ACTION PLAN

The first step in any strategic content marketing is a deep understanding of your audience, their needs, and challenges. You likely have numerous resources to provide you this insight, but what is important is getting insights that are recent – ideally, from the past two months.

• Consider gathering data from direct market research with a survey or conversation.

• Connect to your extended team who have frequent contact with customers (sales, customer service, purchasing).

• Use third-party data or social media observation to get further detail on the pulse of your audience.

• Tip: Review BMMG’s guide for defining customer pain points that may be useful in this research gathering phase, ElevatetheSignificanceofYourSolutiontoAdministration.

Next, outline potential scenarios for your content, and group them into categories. Questions to ask your team:

• What has changed?

• What may change in the next three months?

• How will you continue sales interactions?

• Are you able to attend professional meetings in-person?

• How can virtual engagements support your strategy? Tip: Review BMMG’s guidetoincorporatingvirtualtools

ACTION PLAN, continued next page

STRATEGY Stay Relevant with Empathetic Content Marketing

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

As marketers, we have all been educated in the fundamentals of the customer journey and how it is

imperative to reach, educate, and convert your audience with compelling content to achieve your goal; whether that be to sell a product, attend an event, or in some other way change behavior. That has not changed. For the past 10 years or more, the medtech industry has been experimenting with broadening its reach through social media, video, and email – spreading its wings from a content marketing perspective. However, today we are faced with shifting market conditions. The industry has historically dealt with a relatively static marketplace, but this has likely forever changed. As Augie Ray, VP Analyst for Gartner, recently pointed out, “Among marketing’s greatest challenges is foreseeing how customer

wants, needs, expectations, and purchasing decisions will evolve.”¹ In many ways, COVID-19 has exposed the cracks in our normally static content plan, and it is important to fix it. As medtech marketers, we tend to exceptionalize our marketing strategy. We tell ourselves that our situation is not the same as consumer marketing, so we can’t do the same things. We can’t be as responsive, as personalized, or as empathetic. This has set us back in many ways. As health system president Dr. Stephen Klasko observed, “I think we were always wondering what the big disruption would be that got us to join the consumer revolution, and I think this is it.”²The imperative is clear – stay relevant by updating your content marketing plan, or get left behind.

TIPSFORMAKINGEMPATHETIC

CONTENT • Understand that every decision your customer makes

is combined with an emotion: confidence, capability, exploration, safety –Identifyemotions,andelaborateontheminyourlanguagetoconnect.

• Reflect an understanding of your customer’s day and challenges–Forexample:Tellthemhowlongitwilltaketoconsumethecontent–“Thisisa4-minuteread.”

• Provide opportunities for self-learning and knowledge exploration – Decision-makingcanbealteredwhenemotionsareimpaired.³Byprovidingcontentandsteppingback,youdecreasepressureoncustomersandallowthemtoprocessontheirownschedule.

• Remember the tenet, “What’s in it for me?” – Thebestmarketingfeelsmorelikehelpingandalwaysbalancescustomerneedswithproductsolutions.Itisn’tone-sided.Demonstratethiscommitmentinyourlanguage.

• Humanize your content with personalization–Whenface-to-faceengagementisdecreased,beawareoflanguageandstyleinwrittencommunication.Dataisvital,butalwaysincludethe “humantouch”youwouldnormally includeinperson.

7 8

ACTION PLAN, continued

• Will staff furloughs or reductions affect our strategy?

Once research is done, pull your team together to review it – with the goal of creating new personas for each key customer group. Remember that personas and customer groups work for all audiences from patients to physicians. Assembling personas can be a detailed task, but this should not be a lengthy writing process. It’s an approach to help you keep your key customer in focus while you work through your content plan.

• Tip: Consult our Persona Guide for a template on how to create a quick tool to guide your content development and edits.

Next, assemble your content map, and look at each piece relative to the persona you have just created. New ideas

for reaching them or refreshing your content should be clearer now.

• Incorporate new ways to reflect empathy in your content.

• Consider repurposing older content with a layer of personalization and reissuing it as a revamped tool or program.

Finally, plan to change. Nothing is permanent. By planning to change, you are planning to stay relevant.

• Schedule regular check-in meetings with your content team to adjust and develop your plan, if needed.

• Tip: See BMMG’s GuidelinesforResilience for more information on change.

PITFALLS TO AVOID• Do not assume your content can be delivered in only one way – Make sure

you have a mix of channels and communication formats to meet audience need for each message and unique engagement. Every piece of content can be repurposed in multiple ways.

• Anticipate operational challenges to your content – Things like staffing furloughs, budget cuts, marketing stack accounts, and sales rep integration points may all have changed. Avoid getting caught off guard. Develop an organizational resilience plan. Tip: See BMMG’s GuidelinesforResilience.

• Avoid analysis paralysis – The goal is to create a working framework to make decisions and update content for relevancy. Perfection can come later.

