037 | HealthTech: Remember the Fundamentals | Studio CMO - a podcast by Golden Spiral, Shaping Technology Marketing

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The Episode in 60 Seconds

The new year has brought greater focus and clarity for Golden Spiral, the agency that shapes Studio CMO. Our agency now concentrates solely on market positioning and demand generation for HealthTech companies. We help healthcare technology companies establish and communicate their unique message to the right decision makers.

This shift means Studio CMO will deal exclusively with the challenges and personalities that make HealthTech tick. Watching healthcare's rapid innovation and transformation during the pandemic has highlighted the need for HealthTech companies to remember the fundamentals:

• Understand your buyer's problems
• Lead with an empathetic understanding
• Make your buyer the hero

As the old Southern expression goes, "This looks easy, but does hard."

What to talk through your challenges with an objective source? Schedule a no-obligation chat today. Gain the clarity you need to press into your year.

Welcome Our New Co-Host

Anna Grimes joins the Studio CMO family as a new co-host. Anna grew up in a healthcare family hearing stories of breakthrough surgeries and debates about policy and administration around the family's table. She has built upon that early knowledge with an illustrious career in public relations with stints at Atkinson, Paine Pomeroy, and others.

Anna will share her HealthTech insight and humor moving forward enriching every future episode.

Show Notes

No other segment of B2B tech is transforming more quickly and more systemically than HealthTech. It is extraordinary. COVID has accelerated the pace of change. What would've taken five years to bring about changes in the past has emerged in only ten months. And it's not slowing down. HealthTech is a dynamic space that is posed for challenges new and established solutions can solve. HealthTech is also an extraordinarily loud space. Marketing leaders must remain alert, nimble, and be prepared to move quickly.

Marketing executives must also remember the fundamentals.

Understand Your Buyer's Problems

Myth: Just because we can means that we should.

Just because your technology solution can do something doesn't mean there's a place in the market for it.

What does your buyer need? What makes your buyer's job easier? How can they provide a better level of care?

The Buyer Matrix Doesn't Just Sell Features, It Solves Problems.

Have you mapped your product’s features to your market's problem. Use the step-by-step assignment in this article to create your own Buyer Matrix.

Five Must-Ask Questions to Discover Your B2B Prospect's Pain Points

Your buyers are on a self-service journey, making irrational decisions, and trying to navigate the confusion caused by conflicting information from multiple solution providers. Do you know the right questions to ask? This article outlines five key areas to explore.

Lead with an Empathetic Understanding

How many times do you hit a brick wall or a strong "go away" when moving toward your buyer? As Anna Grimes discussed on this episode:

The brick wall is there for a reason. Many budgets are in free fall. They exist in a regulatory environment like no other.  Healthcare is burdened by regulations and compelled to be in alignment with them. It's not a perfect market. Think about this: if you have a heart attack you can't say, "I don't think I'll get this treated." It's a different ecosystem.

In this article, John ponders, "Are these tech companies thinking about me as a real person when they’re sending these messages? Or are they just trying to make as much noise as possible — without necessarily thinking about the human audience for which it is intended? Has tech forgotten the value of empathy?"

Empathy is necessary for creating content that will resonate with your audience. Otherwise, you’ll create distance between you and them, and this distance can have significant negative effects, preventing leads from generating and deals from closing.

Remember: if you've sold into one healthcare system, you've sold into... one healthcare system.

Three Encouragements for Leading with Empathy

• Don't start with you, your solution, or your technology. Start with your buyer.
• Listen. Listen. Listen.
• Your buyer is drowning in data.

Make Your Buyer the Hero

If you tell me your product has no competition, I have to wonder if you have a real product and if you have a genuine understanding of your market.

HealthTech has a real bias problem. Everyone thinks they’ve got the best product on the market, and they’re shouting it from the rooftops. But, is that what buyers really want to hear about? We don’t think so. Eliminate your technology bias. This article explains how.

Building a customer-centric marketing strategy that focuses on how you can be the Alfred to your buyer’s Batman is key to winning their trust and their business. This article discusses four principles.

Account-Based Marketing can power your ability to make your buyer the hero.

How to Ask Great Questions

• Don't assume understanding
• Keep asking questions until you understand the shape of the problem
• Don't make jumps in logic or jump to conclusions; discover

An agency can help you get out of yourself and see your buyer. Too many tech companies, by no fault of their own, become in-focused and egocentric. An agency can pull you out of that narrative and help you understand your customer and foster empathy within your team. Strip away your assumptions with the help of an agency.

We can help. Schedule your no-obligation discussion to help yourself break free from what's holding you back and discover what it takes to know your customer.
Book your appointment today.

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