For ages healthcare marketers have used medical conferences to launch a new technology. We had very specific strategies to move customers through the sales cycle: from Brand Awareness, Consideration, Trial, and then Advocacy back in their home practice.
We all remember The Playbook:
- Advertising: Banners and posters throughout the convention center raise awareness of the new product and invite physicians to an industry symposium to hear from their peers.
- Lunchtime Symposium: Companies’ key opinion leaders outline the clinical rationale for the new product and the clinical results from well-controlled studies.
- Company Booth: A Booth provides hands-on demonstrations and commercial leaders can answer physician questions.
- “Contact my rep” cards: These provide critical lead generation so that a local sales rep can visit interested physicians following the symposium or conference.
The Playbook was unavailable in 2020 and, in our conversations with healthcare marketers, several new product launches flopped. Seems like everyone is struggling to find “The Playbook” that works in this remote era.
‘Zoom Fatigue’ is a real thing!
Is your attendance at company webinars lagging? Everyone, from societies to sponsors, is hosting webinars, and physicians tell us they’re overwhelmed by all these requests, and are “Zoom’ed out” at the end of the day and just want to get home to family.
Looking for a new way to get the word out to your customers about your 2021 new product?
Consider Hosting an Industry Symposium Podcast on the OTA or AOFAS Channel
A Industry Symposium episode is a new take on The Playbook. These podcasts are a highly educational experience featuring the company Key Opinion Leaders taking their peers through the scientific rationale and clinical data supporting a new product.
Similar to these non-CME events at conferences, these episodes are most effective when they are 30-45 minutes in length, highly interactive, and feature a host interviewing different KOL’s on the scientific information and then moderating a panel discussion.
What About Images?
I know what you’re thinking — but what about the images? It’s difficult to describe what a new product looks like without images, review data from clinical trials, and then discuss case studies without images.
The ConveyMED App supports images (charts, graphs, X-Ray’s, etc.) and can link to videos or other assets on your company website using a company banner ad embedded in the episode screen.
Will Anyone Listen? An OTA Case Study
What’s the most number of physicians you’ve had attend one of your Conference Industry Symposium? 100? 150?
An OTA sponsor hosted an industry symposium episode that was released on the OTA Channel in early December. The sponsor also inserted audio ads into 3 additional episodes to promote their Brand and invite physicians to listen to their symposium.
Our results suggest that there’s strong demand from orthopedic surgeons to learn about new products in this environment, and that these episodes have fantastic “Evergreen” properties as exemplified by the strong downloads in February.
Is this unusual? We average almost 1,000 downloads per week on the OTA channel, and the AOFAS channel is growing quickly.
The results:
Symposium episode: 740 downloads to date
80+ downloads in Feb
Episodes containing their audio ads: total of 1,650 downloads to date
150+ downloads in Feb
Industry Symposia on ConveyMED: The New “Digital” Launch Playbook
Based on the data above and the feedback from our previous customers, we recommend:
- Schedule an Industry Symposium Episode on the OTA and/or AOFAS channels.
- Build awareness of your product and episode with:
- 30-second Audio Ads on adjacent episodes (part of the package).
- Your social media and other digital assets.
- Encourage your reps to email links of the episodes to their customers.
- Pull through:
- Create a Landing Page for interested customers that we can link from Banner Ads (in the Convey App) and episode show notes (all other platforms).
- Encourage your reps to follow up with 1:1 meetings with interested customers. The feedback we’ve heard so far is that the reps love this new sales tool!
The Convey Studio
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we make this easy for you. We make it simple to produce your Industry Symposia episode, build your audio campaign, and get your message in front of the physicians you want to reach. You get the content approved and the KOL’s lined up, and we take care of everything else.
If you’re launching a new product in 2021, let’s schedule time to discuss an audio campaign on ConveyMED!
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