PHYSICIAN CUSTOMER PERSONAS

Understanding your various customer types is critical to developing relevant empathetic content. Creating a PersonaGuide will help you keep your key customer in focus while working through your content plan, as well as enable your internal colleagues to talk the same language when referring to a particular customer group. Some persona examples could include:

The Academic

This physician is at an academic medical center affiliated with a university. His desire is to treat the most intense cases, conduct

research, and present/publish. He wants to ensure he has all the latest

and greatest technologies to reinforce his Center of Excellence.

The Chieftain

Department head or founder of a surgery center or specialty hospital, this physician must balance his clinical time with administrative tasks and

focus on the bottom line. He typically has lower procedure volumes than his colleagues.

The Chameleon

Likely working at a community hospital where this physician would “see it all” and would make decisions

on retaining patients locally or referring to an academic center for specialized and complex care.

The Workhorse

A head-down, focused physician who wants to tackle patient care with the maximum efficiency. Concerns are volume, room turnover, and predictability of his day. This physician may not be as interested in the advanced therapeutic interventions in favor of more bread-and-butter cases.

8

References1. Starita L. Adapt your marketing strategy for COVID-19. 2020. Accessed online May 8, 2020, at https://

www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/adapt-the-marketing-strategy-for-covid-19.2. Dyrda L. ‘This is healthcare’s Amazon moment’: Dr. Stephen Klasko’s 5 predictions on healthcare

delivery post-COVID-19. Becker’s Hospital Review. 2020, Accessed online May 8, 2020, at https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/this-is-healthcare-s-amazon-moment-dr-stephen-klasko-s-5-predictions-on-healthcare-delivery-post-covid-19.html.

3. Carroll B. How empathy will grow your sales and marketing pipeline. 2019. Accessed online May 8, 2020, at https://www.b2bleadblog.com/empathy-will-grow-sales-marketing-pipeline/.

VIGNETTE

The lead sales representative at NewCo, an emerging surgical technology company, was eager to market to the local surgical practice but was faced with the need to pivot from usual methods. Face-to-face engagement was limited in the hospital, so virtual contact was becoming the primary source of communication.

NewCo’s sales and marketing team drafted a personalized email to each of the providers in their regions, introducing the product and acknowledging constraints on in-person contact. The sales team placed a

brief phone call to the provider’s administrative assistant, inquiring about personal favorites for lunch. Each provider was invited to a private virtual lunch meeting, where a meal of their choice was delivered to their office via eatNgage just prior to the one-on-one meeting.

During the virtual lunch, NewCo’s device was introduced, and plans to move forward with hospital approval were discussed. More importantly, though, the team understood how each individual

was thinking, seeing, doing, and feeling, because they had already done “empathetic content” brainstorming sessions. In addition, they learned how to be prepared

for each customer’s “pains and gains.”

After each meeting, a personal note of appreciation – with acknowledgement of the provider’s increased stress related to the changing climate – was delivered. As a result, each encounter felt more like a conversation than a sales pitch.

480 E. Stirrup Trail, Monument, CO 80132 Toll-Free: (855) MED-MKTG Fax: (732) 399-8070

www.BichselGroup.com

Getting Started1. �Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting2. �If in person, make sure you have plenty of flipchart paper and markers3. �If electronically, customize our Virtual Gallery Walk template and determine what else you will need for a successful meeting

Getting Started

1. Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting

Getting Started1. �Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting2. �If in person, make sure you have plenty of flipchart paper and markers3. �If electronically, customize our Virtual Gallery Walk template and determine what else you will need for a successful meeting

Getting Started

1. Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting

Getting Started1. �Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting2. �If in person, make sure you have plenty of flipchart paper and markers3. �If electronically, customize our Virtual Gallery Walk template and determine what else you will need for a successful meeting

Getting Started

1. Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting

Getting Started1. �Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting2. �If in person, make sure you have plenty of flipchart paper and markers3. �If electronically, customize our Virtual Gallery Walk template and determine what else you will need for a successful meeting

Getting Started

1. Identify internal stakeholders, determine if you will meet in person or electronically, set up the meeting

Assemble your audience research and customer contact teams.

Schedule a brainstorming session to plan scenarios and map out market needs (known and predicted). Remember: Define key characteristics of your audience today.

Fill out brief Persona Guides for each major customer segment.

List ways for how your content plan may change to reflect new market and customer needs.

GETTING STARTED

• Guidelines for Resilience

• Customer Identification Tool – Persona Guide

• Add some fun! Lighten the mood and lift your team’s spirits before a brainstorming session by teeing up this classic melody from Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin

• Further reading:

○ How to Adjust Your Content Marketing Strategy during COVID-19

○ Hey Brands, Don’t Make 2005’s Mistake on Your Future Virtual Events

TOOLBOX

9 10