Audience Targeting Strategies for Medical Marketing

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies face unique challenges in connecting with HCPs, patients, and stakeholders. As traditional marketing methods become less effective and privacy concerns grow, first-party data emerges as a game-changer for our industry. First-party data—information collected directly from customers with their consent—is becoming increasingly crucial for success in digital marketing. With the impending phase-out of third-party cookies, leveraging your own data will be more important than ever. But how can pharma and medical device companies harness the full potential of first-party data? A study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google revealed that while data-driven marketing can double revenue and increase cost savings by 1.6 times, only about 30% of companies are creating a single customer view across channels. Even more striking, just 1-2% are using data to deliver a full cross-channel experience for their customers. To bridge this gap and gain a competitive edge, industry leaders need to focus on three key actions: 1. Develop a Comprehensive Data Strategy - Instead of collecting data indiscriminately. This might involve prioritizing data from healthcare provider interactions, patient support programs, or clinical trial participants. Assess the value of your first-party data rigorously. Calculate associated costs and risks and develop a clear implementation roadmap. This approach not only streamlines your efforts but also helps secure buy-in from executives—crucial for successful implementation. 2. Test, Learn, and Measure - Start with a specific business case for your data. For instance, you might aim to improve adherence to a particular treatment or increase adoption of a new medical device. Define what needs to be personalized to achieve this goal. While one-to-one personalization might seem ideal, it requires significant investment and time. Focus on a narrow use case—perhaps a specific physician specialty or patient segment—and invest only in the data and technology required to test that particular case. 3. Build Robust In-House Tech Capabilities - Traditionally, pharma and medical device companies have heavily relied on agencies for marketing efforts. However, a hybrid approach may be more effective in the age of first-party data. Consider insourcing your technology stack and capabilities related to data analysis and activation. At the same time, leverage agencies for their strategic perspective, creative content, and media buying expertise. Many agencies are evolving to meet these changing needs, offering everything from à la carte services for mature brands to turnkey solutions for those just starting their data journey. By focusing on these three areas, pharmaceutical and medical device companies can unlock the full potential of their first-party data. This not only improves the customer experience, but also boosts business results. #CXStrategy #pharmaceuticals #medicaldevices #DataStrategy

Ignored the 45+ age group. Big mistake. Analyzed 40,000+ health supplement orders: Young audience (25-34): ➝ Mid CTRs ➝ Moderate CPCs ➝ Poor conversion ➝ High return rates Older audience (45+): ⤷ Lower CTRs ⤷ Similar CPCs ⤷ 2X conversion rate ⤷ 40% lower returns The insight? Different age groups have different triggers: 25-34 buyers: − Work stress − Performance issues − Quick fixes − Price sensitive 45+ buyers: - Health concerns - Prevention focus - Value quality - Brand loyal Changed our approach: ↗︎ Built age-specific creatives ↗︎ Adjusted landing pages ↗︎ Modified pricing strategy ↗︎ Shifted messaging Result? Revenue from 45+ segment grew 3X. They now drive 40% of total sales. What overlooked audience segment surprised you recently?

Pharma is putting more money into point-of-care than ever. Most of it will underperform. More budget at the point of care doesn't equal better outcomes. Here's the mistake most brands are about to make - and the three things top performers do differently. 1. They buy intent, not inventory. The worst POC campaigns treat EHR screens like billboards. The best ones ask: what is this physician thinking right now? A diabetologist reviewing an A1c result at 3pm is in a completely different headspace than one clearing prior authorizations at 8am. Context isn't optional. It's the entire game. 2. They narrow reach to increase relevance. This sounds counterintuitive - and it is. Top-performing brands are deliberately shrinking their audience pools to find physicians who are actively in a decision window and ignoring everyone else. Reach is cheap. Relevance is what converts. 3. They measure downstream, not just delivery. Impressions, viewability, CPMs - these are inputs. What matters is whether a prescription was written, a conversation was had, a patient outcome shifted. Brands optimizing media performance metrics alone are measuring the wrong thing entirely. The POC channel is maturing fast. As budgets grow, the gap between brands that understand clinical context and those that don't will widen significantly. What's your POC strategy for 2026? #PointOfCare #PharmaMarketing #HCPEngagement #HealthcareMarketing

Medical device companies tend to scoff at the mention of “influencer marketing.” The funny thing is, they’ve been doing it for decades. 😄 In medtech, we have our own version of influencers. They don’t do unboxing videos or post gym selfies. But they DO publish studies, speak at conferences, and shape practice guidelines. We call them KOLs: Key Opinion Leaders. The way most device companies engage with KOLs hasn’t changed in decades. For example, massive budgets are still allocated towards offline conferences and exhibits, only to get 10-15 people in the room to hear the talk. There's a better way to do this, which I learned during my days leading Joovv, a consumer wellness startup I founded back in 2015. At Joovv, we scaled a hardware business to $100M entirely online through influencer marketing. Bootstrapped with limited funds to spend on paid ads, we had to rely on trust. In our early days, red light therapy was largely unknown and seemed “woo-woo” —  credibility had to come from known figures our audience trusted. After several years working with some of the top longevity influencers, when we finally layered in paid search and social, our blended ROAS hit an absurdly high 8x. The foundation we laid with our “KOLs” made all the difference. Medical device companies could apply these same tactics. Instead of limiting KOLs to conference presentations and offline training events, build their digital footprints. For roughly $5,000 a month, you can help create a physician’s online presence for a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands often spent on conference travel, exhibit space, etc. Or take organifi's approach: they built scout teams to attend events, find up-and-coming influencers, and nurture those relationships. Medtech companies could do something similar: identify promising specialists 3-4 years out of fellowship and support them online as they grow into tomorrow’s KOLs. Ask these physicians if they're influencers, and they'd say, "That's not me." But in reality, they’re the most trusted influencers we have. These are just a few examples, but to say the least, it’s high time for medtech to update the KOL playbook.

