Opportunities for Marketing Undeveloped in the Life Cycle of Medical Products

The general misconception is that marketing only participates in the final stages of MedTech product launch. In fact, MedTech marketing is or should – collaborate throughout the product lifecycle.

From the outset, the marketing team can play an important role in providing research and client input, ensuring marketing standards are met throughout the development process. Additionally, marketing teams are invaluable for preparing to start and manage aftermarket events and on-site services. If marketing involvement has not been included in the company's official product development process, then they will miss the ship, which is the opportunity to make the product the most successful.

So, some ways can marketing further promote the success of MedTech products?

R&D upstream marketing

Upstream marketing occurs when marketers work with product development to ensure that customer input and regulated marketing standards have been identified before manufacturing new products or new iterations of new products.

The team responsible for marketing and the sales team, most directly accessing the field, and therefore, the best understanding of the customer needs. They conduct competitive research, get input from healthcare professionals or patients, and have real-time insights into current market conditions.

With this insight, upstream marketing teams can not only inform product development, but also impact the products to be proposed. This should all be part of the formal development step, not as an afterthought marketing solicitation.

Upstream marketers must choose how, when and where to sell products based on the market they are targeting. This information will change according to the country. For example, in the United States, the burden of direct sales is less burdensome, but European businesses may work more regularly with distributors. Each of these important decisions requires a specific set of marketing messages, all before being handed over to downstream marketers to promote and sell products.

Downstream marketing of product releases

When design and development are in progress, it’s time to plan for key product launches, which include ensuring sales materials, labels and marketing collateral are available in the right release cycle.

Although new features and product differences are important, the visibility of high-quality information is the most valuable for mid- and downstream marketers in the MedTech industry. This is why marketing requires access to R&D efforts and product specifications. To compare previous complaints filed by the project, visibility is needed. Marketers want to know why the problem is going on, how many problems are there and how to solve it. Most importantly, how do they include these resolutions in the quality assurance of the next product or product iteration to ensure customer satisfaction?

For the MedTech industry, the stakes are high – handling complaints can have a significant impact on the patient's quality of life, which is wrong.

The role of product sales and service

Usually, medical device salesmen are in the operating room with surgeons, occasionally knowing more about the latest products than doctors. To help achieve the maximum benefit, they often assist physicians and other healthcare providers in understanding the full capabilities and latest features of the device.

In view of this, salespeople will receive some of the most insightful feedback and suggestions to improve the design of the next generation of products – all valuable marketing information and research and development.

For example, sales can provide real-world success stories and surgeon testimonials for marketing, so they can be used to demonstrate product efficacy and emphasize its value proposition. Additionally, the support team provides feedback on marketing in their roles to help them develop targeted educational materials for healthcare providers.

The impact of driving marketing

So, how do companies ensure their marketing is the most productive? It requires marketing to work in parallel with product teams throughout the product life cycle.

For example, usually, once a product is developed and the marketing team is ready to launch it, there is a battle. They need to keep track of all collateral, all labels, instructions for use, videos, assets, etc., essentially everything they need to package the product and start selling it.

These materials were developed too late in the process, after the product was ready to ship. The main reason for this is that all the information they contain needs to be obtained, verified, ensure accuracy, and then sent to the creative team for actual production.

Instead, what needs to happen is that the product and marketing team should work in sync.

What will this look like in practice? As MedTech marketers know, marketing collateral has to go through its own life cycle and change control process, and given the industry’s rigor, the product itself is similar to the product itself. This means marketing is bound by the approval process, and in any other area, the marketing team seems to be too heavy.

There is a modern technology platform that allows marketing to determine the amount of supervision of each collateral requirement. These platforms can also easily set up strict controls if a particular asset requires more or less control and who needs to be approved and when to sign. Additionally, processes can be established to trigger notifications to the approval teams of engineering and product teams.

By customizing change controls for each collateral and ensuring that the product team is part of the process, most marketing materials can be released from lengthy, restrictive approval procedures – enabling companies to move faster and more efficiently through product launches.

The team can work effectively if the marketing assets are stored and managed together with the company's marketing legal regulatory procedures (MLR) approval process and engineering information and activities. Everyone has access to everything they need, and the time to market is much shorter, which is crucial in MedTech.

Work in parallel

When marketing and product teams work in parallel, both parties have advantages – for the entire company. Marketing gets the latest real-time product information, while product development ensures that they design the right products for the right customers in the right market. This is why marketing is the most influential throughout the product lifecycle.

Photo: Nuthawut Somsuk, Getty Images

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