We at Write2Market believe that conferences hold extreme marketing value in terms of brand awareness and relationship building when approached with the correct mindset and strategy, particularly in the healthcare industry. Conference season creates a unique environment by bringing together large groups of industry leaders and practitioners. With that in mind, this year we have taken a new approach to make that observation an advantage for one of our healthcare clients, Isoray Medical.
Isoray’s customers are predominantly clinicians scattered across the United States (and a few on other continents) whose time for business activities other than patient treatment is highly limited. This means that scientific annual meetings and conferences are one of the only instances where their customers convene in the same place at the same time. In addition to using these events as a key means of customer engagement, we wanted to utilize this opportunity to create marketing content that will be useful throughout the year. To do this, the team invested in clinician video interviews at the 2018 American Brachytherapy (ABS) Annual Meeting. Here’s why.
Fostering Relationships with Customers, Present and Future
These videos are not only a marketing tool, but also an opportunity for Isoray to deepen one-on-one interactions with their customers, engage with them in a unique way, and get their direct feedback. Involving clinical customers and prospects in marketing testimonials and research helps keep Isoray top-of-mind while creating new points of contact through the videos’ review, approval, publishing and sharing process.
The insights gained help Isoray engage with their target audience that they may not be adequately reaching. Peer-to-Peer conversations tend to carry more weight than Vendor-to-ustomer ones do.
Customer relationships weren’t the only ones fostered throughout this process. Isoray and ABS agreed to co-brand this project with the addition of an Isoray/ABS banner that served as the backdrop for all of the videos. ABS enjoys “carte-blanche” access to every one of the videos to leverage as they please on their own website and social media platforms.
Compelling Content with a Long Lifespan
Over the course of this 2-day conference, Isoray interviewed more than a dozen clinicians that resulted in nearly 30 minutes of total video time post-edit to date. Splitting this content into highly consumable 60-90 second videos released weekly helps keep the content pipe full for nearly an entire quarter.
Given the necessarily slow pace of dissemination of new peer-reviewed data, the content in these videos is likely to remain relevant for 12 months minimum. They also align with Isoray’s overarching corporate and marketing messages and goals, creating a peer-to-peer narrative around their industry and product while making it highly consumable for viewers.
Convenience & Economics
As mentioned earlier, clinicians’ schedules and disparate locations can make collaboration, particularly marketing and education, difficult. Conferences and clinical annual meetings are a unique opportunity to speak directly to scores of them over one or two days. Getting this right can be complicated but here are a few tips:
- When organizing a project like this at your next conference, you need a plan in place for obtaining these interviews as efficiently and quickly as possible, making sure to speak to as many customers as you can.
- The project manager in charge of production must ensure the film crew and directors are ready at a moment’s notice while the sales team should be continuously wrangling interviewees to and from the ‘set’.
- It is good practice to try to schedule interviews in advance, but remaining flexible and opportunistic is paramount to a successful conference video interview project.
The concentration of clinicians and convenience of location is what makes projects like these cost-effective. Conferences are the only environment where it is possible to generate this kind of content in this amount of volume within the healthcare space without spending thousands on travel, crew, and production on a clinician-by-clinician basis. A good target of cost per 60-90 second video is less than $1,000.
It all boils down to the notion that you’re attending an event surrounded by all of your customers anyway – why wouldn’t you invest a little more to create deeper clinical relationships and peer-to-peer marketing content capable of carrying you through your next quarter?