Medical Device Marketing: An HCP Marketer’s Guide

Find Programmatic Experts

Programmatic advertising — the automated selling and buying of ads — is part of a vast and ever-evolving ecosystem, making it difficult to keep up with. Despite the challenges, however, selling more medical devices will depend on your ability to understand and master this technology. 

Just consider these points:

• With telehealth becoming ubiquitous, more HCPs are using digital connected devices than ever
• Fewer HCPs are taking in-person meetings, making your ad strategy more essential than ever
• GDPR, privacy regulations from Apple, and the sunset of third-party cookies mean more data-related regulations

As you can see, there’s a lot to keep up with! A team with programmatic expertise, like Health Union, will enable your campaigns to weather the changes and incorporate best practices that lead to success.

Use Smart Ad Formats

Online users now see around 4,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. It’s no wonder HCPs experience banner blindness when they see medical device ads. 

So how do you avoid ad fatigue and banner blindness? Use innovative ad formats, including video and mobile ads. And within these formats, try out smart ad types, like rich-media mobile ads and interactive video. That’s how you stand out from your competitors and sell medical products efficiently.  

Medical Device Ad Regulations: What Do You Need to Know?

There’s nothing stopping your company from marketing medical devices to physicians using the internet. However, the FDA and FTC have some control over restricted and non-restricted devices. In general, you can expect far fewer regulations and rules than say pharma companies would need to consider. 

That said, you should never advertise an experimental or investigational medical device, nor should you promote “off-label” usage. These rules are crucial to understand as you research how to promote medical products. 

Facebook & Google Medical Device Advertising Regulations

Facebook Regulations

Medical device marketers can advertise most medical products on Facebook, provided they follow the platform’s regulations:

• Ads shouldn’t draw attention to health conditions, such as close-up images of acne
• Ads cannot contain misleading or false claims
• Ads can’t include debunked claims related to medical treatments
• Ads shouldn’t contribute to negative self-perception

Google Regulations

Google also has rules related to medical device advertising. Here are a few: 

• Ads related to birth control and fertility are prohibited in some countries, like Iran and China
• Marketers are prohibited from promoting a medical product with any governmental or regulatory warning
• Promoting experimental medical devices and treatments is prohibited

Complying With Med Device Advertising Regulations

Note: Below is general information, but please consult legal professionals for best practices to ensure you’re complying with medical device advertising regulations.

Pay Attention to the Details

While medical device advertising regulations aren’t as extensive as, say, pharma ad regulations, focusing on the details is still crucial. Perfect your creatives and build detailed HCP audiences based on your goals. 

Paying attention to the details won’t just lead to better performance; you’ll be more likely to catch red flags and mistakes that could get you into trouble with Facebook, Google, the FDA, or the FTC, such as not including precautions and side effects. 

Stay Consistent Across Channels

In today’s healthcare ad tech ecosystem, running campaigns with ads across multiple channels is a necessity. Why? The average person has access to over 10 connected devices, the same devices that the medical device industry runs on. 

Given the complexity of omni-channel marketing, maintaining consistency is crucial to complying with FDA, FTC, Facebook, and Google regulations. This gets especially tricky on larger teams working cross-functionally. The key to success? Create a set of guidelines that each team member can reference. Even better, you can “perfect” one ad and then create different versions for the various ecosystems you’re operating in (mobile, desktop, etc.). 

Watch Your Competitors 

Pay attention to what your competitors are doing and whether the FDA or FTC is sounding the alarm on their content. If they are, take note and avoid their mistakes. 

Additionally, follow news and announcements from the FDA and FTC. The rules are modified from time to time, and you don’t want to misstep just as the regulations change or are being enforced more strictly. 

The 5 Best Tactics for Med Device Promotion

Video Advertising

Video ads are a powerful way to bring a medical device to life. It’s no wonder that: 

• 85% of businesses use video advertising
• Users are 27.4X more likely to click on a video ad
• Video content is 1,200X more effective than other formats

Given their impact, it’s no surprise that almost every digital ecosystem supports video. For example, you could:

• Use telehealth video ads to engage HCPs while they’re using EHRs at work
• Take advantage of in-stream video — like on YouTube — to engage HCPs while they’re watching video content
• Utilize display video ads to reach HCPs on endemic or non-endemic sites

Mobile & In-App Advertising

Mobile has become ubiquitous, which makes it a crucial avenue for engaging HCPs in and out of the office. For example, you could: 

 

• Combine mobile advertising and geofencing to target HCPs while they’re in a work mindset, i.e., at a medical office, hospital, addiction treatment center, medical conference — the opportunities are endless
• Engage HCPs with a brand awareness campaign while they’re commuting to work
• Use in-app advertising to reach HCPs while they’re utilizing medical apps used in clinical settings, such as UpToDate or MedPage

The power in mobile advertising lies in reaching the right HCPs, at exactly the right time. 

Contextual Advertising

We all care more about something when it seems relevant. If you’re a marketer, for example, who’s in the middle of coming up with smart KPIs to show their boss, you’ll be more likely to click on an ad for an analytics company than say an HVAC contractor.

