No matter which business you are in, marketing is a must to stay abreast with the competition around you. Be it a small marketing initiative or an elaborate marketing campaign, it involves a lot of strategy and understanding of customer psychology. You need to understand your market and find your target to market effectively. Marketing becomes much more complex when we are dealing with an industry like medicine  which essentially runs on trust and values.

It is not easy to commodify medical services as each service offered is entirely different from the other. Oncology, cardiology, neurosciences, diagnostics, orthopedics, rehabilitation and so on, there are a wide array of services offered by medical practitioners and each requires a distinct medical marketing strategy. An in-depth understanding of the science involved and the benefits they offer is crucial while devising a marketing strategy. If you are a medical practitioner and intend to use effective medical marketing services to reach your prospective clients, this post is for you. This is a list of the most essential constituents of an effective medical marketing campaign:

1. SWOT Analysis

The first step in any marketing campaign is to carry out an effective SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Understanding your line of medical practice and the industry on whole is very important before you carry out the below mentioned steps. Analyze the strengths of your service and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), things you need to work on, threats you need to face  in the future and opportunities you can encash.

2. Competition Analysis

This is one of the most important yet most neglected constituent of an effective marketing campaign. There are instances when big brands and businesses failed to do a competition analysis and eventually ran out of business. Keeping a close eye on your competitors, their success and marketing strategies is very crucial when it comes to sustainability and innovation. The idea is to never be complacent about one’s own success and to never underestimate a rising competitor.

3. Segmentation

Once you have analyzed your SWOT and have identified your competitors, the next step in a medical marketing campaign is to understand the market you serve. Be it geographic, demographic or psychographic,  use all possible metrics to segment your market into a clearly defined entity. It is easier to strategize when you have a clearly defined market.

4. Targeting

Though you have defined your market and the customers you want to cater to, you need to find your target customers who are specifically looking for the medical service you offer. It is easy to design a medical marketing campaign and its tone if you have a specific set of clients belonging to a pre-defined segment.

5. Goals

Goal setting is definitely one of the primary steps where the whole campaign is revolved around. A realistic definition of the goals is to be set in regards with the audience you are targeting; the outcomes you are expecting and the amount of time and money you are willing to spend to achieve this outcome.

6. Strategies

Every marketing campaign has a language of its own and a specific message it wants to convey. Medical marketing campaigns are no exception to this. In fact, marketing healthcare or dental services requires a unique strategy that encompasses compassion, trust and goodwill. Be it creatives, web design or execution, clear planning of the strategies is made to ensure the outcome of your marketing mediums and budget.

7. Marketing Mediums

We live in an extremely inter- connected world today where there is a wide array of mediums to connect with prospective clients. However, you need to careful while choosing these platforms and clearly define the strategies. Having a ‘one for all’ strategy for all the mediums may not work for a medical marketing campaign.

8. Marketing Budget

Last but not the least, you need to have a clear cut idea of the budget of your medical marketing campaign. You need to know the duration of the campaign, the resources needed and the people who are involved. Only when you have a cap on your budget is when you can strategize accordingly.

So you’ve invented a product, your patent was approved and production is underway. Now what? Where are you going to find buyers? How are you going to market it? How much will you sell it for? Will you sell it domestically, internationally, or both? Will you use general marketing, or direct marketing?

These are questions, everyone who has created a product has to ask themselves. Perhaps to make things easier, we’ll take a look at the differences between general marketing and direct marketing.

How General Marketing Differs From Direct Marketing

In part Investopedia, defines direct marketing ‘as removing the “middle man” from the promotion process, as a company’s message is provided directly to a potential customer.’ Another way to describe direct marketing is: Selling products by initiating direct contact with the prospective consumers. Direct marketing is different than general marketing because it’s a promotional technique that can be measured in terms of responses.

Alternatively, general marketing is not as personal as its counterpart, because it involves advertising, then hoping for a response. With direct marketing, a direct marketing company selects which individuals will be offered the promotion, and then it receives the direct responses instantly. You’ll see shortly how they get the numbers so quickly.

Types of Direct Marketing

Often associated with mail order marketing, direct marketing also includes other promotional media outlets such as televised infomercials, videotext services, and newspaper inserts. Obviously, if you have a product that appeals to the masses rather than a small market, direct marketing makes the most sense financially. But who’s going to do the direct marketing for your product? You, or a professional direct marketing company?

What is a Professional Direct Marketing Company?

A direct marketing company is a firm that specializes in helping product developers get their products directly in front of the consumer. They know what works, and what doesn’t. As well these firms usually don’t just deal with domestic markets, but international markets, too.

How a Professional Direct Marketing Company Helps Product Developers

•  They have a dedicated professional marketing and sales team.

•  They are experts in media, direct response television, marketing, product analysis, consultations, and sales solutions.

•  They ensure that products get the best media services, coverage, and guidance.

International Direct Marketing – Direct Response Television

If a direct marketing company has connections in the international market, they will have different associates in the firm, who speak various languages. And these members of the marketing and sales team will have the expertise and connections to translate and air your infomercials, send samples to interested parties, make important phone calls, attend international and domestic trade shows, and much more.

Who Benefits the Most From Direct Marketing?

The unequivocal beneficiary of direct response marketing is the inventor, or owner of the product being marketed, because of:

•  Unequaled “Track-ability”: Direct Response Marketing means instant access to the campaign results. By using unique URLs to get quantitative data and/or toll free number data, seconds after the ad is broadcasted. This gives you instant feedback on both the media placement and creative messaging. A general marketing advertising campaign can take months to get results, if they can even get any raw quantitative data at all.

•  Hard Data: Hard numbers provide a view of the campaign’s performance, and is used to make education decisions based on facts, rather than assumptions. Product developers will know exactly how many people called in to each station, or on each ad. Of those phone calls, they’ll know how many calls were answered, and how many of the callers actually bought their product.

Direct marketing shows which media outlet was profitable, as well as which creative message was successful. On the flip side, the results also show which media outlet was the least productive, and which creative message wasn’t successful.

All of the above is crucial to business people who have a product that they have to market because the numbers are indisputable. They cut out the guesswork, waiting, and wasted money. As you can see, your marketing choice depends on your product. If you have a product that appeals to the masses, direct marketing is the way to go. More specifically, direct response TV. And having a team of experts to back you up doesn’t hurt either, especially if they have international connections.