WSJ reports Americans aren't moving any more which means one thing for healthcare marketers: Your audience isn't a churn*, it's now a community you have to nurture. Healthcare marketers love iterating so we're not used to being told "No do-overs!"... but if no one's moving in there's no big new audience to guide through the funnel. The audience you have in that location may be the audience you have. And if you lose the trust of your community and they have another good local option it's gonna be pretty damn tough to win them back. Conversely you could go out and win the trust of your community, and that may pay dividends that last for decades. When no one's moving away, it means that LTV for a loyal patient or client could be a lot higher. How do you build trust with your community? High-value informational content and consistent upper-funnel advertising is a good start. Local ads help, but a big thing you should do is find ways to give back to that community and show that you're invested in their well-being. A few examples that I've seen recently: Wheeler Health running "Foodshare Fridays" with a local food pantry Ascension Saint Thomas giving a day of free heart screenings for Nashville public school teachers Oschner Health doing a volunteer event at a local animal shelter Mountain Land Physical Therapy Partners offering an Adaptive Ski Day for disabled patients to waterski And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Every week I see healthcare orgs nurturing their community with free checkups, school visits, sponsoring theatres, food drives, a million ways to show the community you care. If I'm a patient trying to figure out which provider actually cares about the folks around here, I'm a lot more likely to look favorably on the one that (*yeah obviously there's still some churn especially for verticals with a narrow age band BUT communities have a long memory and the parent with the new kid is still going to ask their community who's good... or remember who they saw supporting the local library and school.) #healthcaremarketing

Stop Blaming Meta. If you’re still getting low-quality, junk leads, it’s probably not the platform’s fault. Most healthcare groups are still running Meta like it’s 2020, with generic creative, broad targeting, basic forms, weak qualification, and no feedback loop to help the algorithm learn. But Meta lead gen has changed. And so should your funnel. This is the Meta strategy that Cardinal used to lower acquisition costs by 73% (not a typo) over four months. Phase 1: Start with messaging & creative – Test angles and value propositions relevant to your audience – Include insurance callouts where relevant – Run top-of-funnel video or educational content to build warm audiences early Phase 2: Strengthen audience signals  – Rely less on cold audiences and more on demonstrated behavior – Retarget video viewers and engaged users – Use site and cross-channel audiences built through HIPAA-compliant methods (CDPs, server-side tracking) Phase 3: Qualify & verify – Use lead forms – Add conditional questions aligned to operational reality – Qualify for treatment interest, modality, readiness, and insurance –  Turn on SMS verification to eliminate fake submissions and spam Phase 4: Optimize your forms – If insurance is the blocker, refine insurance questions – If readiness or location is the issue, adjust form logic Phase 5: Scale & sustain. – Maintain creative diversity – Keep feeding warm audiences – Revisit data often When Meta underperforms, it’s less of a platform issue and more that the system isn’t being given the right signals, structure, or feedback to learn from. Meta will optimize to whatever you define as success. Define it poorly, and you get junk. Define it well, and you get booked appointments.

As much as 75% of pharma ad spend is wasted because you’re targeting the entire market, not the HCPs who are in-market. Audience catalogues are the culprit. If you’re using audience catalogues, the average approach looks like this: target everyone in the U.S. who prescribed a product in my category in the last two years and call that my audience. That’s not targeting. It’s carpet bombing. If I’m allocating a fixed display budget every month, my job is to reach the exact HCPs most in need of my product right now. Take GLP-1s as an example. Based on a patient’s most recent Hemoglobin A1C test, if it was greater than 9.0% and they have other aspects of metabolic syndrome, they could be less than 45 days out from a GLP-1 prescription. That recency and context signal matters. But catalogues simply don't allow for this level of sophistication. When you can target at that level of granularity, you stop paying to reach people who don’t have a need. We’re seeing that this change cuts spend by as much as 75% and still drives the same or better outcomes.