The concept is called contextual advertising and it certainly applies to medical device advertising and promotion. Say, for example, you’re looking to promote a new surgical device to plastic surgeons. Your ads will likely resonate more on web pages that talk about “cosmetic surgery,” “plastic surgery procedures,” or “reconstructive surgery.”  

 

This medical device promotion strategy works. In fact, using super-specific keywords for a contextual ad campaign can increase brand awareness by as much as 93%. 

Point-of-Care Advertising 

Like contextual advertising, point-of-care advertising lets you deliver timely, relevant ads. However, it also allows for an added dimension: the ability to target your ads based on an HCP’s location. This is key when figuring out how to market medical devices.  

This capability enables you to focus your ad spend on HCPs who are in the medical mindset, reducing media waste. For example, you could promote a new pacemaker technology to cardiologists at an upcoming American College of Cardiology conference.   

Pop-up CTA button: Get Started With Point-of-Care Advertising 

Native Advertising  

As medical device companies increase their digital advertising efforts, it’s inevitable that some HCPs will get annoyed with the increased ad load. After all, 84% of respondents in a recent survey said ads were interrupting them too frequently. However, this is actually an opportunity to approach online ads the right way.

Enter native advertising, a tactic that enables you to engage HCPs with relevant ads, but in a way that blends with surrounding content. In other words, your ads will offer value to HCPs — without taking away from their user experience. 

[h2] 5 Steps for Launching Your First Medical Device Advertising Campaign

#1: Come Up With Med Device Ad KPIs

Start by asking yourself what you want to see at the end of a med device ad campaign:

• Do you want to build brand awareness among HCPs?
• Is your goal to increase demos by “XX” percent?
• Maybe you want to generate a certain number of in-person meetings? 

These KPIs could form the heart of a successful campaign. If you’re struggling to define your KPIs, think about your goals on these three levels:

• Awareness: You want your target market for medical devices to know about your product
• Consideration: You want HCPs to consider your device when they’re ready to buy one
• Conversion: You want more HCPs to buy your product

#2: Research Competitive Ad Strategies

Before deciding on a medical device business and ad strategy, study your competitors’ strategies while asking plenty of questions:

• What types of devices are your competitors marketing?
• Are they targeting HCPs? Which ones?
• How do they position their products?
• Which ad types and channels are they utilizing?
• Are they paying for keywords on search? Which ones?

Once you gain a closer understanding of how your competitors are using their budgets, use that information to build your campaign and differentiate from your advertising. 

#3: Build Your Audience

Building the right audience is the key to successful digital marketing for medical devices. How do you do that? It starts with utilizing clean, accurate HCP data.

Enter Health Union. Over 20+ years, we’ve built a comprehensive, first-party HCP database that includes 8M+ HCPs across every medical specialty and subspecialty. We let you tap into that data. 

To get started, go through your list and figure out which HCPs you want to target (or work with a med device ad vendor, like Health Union— we’ll handle this for you).

Say you’re trying to generate leads to sell a new defibrillator. First, you’ll want to find the people with purchasing power. To do this, you might go through your first-party data and then identify senior-level hospital executives and HCPs in cardiology. Next, you’ll want to advertise to your target audience on a 1:1 basis. For this, you’ll want your med device ad vendor to match the HCPs and executives to online identities. 

#4: Create a Content & Delivery Strategy

Some HCPs will see up to 10,000 ads in a day, so it’s important to use ad types that will stand out. Some of the most engaging include rich media mobile ads, interactive banners, and video ads.

The next step is deciding on your messaging. The secret here is to keep it short and sweet, and use phrasing that’s going to resonate with your HCP audience. Healthcare professionals don’t have a ton of time to spend on viewing ads, so your messaging needs to make it clear what’s in it for them. Show them how your device will improve care for patients. 

 #5: Measure & Optimize 

Okay, you’ve launched your campaign. Now what? Start here:

• Measure the KPIs you created
• Optimize the campaign
• Improve your strategy moving forward

The process begins by looking at your original goals. Were you after leads? Were you looking to boost conversions? Maybe you wanted more sales. Did they go up? Whatever your goals were, drill down and see if the campaign did its job. Next, take a closer look at specific elements:

• Did HCPs from certain locations engage with your ads more than others?
• Did certain creatives or messaging perform better than others?
• Did certain channels get more engagement? 
• Did shorter videos get more clicks than longer ones? Or vice versa? 

By answering these questions, you’ll gain insight into your target audience’s preferences and what you can do to maximize results moving forward — at a lower price. 

Wrapping Up: How to Boost Your Medical Device Advertising in 2022 & Beyond

As the medical device advertising industry continues to change, it’s crucial for healthcare marketers to understand their audiences and engage HCPs more meaningfully. Targeted campaigns grab the attention of HCPs, promote your medical device products, and grow your sales. However, finding the right med device advertising agency is the only way to boost your marketing efforts and take your campaigns to the next level. 

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Learn more about Health Union’s vision to transform data-driven, healthcare marketing: The HUman Side of Data.