As it first appeared on MassDevice.com this past Friday
This past December I inherited the Medical Devices Group, the industry’s only spam-free, curated forum for intelligent conversations with medical device thought leaders. With nearly 110,000 members, the Medical Devices Group is the largest medical group on all of LinkedIn and the 45th-largest among more than two-million LinkedIn groups.
Here’s one for you old-timers.
Remember when your medical device marketing media plan was primarily print? Your media buyer would collect rate cards with numbers of subscribers and negotiate for the best cost-per-thousand impressions.
She’d negotiate with the publication’s sales manager who would invariably talk about “pass-along readership” to give a sense of the “true” number of readers exposed to your message.
Guess what?
Those little share buttons? The ones inviting you to email to a friend, tweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, update on LinkedIn, upload on YouTube?
That’s your new pass-along readership.
How are you leveraging it?
A recent Medical Marcom subscriber wrote me and said,
“I like your blog and your approach. In fact, the way you represent yourself through your content, it’s almost hard to tell how you make money. Now, that’s content.”
– John
John, I’m grateful for your compliment especially for the question it sparks for my readers:
How much value do visitors get from your website?
I’m assuming you have a smartphone. And I’m assuming it has a video camera.
How often do you use your phone’s video recorder to promote your business?
Here are three promotional ideas you can use right away.
I don’t mind admitting it. I thought a stent was a stent.
#MedDevice guest Sean Morris, the CEO of Veniti Medical, pioneers in the venous disease space, taught me something new. Today, there is no such thing as a dedicated stent for veins!
Well, not yet. That’s where Veniti comes in.
If your job remotely relates to medical device marketing, you’ve gotten this email:
“SEO Services for Top Google Ranking.”
The one I got this weekend has an “SEO discount offer going on right now.”
If you’re like most, you delete this. Are you being too hasty?
Exciting game!
And I can write about it all day.
But I will never, ever rank on Google for the term “New York Giants.”
So I should never even try to rank for “New York Giants.”
Today’s point:
It’s binary. If you can’t get on page one of Google, don’t even try.
Any money or effort you spend on search engine optimization for unattainable terms (“healthcare,” “sales training,” “New York Giants”) is a big, fat waste.
Cellsonic CEO Andrew Hague has an enviable problem.
What does he have to offer a well-heeled multi-national company looking to capitalize in the US?
Is it the beauty device that smooths out cellulite?
The shockwave medical device that heals wounds and injuries?
The low-cost medical device that can handle any mutant strain of malaria?
Mr. Hague tells me his Cellsonic machines do it all – but none of these indications are FDA cleared – and, without a predicate device on the market, trials will be very, very expensive.
Andrew explained the opportunity and outlined what he needs to do next.
Poor Yash Khanna.
Or, I should say, $3,000 poorer Yash Khanna.
Dr. Khanna wants you to attend his “Polymers & Plastics in Medical Applications” conference in Las Vegas on Feb. 29.
And don’t get me wrong, if you have anything to do with medical device manufacturing and engineering, you should probably attend.
But Yash completely wasted his money when he paid $3,000 for his email blast.
This effort was SO bad, in fact, shame on you, Mr. Publisher, for even letting it out the door!
I’m Joe Hage, a Wharton MBA and 20-year marketing professional. I specialize in marketing communication and strategy, lead generation, and social media for life science companies. I love what I do.