Creative is the new targeting, but how do you execute on that? Every decision you make with regard to ad creative matters for who you reach: - Creator selection - style, age, interests, etc. - Music selection - genre, pace, etc. - Copy - subtle framing/phrasing, value props - Context - use cases, setting - Testimonials - from who, and what they say - And more... To focus efforts, we ALWAYS recommend starting with consumer research. Here is an example from a recent client project for a wellness brand: - Our 30-45 demo is 34% MORE likely to trust friends & family for advice, and 10% more likely to trust social media - Our 50+ demo is 32% more likely to ask a doctor for advice and 49% more likely to ask a pharmacist for advice So what does this mean for our creative strategy? To truly reach these people and drive conversion, we need to build trust through different avenues. We should (generally) not be showing a pharmacist to our 30-45 demographic and we should not be showing a non-credentialed/non-medical professional creator to our 50+ demo. The data proves this. - In ads mentioning a doctor's recommendation and leveraging an older creator, we see our younger demo underperform by 60%, with our older demo outperforming by 10%. - In ads featuring testimonials & social proof, our younger demo outperforms by nearly 50%. As is always the case ... remember to think audience-first! New Engen #DigitalMarketing #CreativeTesting *Ad screenshots are AI reproduced in general direction of actual assets to mask brand.

Not all surgeons are created equal—at least not when it comes to commercial viability. The right surgeon isn’t just a user of your device; they’re an advocate, a partner, and a catalyst for broader adoption. But how do you identify the right one? I use this a 4-Step Surgeon Avatar Framework to help clients focus on the most impactful clinicians. 1️⃣ 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 (𝐁𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐲 & 𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞) Most medtech companies default to high-volume surgeons in relevant specialties. But volume alone isn’t enough. Instead, look at: ✅ Adoption Potential: Are they early adopters or laggards? ✅ Influence & Networks: Do they educate peers, publish research, or lead training programs? ✅ Economic Alignment: Are they in value-based care environments or cost-sensitive institutions? ✅ Technology Openness: Are they data-driven and comfortable with digital health tools? 2️⃣ 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐭𝐨 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝟐𝟎% Applying the Pareto Principle, focus on the top 20% of surgeons who drive 80% of value for your company. To find them: 🔹 Analyze purchase history and usage patterns. 🔹 Use surveys to assess pain points, goals, and innovation appetite. 🔹 Review hospital affiliations—are they in systems driving procurement trends? 3️⃣ 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐱 Not all high-value surgeons serve the same role. Build a segmentation matrix to categorize them into: 🟢 Champions: Vocal advocates who actively promote your device. 🟡 Users: Reliable but not evangelists—good for steady sales. 🔴 Skeptics: Unlikely to adopt; avoid wasting resources. 🔵 Gatekeepers: Institutional decision-makers influencing broader adoption. 4️⃣ Engineer Your Sales & Marketing for Maximum Impact Once you’ve identified your ideal surgeon avatar, adapt your go-to-market strategy: 🚀 Target Champions for peer influence (webinars, case studies, advisory boards). 🎯 Support Users with seamless training & clinical evidence. ❌ Avoid Skeptics—don’t waste resources on those unlikely to convert. 🏛 Engage Gatekeepers early with value-based evidence to drive institutional adoption. 💡 Final Thought: The Right Surgeon = Exponential Growth This is a process. It doesn't happen overnight and requires manual effort (e.g. sifting through profiles, looking at granular signals online etc) For me this has been the most effective way to unlock growth. 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂 𝒎𝒆𝒅𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆? 𝑫𝑴 𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒍𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒕 #medtech #medicaldevices #medicaldevice #medicaldevicesales #medicalsales #digitalhealth

If I was the CEO of a small, rural practice with an even smaller marketing budget and 2 large health systems oozing into my territory, here’s how I’d run my next campaign… 1. Launch a hypertargeted campaign to ideal consumers (future-patients) in social and digital display channels. 2. Massage narratives based on positive engagement; Bring in video strategist to create cinematic versions of those winning narratives/value props, but on-site and with our clinicians. 3. Shift strategy from programmatic display to blended video (CTV, OTT) once video assets are completed. This will shift awareness to deeper engagement and conversion as a full-funnel play. The reason: Your ideal patients all go through 2 stages in their pain cycle: 1. Fear 2. Waiting And this when you need to be building trust and reducing consumer anxiety to pick up the phone to your practice. And, no other channel does this as well as video. Please understand, heathcare is a human science and no static ad can convey the amount of empathy and expertise like a 360 view of your physician. And no, this is not up for debate and I will fight any of you over this… (let’s go right now 😅) The Rural Physician Roadmap: We applied this exact prioritization with a physician-owned, rural spine center competing with larger systems. We shifted the channel strategy from awareness to video and performance, aligning with a very real emotional byproduct of seeking care once enough awareness was created. Even after intentionally decreasing impressions by budgeting for a more expensive format like video, here were the results: 223% lift in CTR (from 0.79%) This shift would not have been possible without deep market intelligence around what our client is doing well, but most importantly - who their real competitors are, and how to differentiate when the geography was working against them. Conclusion: It doesn’t matter how talented your team is, or how busy your practice is, if you’re not operating with market intelligence, you’re missing the biggest opportunity to boost margins with every procedure - no matter where you’re located. Want to take the first step toward true market intelligence? Click the link in the comments to discover your competive position and untapped opportunities as a medical practice Rooting for you - S #HealtcareMarketIntelligence #HealthcareStrategy #PrivatePracticeStrategy