Medical Device Manufacturers
Medical device manufacturers are making major headway into the home product market with products aimed to save people the inconvenience of monitoring long term ailments at the hospital or their General Practitioner. The majority of medical device companies get a device from concept to manufacturing within two to three years, however many medical device companies have challenges with marketing and distribution of their new product.
Outdated Marketing
There is a difference between serious and solemn, however when it comes to marketing practices this has been overlooked for some time now for home medical devices. Sure, devices are created by professionals and as such formal marketing takes this to the user in the product however no medical device is ever sold without rigorous testing. After all, it is a medical device, yet marketing still has the hint of business-to-business professional neutrality to it instead of a business-to-customer approach expected in the home marketing sector.
What drives this cookie cutter marketing? Surely it isn’t the customers expectation to be sold to by stale marketing. Is it the professionals working on the design and development of the products? While it seems possible, they may have an unknown influence, it is more likely that it is marketing teams not wanting to go outside of its safe zone that they expect to use in business-to-business marketing. Is it the influence of the professional on the marketing and the fear of the marketing team not knowing anything about the product?
It is clear that the lack of information about the product and potentially the risk of asking more questions internally may be driving this and failing to get the product out to the retail market as successfully as it could be done. Can you name any marketing campaigns that were memorable as those in the latest shoes or headphones industries? Why not home medical industries? The size and maturity of the market is there, why not change marking practices and get larger returns.
Profitability Through Marketing
If we look at most medical device companies, they are SME’s and as such have around 20 people working in them with some staff sharing duties. The expectation is that the product will have smaller production runs for home markets as it is considered a niche; however, this may be a false assumption. If the scale of production is increased by medical device manufacturers to reduce the unit cost and modernized mainstream marketing used, there could be much larger returns to the medical device company and product exposure in the marketplace for uptake and adoption. Change what is a ‘needed’ product to a ‘desirable’ product.
Most medical device products that are not mass produced have a market entry price that prices it out of that sector. For example, blood-oxygen monitors that a person uses on their finger are only a few dollars yet they saturate the marketplace with many people owning at least one of them. With better marketing these could be pushed further along with higher-value products. Furthermore, if medical device manufacturers invested in mold tooling that lasts longer, they could be able to manufacture for more markets at the lower price points, increasing their overall market size significantly.
Directed Marketing
Medical devices add convenience to the buyer from potentially expensive hospital fees or to accelerate diagnosis, maintain effective monitoring of conditions or to battle long term conditions and improve quality of life at the same time. Some are ‘desirable’ products and some are ‘required’ by the user. Some people that have conditions don’t know about them; marketing may help save lives and expand the market size at the same time. Furthermore, the medical device companies that are smaller than can grow much larger and spend more money for development of future products.
