Internet marcomms: Some companies just “get how to do it”

Think of Doctors you know and ask yourself whether you can really see them Tweeting, checking their Facebook page or using Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Google+ or any of the array of so-called Social Media Vehicles. You just can’t, can you? These people are far too serious, far too clever, far too busy, far too proud to indulge their spare seconds on such frivolous activity… aren’t they?

Well, no actually. How many docs don’t carry an iPad? How many never check their emails? How many never check the Rugby results? Not to mention visiting the websites of their chosen specialty, or looking up papers on Pubmed. The internet could have been designed for these people.

What they might not do of course, is visit medical device company pages, let alone venture into that thing called “Social Media” which probably scares the living daylights out of most of them.

But here’s the thing…the internet is such a brilliant tool, so perfectly designed to offer real time information and updates to the busy medical professional, that while he might sneer at the more frivolous end of its capabilities, and while he may not use it much to engage with anyone, mark my words, he will. It’s far from fantastical to envision a spinal surgeon checking out the finer details of a complex minimally invasive lumbar interbody fusion on his iPad before a case. And if you’re the purveyor of expensive and intricate instrumentation to make this procedure happen, and if you make your instructions clear and explicit, why would he not go to your website and indeed use your product in the first place?

And if he does all that and it goes well, and you get to know about it, while he might have neither the time nor inclination to share it, might you not just be there to take away that burden?

And when you pop such news in your news section, or your press release or your blog, might not other specialists see it and nod approvingly?

And might they not contact said operator, possibly using some social media vehicle, with a view to applying the same solution in one of their own cases? Or even improving/addressing an issue they might have encountered?

This may sound a little far fetched (although it actually doesn’t), but evidence suggests that healthcare professionals are diving into the internet for key information about products and techniques at an exponentially increasing rate.

So if you’re a MedTech company and you’re not on the bus, you most certainly will be in a year or two. While it might look like time wasted right now, by the time it stgarts to feel valuable, you could have developed a lovely long history (which Google likes) and be seen as right up there.

Get it?

Posted on: Posted on: Posted in: Categories

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *