Surgeons are among the hardest-to-reach medical professionals due to their highly regulated work environment and high-pressure situations. They are often skeptical and reluctant to adopt new changes as they can impact their work performance in clutch situations. Surgeons rely on data and proven studies for decision-making, which makes it even more challenging for marketers and organizations aiming to target and approach these hyper-performing surgeons.
Businesses such as those offering AI-infused healthcare software, surgical equipment suppliers, medical device manufacturers, post-operative care solutions, and others must have their valuable services backed by conclusive medical evidence. Failing to do so would cause organizations to deviate from their growth trajectory and halt their marketing performance.
So, how do we market to surgeons? What strategies might work? Through this blog, we highlight the marketing strategies involved in marketing to surgeons. We also cover some of the other challenges you must consider when contacting the leading surgeons.
So let’s get this started.
Who Are Surgeons?
Surgeons are qualified healthcare professionals (HCPs) specializing in the diagnosis and performance of pre- and post-operative surgical procedures. They are also accountable for making the difference between life and death, so marketing to surgeons definitely does not come off easily.
Surgeons, as healthcare professionals, spend years honing their techniques and utilizing specialized equipment to ensure the safety and well-being of their users. This is why surgeons are often hesitant to experiment with new tools. They are extremely cautious about any new procedure or equipment they would use to deliver benevolent healthcare services. Overall, this makes it challenging for healthcare marketers to target Surgeons, which varies from targeting other healthcare professionals.
Challenges Encountered While Marketing To Surgeons
Marketing to surgeons has never been a cakewalk; there are several complications and challenges that can hinder your establishment’s ability to showcase its innovative products and services.
Here are some of the major challenges that can cause friction while promoting your services to the surgeons:
1. Working Hours and Time Constraints
Surgeons have a demanding work schedule, as they often deal with emergencies and life-threatening situations that require immediate attention. This makes it challenging for them to devote time to themselves for learning about new technologies, conducting research, or reviewing marketing resources.
Organizations in the healthcare category must prioritize in forwarding concise business information only. This must align with the target audience’s interests and hold beneficial value. Otherwise, it would not yield the desired results you expect.
2. Building a Business Relationship
Surgeons are prone to display resistance to accepting new technology innovations due to several risk factors that revolve around human life. They rigorously analyze the differences between the benefits and outcomes a product provides before accepting it. Implementing new products or services also slows down the productivity of surgeons until they develop complete familiarity.
Businesses can provide relevant, medical-certified research reports, white papers, and medical journals to appear reliable to surgeons and establish their brand credibility. The more credible and proven sources you provide related to your services, the better the possibility it creates for surgeons to consider your organization as authentic, thereby fostering long-term business relationships.
3. Privacy Regulatory Restrictions
Marketers frequently encounter challenges when attempting to reach out to surgeons due to stringent medical regulatory standards. Privacy regulatory acts, such as HIPAA and GDPR, are enforced to safeguard the contact profiles of healthcare professionals and other individuals.
Organizations can adhere to these privacy regulations by following the terms and conditions. Provide only genuine and valid marketing resources, which must be forwarded to the targeted recipients (surgeons). Marketers can also utilize medical study evidence resources through reports, research papers, and more.
Marketing to the Surgeon: Best Strategies for a Diverse Reach
Surgeons are the occupied medical professionals who cannot afford to waste their valuable time. Marketing to surgeons presents a unique challenge for healthcare marketers, as it differs significantly from targeting other healthcare professionals. Approaching these HCPs can also open doors for interacting with surgeons to achieve a better business outcome.
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Organizations that desire to market to surgeons must be vigilant in areas such as demonstrating business value and winning the trust of their target audiences. Furthermore, utilizing evidence-driven marketing resources and employing a combination of in-person and digital channels for networking and brand endorsement.
Here are the major strategies that can help you target the surgeons for promoting your services:
1. Understand the Needs of Your Audience
Decoding what your audience prefers is the maiden step to developing your marketing strategies. A generic approach for targeting the surgeons may not yield the desired results.
