Marketing Medical Devices: 10 Things I Have Learned

I’ve been marketing medical devices for most of my working life. Pacemakers, dialysis machines, defibrillators, patient transfer solutions, vascular therapy devices, urinary catheters – in fact you name it and I’ve probably worked with it.

During this time, I have learned quite a few things and thought I’d share my top 10 list of them with you. I will cover general marketing, distributor challenges, branding, importance of marketing working with a P&L, service portfolio management, inbound marketing, sales and marketing alignment and a few other topics.

If you are more interested in other B2B businesses than medical devices, please rest assured my learnings are quite transferable to most companies and businesses except for FMCG.

1. Most companies do market the same ways

What is it with medical device companies? To be rather frank about it — the marketing is boring, and you’d be pressed hard to find any novel ideas that stick out. We participate in the same trade shows and congresses year after year. We keep producing brochures with glossy covers. The images normally show either a nice product shot or an extremely happy patient (who’s e.g., about to visit the restroom but with the help of the X-product, it…