Updated: October 2024
Healthcare marketing has become more important than ever before as the COVID-19 pandemic has left many people scared to visit hospitals and purchase healthcare-related products. At this difficult time, it is important that healthcare marketing strategies are developed to put the customers' minds at ease, nurture relationships, and provide helpful information to ensure business growth and customer trust.
A powerful inbound B2B healthcare digital marketing and account-based strategy, combined with customer relationship management software, can accomplish all of the above and help healthcare businesses grow and thrive in the new normal.
Before we begin unpacking how to create a successful B2B marketing campaign for businesses in the healthcare industry, let’s take a look at the challenges B2B marketers may face for the upcoming 2025 year.
One of the biggest challenges that B2B healthcare marketers face is reaching the right businesses through their digital marketing efforts. With Google tools such as WebMD and online medical chat rooms, it has become difficult for healthcare businesses to rise up the Google and related search engine results ranks. Not only is search engine optimisation becoming difficult, but the users actively seeking your healthcare website are usually the general public and not business owners. With this in mind, it is becoming difficult to connect with the right B2B customer base.
B2B sales are complex, and the process of making a B2B sale lies in the hands of multiple players, from the selection committees to finance departments, CEOs, and decision-makers. Now, if you add hospitals or healthcare into the mix, the process is even more tedious and complex. When it comes to healthcare business, the B2B sales process can take months, even years and, because of this, healthcare marketers need to create lead nurturing strategies that engage and delight businesses during this time.
With so many regulations in place, healthcare marketers need to navigate their efforts according to various rules and industry-related factors. Marketers must be well-versed in compliance requirements and careful about the information they distribute to their clients, ensuring everything meets industry standards. With this in mind, content creation can quickly become a long, drawn-out task, and in turn, content marketing gets put on the backburner.
With so many obstacles in place, marketers can quickly become overwhelmed when it comes to B2B marketing for the healthcare industry. However, with a strong inbound marketing strategy in place, all of the above issues can be seamlessly managed and navigated.
According to a study conducted by HubSpot, 70% of marketers are relying on content marketing to gain quality leads. Content marketing is vital for successful B2B marketing, and this is why it’s important that you work with an agency or team that has an understanding of digital content creation, distribution, and marketing.
By creating high-quality, consistent, and relevant content, you have the power to establish your business as a healthcare industry leader. By distributing this content on your social media pages, including LinkedIn (a vital tool for B2B marketing), on your blog, and in email newsletters, you will reach decision-makers and, in turn, increase sales.
When creating a marketing strategy for the healthcare industry, you must have long-term goals. As stated previously, the B2B sales process takes time, and you have to create campaigns that reach your prospects at every stage within the buying cycle. By capturing leads through lead generation campaigns and lead forms, you can store your lead data and send out campaigns to leads based on where they are in the buying cycle. This is where Customer Relationship Management tools such as HubSpot become important.
CRM platforms such as HubSpot give you the opportunity to manage your healthcare campaigns and leads in a centralised place. Not only does HubSpot offer a marketing platform, it also has a sales platform that allows you to track all your clients and leads as they move through the sales funnel. This makes it easier for your sales team to track, organise and manage your sales data by syncing your lead data in a single place and logging sales activities effortlessly.
HubSpot also has a feature that allows your team to view the sales pipeline of every potential client and current customer, and you can create your deal dashboard to suit your long-term B2B healthcare sales strategy.
As stated previously, the sales process for the healthcare industry is a long process; however, account-based marketing makes the process of inbound marketing for B2B more streamlined and efficient. Account-based marketing, also referred to as ABM, is a B2B marketing strategy focusing its resources on key accounts within an industry.
This strategy makes use of highly personalised campaigns that are intricately designed to engage with each account, basing the marketing message on the specific needs of the particular account. For businesses in the healthcare industry that target accounts with longer sales cycles and bigger deal sizes, ABM is ideal.
Learn more about account-based marketing for B2B marketing here.
To ensure your marketing efforts get results, a sales team should be a part of the process - especially when it comes to B2B marketing and B2B lead generation.
CRMs such as HubSpot can bring your marketing and sales team together in a single place. Through this software, both teams can understand where every lead is within the buying cycle, and the sales team will have a fully-rounded understanding of which leads are MQLs and which are SQLs. This means that no potential sale gets lost, and every lead can be tracked and monitored effectively.
If you want to secure buy-ins from decision-makers and business owners, you must ensure your inbound marketing campaign is of the highest quality. It's important that every campaign, from lead generation campaigns to social media campaigns, are tracked and measured.
Important metrics to analyse include:
If you want to ensure your campaigns are working to the best of their ability, you need to measure, test, edit, and evolve your strategy based on what you learn about your audience through metrics.
By taking on this approach and having clear numbers and statistics in place, your marketing team can focus on delivering the best results for your B2B marketing efforts. CRM platforms provide you with in-depth tracking and measuring tools to ensure your marketing team can report on their campaigns and monitor their success.
If you put time and effort into your B2B sales strategy by understanding your audience, creating relevant content, promoting that content on powerful platforms, and continuing the conversation, you will make more sales in 2025.
Ready to elevate your B2B sales strategy? NEXA has generated highly qualified leads for healthcare businesses for over a decade. With our proven experience, we can help your business drive sales and growth.