Here are a few aspects to consider:
Prioritize Surgeons Challenges as Your Target Goal: Every surgeon’s subspecialty has unique needs and challenges. Your business should be able to identify these challenges and demonstrate how the products or services you offer can make a difference.
Make Your Audience Feel Comfortable: Develop marketing resources that are familiar to surgeons. By this, we mean that you should incorporate medical terminology and a tone that matches the language used in medical settings to enhance the understanding of your services.
Spotlight Your Benefits for Visibility: Surgeons are always on the go in providing a high-quality user experience. If your service can enhance the productivity and performance of surgeons, ensure it is clearly visible to your audience. Avoid stuffing in your marketing resources and have the relevant and beneficial values positioned naturally.
Provide Additional Support and Training: Implementing new products or services by surgeons always requires supervision. Do not hesitate to provide the installation, training, or skill development support. Empathizing with and supporting your audience at this stage will help you form genuine, long-term business relationships.
Display cost-effectiveness: Organizations aiming to promote their developed services to healthcare professionals must focus on their cost-effectiveness. Emphasize the cost efficiency trait to bring it to the forefront and attract the attention of surgeons. Additionally, showcase how the surgeons can function optimally.
2. Establish Your Brand Credibility
Unlike other healthcare professionals (HCPs), surgeons have selective preference criteria for the products that are advertised to them. They require proven facts and medical evidence-based resources prior to even considering your organization.
Marketers can curate targeted promotional resources and support them with industry-proven reports, medical research papers, and other relevant materials to capture the interest of surgeons and their facilities.
Businesses should also be transparent in showcasing their industry expertise. Surgeons are trained medical professionals who perform surgeries based on their specialized skill sets. Ideally, they anticipate reading and interacting with potential organizations whose expertise is demonstrated publicly. Conduct in-depth research on each topic before presenting any resources, such as articles, video content, research reports, or other materials, to surgeons. This would demonstrate your industry knowledge across various subdomains.
3. Host Educational and Networking Events
The best way to interact and network with your audience is in person. Hosting events can help you break the ice with surgeons and other medical professionals from their facilities, thereby winning their trust.
With the help of interactive and other networking events, you can uncover numerous business opportunities to gain insight into your audience, seek expert advice, and engage in meaningful discussions. Additionally, offer live demos and practical guidance on how your service can enhance the functionality of surgeons.
You can also sponsor medical conferences to promote your services. Share your futuristic perspective with several surgeons and medical professionals to establish yourself as an industry leader.
4. Utilize Social Media to Generate Engagement
Social media has transformed how potential businesses utilize it to connect with surgeons and other medical professionals. 31% of healthcare professionals use social media for professional networking. With a wide range of social media channels, you can curate your business profiles to share informative posts, industry updates, client testimonials, how-to videos, event updates, and so much more.
Emphasize curating content that aligns with the search intent of the target surgeons to educate and update them with prompt responses, ensuring a positive user experience on social media channels. As a potential establishment, you can create your social media profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to develop a holistic approach to staying connected with your prospects for quality interaction and engagement. 84% of the B2B marketers agree that LinkedIn delivers the best value, followed by Facebook (29%) and YouTube (22%)
5. Use Content Marketing to Promote Thought Leadership
Content marketing presents an excellent opportunity for organizations to showcase their thought leadership and gain a deeper understanding of their target audience’s needs. It also helps marketers assert their expertise to gain the trust of their audience. Utilize your business website to showcase well-researched and well-written resources, such as industry-oriented articles, whitepapers, medical journals, and healthcare reports.
Marketers can also curate medical podcasts and video content tailored to the preferences of segmented surgeons, allowing them to exchange opinions on the latest industry trends and technologies. Businesses should also consider having SEO-optimized content resources. This would increase your organization’s visibility and also boost your ranking on the search engine result page (SERP). Overall, SEO-optimized content marketing can help your business deliver personalized resources directly to your target audience with ease.
6. Tag in Reviews and Testimonials
Customer reviews and testimonials are the greatest social proof you can showcase to win the trust of your audience and encourage them to rely on your organization. Furthermore, including positive testimonials on your sales pages can boost your sales performance up to 34%.
