In the competitive medtech industry, having promoters and advocates can
significantly boost your business. These individuals or groups can amplify your
brand, increase credibility, and drive growth. This article covers the different types of
advocacy, how to leverage ambassadors as part of your marketing plan, and
provides ideas on cultivating your relationship with them.
Linking Advocacy to Business Needs
Before developing brand and product promoters, it’s crucial to define where
advocacy can have the biggest impact on your current and future business. Is there
a part of your portfolio that is especially reliant on peer reviews, or are you launching
innovative technology that requires the approval of key industry leaders? Do you
need advocacy in one specific geography or worldwide? Answering these questions
helps you understand what business needs are supported by an advocacy approach.
What Type of Advocacy Should I Invest In?
Advocacy can be organic or formal. Organic advocacy comes from naturally
enthusiastic customers who recommend your solutions without any formal
agreements. This is more common in the consumer industry but can occur in B2B,
especially if you have a unique and innovative product.
Formal advocacy involves agreements where customers or hospitals speak or post
about the positive effects your technology has had on their outcomes.
Within healthcare there are different types of advocates, so you will need to select an
of ambassador that has the biggest impact on your business goals. For clinical sales,
peer-to-peer advocates such as physicians are ideal. For broader topics like value-
based care or sustainability, thought leaders who can engage diverse audiences are
more effective. You may however be looking for a key opinion leader on a specialist
topic like the HIE.
Steps to Creating and Leveraging Advocates
1. Focus on the customer experience.
There’s no foundation for advocacy without your customer being first convinced
about your product, so it’s important to ensure that your customer is always getting
the most out of the innovations they have invested in.
Helping end-users optimize their technology is an ongoing process, where
continuous education and support is key, this includes delivering a comprehensive
and robust onboarding process with tutorials, training sessions, user guides, and
face-to-face support, as well as ongoing continuous and prompt support for the
lifetime of the product.
As most users only ever end up utilizing a fraction of the systems they buy, it’s also
crucial to tailor a learning program that helps caregivers use the relevant advanced
features at a point in time that makes most sense. How-to platforms such as those
from www.simpi.com/medical are ideal for on-the-job and in context end-user support
allowing caregivers to benefit from the full value of your solutions.
2. Select the Right Advocates
Based on the completed assessment of what type, expertise, speciality and location
of advocate would have the most impact for your business, you can now develop
some key selection criteria and start your search.
Think also about how you will leverage the individuals, which channels will you use
to reach your customers, and what type of content your potential clients are most
likely to engage with from your thought leader.
With these criteria in mind, make a short list of potential ambassadors , review their
capabilities against your needs, and start approaching your preferred advocates to
discuss a potential collaboration.
3. Leverage your ambassadors!
Promote!
One approach is to empower your advocates to promote themselves as well as your
technology. This can be as simple as providing images and written content for them
to amplify, but can extend to a comprehensive promotional plan that includes
videos, speaking opportunities, and more. Providing platforms such as a user group
hub and supporting their sharing of expertise via case studies, webinars, and
industry events is another effective strategy.
Invest in research and product development
Collaborating on research projects with academic institutions and industry partners
not only benefits the healthcare industry as a whole but also strengthens the
credibility of your advocates.
Including advocates in your continuous product development processes is another
crucial step. Ambassadors typically like to have their voices heard and feedback
incorporated into the latest innovations. This involvement benefits both parties and
allows your advocate to speak more authentically about why your technology is
having an impact.
Partnerships
Finally, putting strategic partnerships in place with hospitals and individuals can help
formalise the agreements and provide a clear roadmap and metrics on which to take
the plan forward.
Ethical considerations
Ensuring advocacy programs adhere to industry regulations, standards, and ethical
guidelines, particularly for medical professionals is crucial. These rules are
constantly being updated and can differ per country but some key ones to refer to
are the USA’s sunshine act, the European Union’s EFPIA disclosure code, and the
MECOMED guidelines in the Middle East.
Compliance is not just a legal requirement, it also fosters trust and ensures that your
advocates are seen as authentic and reliable sources of information.
Don’t forget your internal teams!
There is an abundance of highly qualified experts within Medtech corporations.
These individuals can also be used as thought leaders, as well as product and
brand ambassadors, so they should be included in any advocacy plan.
Conclusion
Creating promoters and advocates in the medtech industry starts with a great long
term product experience supported by how-to platforms such as
Selecting the right advocates for your business needs is also key. Leveraging your
ambassadors using the outlined strategies will cultivate strong, long-lasting and
authentic advocacy and drive significant growth.
About the author: Sarah Morton has over 25 years’ experience in the healthcare
industry. A former Philips employee, she held a variety of leadership roles from
marketing strategy, and engagement to sales excellence and customer education.
Sarah is an independent consultant at www.unplainjane.net and a keen advocate for
continuous innovation in the customer journey.
Originally from the UK, Sarah has been based in the Middle East for the last decade,
and in her free time is a keen creative writer and amateur stand-up comedian.