seamlessly no matter what device it is viewed on.
Conclusion
As hospital administrators are conducting research online and are looking for answers to their questions you need to create content that helps them at every stage of their buying process. You need to create the content they seek and nurture them at every step.
They don’t want to be sold to, they want to research for themselves as 50% already have made most of their decision before they even contact you. And if you are the one that has been the most helpful at every step, guess who they will contact first?
Now it’s your turn
What are the biggest challenges you face in your healthcare marketing? Do you find it hard to reach the key decision makers? Let me know in the comments below.
Source: A recent study conducted by Google of 700 hospital administrators