These customer reviews and testimonials portray your industry expertise and skills in upgrading the business productivity of previous surgeons and their organizations. Reading the positive and warm stories of other surgeons can ease the anxiety of your segmented target audience and boost your online reputation in your established industry vertical.
Overall, these factors lead to better decision-making and also alleviate the concerns of your audience. These testimonials and reviews add a humanized element that can be displayed through websites, social media, digital ads, and other channels.
7. Perform Email Marketing
Due to their tight work schedule, surgeons often face a time crunch when reading lengthy marketing materials. Email marketing is a balanced channel for networking with surgeons and promoting your brand. Businesses can utilize email marketing for various purposes, including sharing industry news, promoting educational opportunities, showcasing user-generated content, and conveying promotional messages, among others.
Keep an eye on the following elements to ace your email marketing campaigns:
- Develop a professional yet engaging subject line to attract the attention of the surgeons. According to OptinMonster, nearly half of the email recipients open emails solely based on the subject line. Meanwhile, 69% of email recipients mark an email as spam primarily because of the subject line.
- Keep it concise with scannable content, as surgeons will not have time to read lengthy emails. Anything included in the email must be value-oriented or for educational purposes. Although, healthcare marketing emails have an average open rate of
- Ensure that a targeted call-to-action (CTA) is included to guide the intended recipients to the next step. The purpose of the CTA is to make the user take action. Therefore, avoid generic CTAs to increase clicks, form submissions, and other conversions.
- Personalize your email marketing campaigns to appear familiar to the surgeons and boost engagement. A study conducted by HubSpot confirmed that 94% of the surveyed participants (marketers) believe that personalization boosts sales.
- Adhere to data privacy regulations, including HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR. This would help your organization avoid legal penalties.
- Ensure that your emails are compatible with various devices, as this can significantly impact the growth and performance of your marketing campaigns.
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8. Collaborate With Surgeons and Similar Healthcare Professionals
Establishing a formidable network range can help organizations expand their connectivity. It cultivates a sense of mutual interaction and, if executed well, can lead to positive word-of-mouth marketing. This helps organizations gain in-depth knowledge about specific healthcare approaches and treatment procedures through real-life instances.
Marketers can also host a series of workshops to showcase their products and demonstrate their usage, leveraging advancements in technology and cost-effectiveness. Thus, it fosters multidisciplinary collaboration and also increases the positive image and trust of your audience in your brand.
Reach out to relevant physicians and other key opinion leaders (KOL) who can help you extend your client base. Furthermore, they attract the attention of targeted prospects due to their industry reputation, resulting in increased sales and collaborative partnerships with potential clients.
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9. Deploy Paid Advertising Campaigns
Combine paid advertising with other organic channels to gain visibility in the fast-paced healthcare industry. Platforms such as social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, X) and Google ads, PPC ads are among the most effective digital advertising channels, enabling you to target specific demographics and segment audiences based on your marketing strategies.
Factors to consider while strategizing on your paid advertising campaigns:
- When developing your ad campaigns, marketers must clearly highlight their unique selling points (USPs) from the outset. Since, the average click rate for health-related Google ads is just
- Focus on the targeted benefits while marketing to surgeons, and be transparent about the abilities of your products to remain composed and credible.
- Incorporate client testimonials and offer industry-driven marketing resources that provide valuable benefits to surgeons, encouraging them to engage further with your establishment.
- Personalize the elements in the ads according to your prospect’s preferences. Position your CTAs effectively to drive specific actions from your target audience.
- Ensure your ad campaigns are SEO-optimized to appear visible in the search results.
Wrapping Up
Marketing to surgeons is a meticulous process that must be executed with precision. Organizations aiming to target potential surgeons must ensure that they develop their brand reputation and visibility in the market beforehand. With a strong online presence, informative business resources, social media engagement, user-generated testimonials, and other effective techniques, you can attract the attention of your ideal prospects.
Our blog aims to highlight the vital strategies that can help you effectively market to surgeons. With a balanced approach in digital and in-person marketing initiatives, you can gain a competitive edge and establish trust with your audience. The right blend of these tactics can significantly boost your marketing endeavors, expanding your sales performance and client.