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This article was originally written for and published by MedCity News.
It’s a common misconception that marketing only becomes involved in the last stage of a medtech product’s launch. In actuality, medtech marketing is – or should be – collaborating throughout the entire product lifecycle.
From the outset, marketing teams can play a significant role in delivering research and customer input, making sure that marketing criteria are met throughout the development process. In addition, marketing teams can be invaluable for preparing the field for launch, and managing post-market activities and field service. If marketing’s participation isn’t already incorporated into a company’s official product development process, they’re missing the boat on opportunities to make a product most successful.
So what are some ways marketing can further contribute to medtech product success?
Upstream marketing for R&D
Upstream marketing takes place when marketers collaborate with product development to ensure that customer input and regulated marketing criteria has been incorporated before a new product or new iteration of a product is being manufactured.
Teams in charge of marketing, as well as sales, have the most direct access to the field and, as a result, the best understanding of what customers require. They conduct competitive research, get input from healthcare professionals or patients, and are aware of current market conditions in real time.
With this insight, upstream marketing teams can not only inform product development, but also impact the products that will be proposed. This should all be part of a formalized development step rather than marketing being consulted as an afterthought.
Upstream marketers must choose how, when, and where to sell the product, depending upon the markets being targeted. This information will change based on the country. For example, direct sales are less burdensome in the US, but businesses in Europe might collaborate more regularly with a distributor. Each of these important decisions require a particular set of marketing information, and this all takes place before being handed off to downstream marketers to publicize and sell the product.
Downstream marketing for product launch
When design and development are underway, it’s time to plan for the crucial product launch, which includes making sure that the sales materials, labeling, and marketing collateral are available at the right release cycles.
While new features and product differentiation details are important, visibility to high-quality information is what downstream marketers in the medtech industry value most. This is why marketing needs to have access to R&D efforts and product specifications. In order to compare which previous complaints were addressed by engineering and which resulted in unfavorable outcomes, visibility is required. Marketers want to know why problems occurred, how many there were, and how they were resolved. Above all, how can they include these resolutions into the quality guarantee for the next product or product iteration to ensure customer satisfaction?
For the medtech industry, the stakes are high — with a mistake in handling a complaint possibly having a major impact on a patient’s quality of life.
The role of product sales & service
Often a medical device salesperson is in the operating room with the surgeon and occasionally knows more about the newest product than the doctor does. In order to help realize the maximum benefit, they are the ones who frequently assist physicians and other healthcare providers in understanding a device’s full abilities and newest features.
Given this, salespeople receive some of the most insightful feedback and suggestions for improving a product’s design for its next generation — all valuable information for marketing and R&D to have.
For example, sales can provide real-world success stories and surgeon testimonials to marketing so they can be leveraged to demonstrate product efficacy and highlight its value proposition. Additionally, support teams, in their role, can provide feedback to marketing that helps them develop targeted educational materials for healthcare providers.
Driving marketing’s impact
So how can companies ensure their marketing is most productive? It requires marketing to work in parallel with product teams throughout the entire product lifecycle.
For example, oftentimes, once a product has been developed and the marketing team is getting ready to launch it, there’s a scramble. They need to track down all the collateral, all the labeling, the instructions for use, videos, assets, etc., essentially everything that’s needed to package up the product and begin selling it.
All too frequently, these materials are developed far too late in the process, well after the product is prepared to ship. The main reason for this is because all of the information they contain needs to be located, verified, validated for accuracy, and then sent to a creative team to actually produce.
What needs to happen instead is that product and marketing teams should be working synchronously.
What might this look like in practice? As medtech marketers know, marketing collateral must go through its own lifecycle and change control processes, similar to the product itself given how strict the industry is. This means that marketing is subject to approval processes that, in any other field, would seem excessively onerous to marketing teams.
There are modern technology platforms available that enable marketing to decide how much oversight each piece of collateral needs. These platforms can also easily set up strict controls if a specific asset needs more or less control, as well as who needs to sign off on approvals and when. Additionally, processes can be established to trigger notifications to approval teams on the engineering and product teams.
By customizing change controls for each piece of collateral and ensuring the product teams are part of the process, the majority of marketing material is freed up from lengthy, restrictive approval procedures — enabling companies to move quicker and more effectively with a product launch.
If marketing assets are stored and managed in the same platform as a company’s Marketing Legal Regulatory (MLR) approval process as well as engineering information and activities, it enables the teams to collaborate effectively. Everyone has access to everything they need, and time to market is much shorter, which is critical in medtech.
Working in parallel
When marketing and product teams work in parallel, it’s advantageous on both sides — and to the company as a whole. Marketing gets up-to-date, real-time product information, while product development makes sure they’re designing the right products, for the right customers, in the right markets. This is why it’s most impactful to have marketing integrated into the full product lifecycle.
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