The B2B healthcare marketing landscape is only growing more complex, with stakeholders prioritizing value-based care, challenges with regulatory compliance and staffing shortages. Marketing success demands credible, buyer-centric campaigns that speak directly to these evolving pain points.
Whether your target audience includes hospitals, healthcare start-ups or pharmaceutical companies, B2B healthcare marketing requires a cohesive strategy rooted in credibility and tailored to your buyers’ pain points. Below, we explore nine actionable tips to sharpen your approach.
Key Takeaways
- Credibility matters in healthcare. Marketing can be a powerful tool to build trust with your target audience.
- B2B healthcare marketers face unique challenges. Staffing shortages, combating misinformation and large buying groups are a few key challenges.
- Case studies and peer reviews are critical. Be sure to invest resources into creating these content assets as they help establish trust and credibility.
- Partnering with associations could be a powerful lever for healthcare marketing. They are viewed as highly credible in the industry and marketers should consider partnering with these organizations as part of their media plan.
Why B2B Healthcare Marketing Matters
Credibility Drives Influence
While credibility matters across most industries, it’s particularly essential in healthcare. Marketing campaigns must deliver credible, relevant value to build trust with target audiences.
Digital Marketing Journey
Today’s healthcare buyers complete most of their customer journey online, before ever contacting sales representatives or the company directly. For this reason, organizations need to create content and campaigns that engage prospects earlier and more effectively.
Top Challenges Facing B2B Healthcare Marketers
From staffing shortages to misinformation, B2B healthcare marketing offers a set of unique challenges, including:
Investing in Data
According to a survey by Huron, there was a 47% increase in challenges related to the investment in data structures for better decision-making. Despite the promise of AI and analytics tools, many healthcare marketers still lack the infrastructure needed to make informed decisions and maximize campaign ROI. Data-driven B2B marketing strategies make for better campaign outcomes, making this a vital investment for healthcare companies.
Staffing Shortages
The current healthcare market is dynamic, with many roles experiencing shortages. 9 out of 10 healthcare executives expect the nursing shortage not only to continue, but to worsen. If you are using account-based marketing (ABM) tactics to target this demographic, prospect data can become out of date very quickly.
Beyond audience considerations, healthcare shortages impact the entire system, including executive priorities and budget discussions.
Complex Buying Groups
Most B2B healthcare purchases involve a complex and large team of stakeholders. For example, if you are focused on healthcare IT, 84% of stakeholders involved in healthcare IT decisions are not in IT roles. Effective campaigns must appeal to a range of job titles and roles.
Creating Content
Content creation can be a big hurdle for healthcare marketers due to strict regulations. For many healthcare marketers, each piece of content may need to undergo several rounds of review before being launched.
Combatting Misinformation
As a B2B marketer, your direct stakeholders may not be patients. However, misinformation still impacts your decision-makers, who may work directly with these individuals. In fact, 70% of Americans have encountered misinformation related to healthcare, which can erode trust across the entire industry.
10 Tips for Stronger Healthcare Marketing Strategies
While healthcare marketing can be challenging, marketers have a lot of tools in their arsenal to create strong campaigns. Below are some tips for stronger B2B media plans:
1. Define Goals and Align Teams
The planning stage of a campaign is a great place for marketing and sales to get aligned on what key objectives should be. This can involve steps such as determining if there is a target account list or defining the challenges the buying committee may be facing. This alignment helps ensure that your strategy is focusing on the best B2B marketing channels possible to reach your goals and business objectives.
2. Diversify Media Mixto Avoid Ad Fatigue
Video is a great tool for building B2B brand awareness, since it involves multiple senses. With CTV, companies can target their audiences without wasting media dollars. Many media publications offer video channels, allowing teams to expand reach and credibility.
However, these ad formats are also susceptible to ad wear out, making it important to combine them with other types of media, such as programmatic B2B display and audio.
3. Write in Easy-to-Understand Language
B2B healthcare marketing is often loaded with complex jargon, especially when dealing with a highly technical audience. However, 80% of B2B healthcare decision makers preferred simple and easy-to-understand language in marketing materials. They were also more likely to act on the call-to-action in the campaign if the content was in simple, concise language.
4. Proactively Create Several Versions of Creative
It’s important to refresh creative, especially in programmatic, CTV and LinkedIn. If your company has a long regulatory process, get several versions approved in the first iteration. Set regular checkpoints to get new creative in process before you need it — keeping content fresh while avoiding delays.
5. Tailor Content to Each Member of the Buying Committee
Effective content marketing in healthcare requires a nuanced approach. Brands need to consider how to reach each member of the buying committee and what type of content to use.
Content marketing efforts will need to align with each decision-maker’s and influencer’s pain points. These will also need to be promoted on channels these buyers already engage with, including LinkedIn, associations and leading industry publications.
6. Highlight Case Studies and Peer Reviews
Trust drives decisions, especially in a highly regulated industry like healthcare. A study from HIMMS, found that 83% of healthcare buyers value evidence of proven success with other healthcare companies when selecting a vendor.
Case studies, testimonials and review sites carry even more weight in the AI era, where authenticity is under heightened scrutiny and buyers are still looking for a human element when researching vendors.
7. Consider Brand Safety Across Programmatic
Since healthcare is built on trust, it’s important to ensure teams have a strong brand safety plan in place when purchasing ads programmatically. This may include blacklisting sites known for misinformation or using contextual targeting to avoid specific topics. Regularly auditing your placements to ensure your ads are appearing in credible and brand-aligned environments helps keep your strategy on track.
8. Don’t Forget about Retention
According to one survey, only 6% of healthcare marketers are investing heavily in customer retention — despite companies having targets of 91% retention.
Since retaining a customer is much cheaper than acquiring new customers, don’t let your retention strategy fall to the wayside. This can include tactics like in-person events, direct mail campaigns and custom webinars.
9. Partner with Trusted Industry Associations
If your target audience involves doctors or nurses, invest in partnerships with associations. In fact, 81% of healthcare professionals consider these trustworthy, making them high-impact channels.
Medical professionals are heavily involved in their respective associations, which can even provide them with certifications, research and CME credits. By partnering with an association, you can build trust with your audience. Many of these associations offer webinars and in-person events, which allow you to form personal relationships with prospective clients.
10. Supplement ABM with Category Targeting
If your team is building an ABM strategy, consider including campaigns focused on wider categories, such as job titles and company size. Since workforces are dynamic, this still allows you to expand your reach across the right audience, which is one of the biggest determinants of campaign success.
Final Thoughts
While the B2B healthcare landscape is complex and demanding, marketing to these individuals doesn’t have to be as complicated. With the right strategy — built on trust, clarity and channel alignment — your team can create campaigns that truly drive results.
Need help building smarter healthcare campaigns? Reach out to our team today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between B2C and B2B healthcare marketing?
B2C marketing refers to business-to-consumer, and this will include products marketed directly toward patients. B2B healthcare marketing refers to products marketed directly to businesses, such as pharmaceutical companies or hospitals.
What content works well in B2B healthcare?
Webinars, white papers and blog posts work well in B2B healthcare. Case studies and peer-reviewed articles in medical journals are also really important in healthcare for establishing credibility.
