In today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, where technology is reshaping patient care and administrative processes alike, the demand for innovative solutions that simplify complex service delivery has never been greater.
For healthcare software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and startups, this dynamic environment offers a unique opportunity, but it also presents a formidable challenge: how do you stand out in an increasingly crowded market?
The answer lies in mastering the art of healthcare SaaS marketing, a nuanced discipline that demands a deep understanding of the industry's intricacies and buyer personas, and the ability to navigate its complex regulatory landscape.
That’s why we’re unpacking six actionable, industry-specific marketing tips that will act as your ticket to thriving in the world of healthcare SaaS.
Brief Recap: The State of the Healthcare Software Market
The healthcare SaaS market includes cloud-based electronic health records (EHR), compliance automation software, home healthcare software, medical billing software, patient management systems and many other solutions.
As the danger of cybercrimes and the popularity of telehealth increase, so does the need for more secure healthcare solutions that enable providers to service patients and clients efficiently. It’s no surprise, then, that the healthcare SaaS market is expected to reach over $50 billion by 2028.1
Healthcare SaaS companies and start-ups must market strategically to stand out from the competition and make a name for themselves, which is easier said than done!
Marketing Your SaaS Healthcare in 6 Steps
To aid software companies in reaching the right audience and developing a seamless path toward conversion, our healthcare SaaS marketing experts gathered six industry-specific steps to help you create an airtight marketing strategy.
1. Identify Your Target Audience with Precision
Marketing your SaaS product the right way begins with identifying your specific niche within the healthcare industry and understanding your target audience's pain points and needs.
That means figuring out who you’re selling to, such as private practices, hospitals, or healthcare systems, and understanding their market size. A large hospital will have different needs than a small practice, and understanding those needs early on will help you figure out your niche from the outset.
At this stage, you’ll also want to identify the buyer, the budget approver and the “champion” or user. The decision-maker who has final say over whether an organization will buy your product often has vastly different pain points and motivations than the end user who will deal with the product frequently, so tailoring your marketing and sales messages accordingly to address their unique challenges effectively is critical.
2. Conduct Competitive Analysis
The next step in healthcare SaaS marketing is identifying your main competitors, how they describe their products, who, exactly, they’re targeting, and what value propositions they highlight throughout their messaging.
Because of the large scale of the healthcare SaaS market, understanding and analyzing competitors is crucial for carving out a place in the market. Find out:
- What audience do your competitors target
- What advertisements do they run on which platforms
- What content do they promote via email and social media (Subscribing to their marketing email is a great way of keeping tabs on the content they produce)
By strategically paying attention to your competitors, you can find out what works for them and what doesn’t, see what resonates with their audience, learn from their successes and missteps, and develop ways to look and sound better than they do.
You can gather all the information you need to do this by thoroughly auditing competitor websites and marketing channels. Take the time to dive deep into what both direct and non-direct competitors say and do to gain a complete picture of the market and what you need to do to enter and become a thought leader and innovator in the space.
3. Understand the Regulatory Landscape
One of the most unique challenges when marketing a healthcare product is the vast number of federal and state regulations that come into play. Healthcare data is highly sensitive and susceptible to cybercrime, and customers need to trust that your SaaS solution meets all relevant compliance and security standards, such as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), created to protect patient information.
In your marketing materials and website, highlight your adherence to relevant regulations to build trust with potential clients. Conduct research and stay up to date on regulations that might make your product easier or harder to sell. You might also want to take advantage of complex regulations by creating content around them that answers potential prospect questions and hits on important keywords.
4. Define Your Content Strategy
With your audience, competition, and regulations in mind, it’s time to produce high-quality, informative content that demonstrates your expertise in the healthcare domain. This can include blog posts, whitepapers, webinars and videos that address relevant healthcare challenges and offer solutions.
Content should differ for different audiences; again, the user won’t have the same questions or knowledge gaps as the buyer, so create and promote content to audience segments. Use your understanding of your audiences’ daily pain points, motivations, objections and more from Step 1 to create content at every stage of the funnel.
For example, doctors often own their practices, but usually not alone. If several doctors co-own a practice, you might deal with a buying committee that needs to be convinced of the benefit of the software. For any committee sale, you'll need to produce content that champions and advocates can use to get buy-in from everybody else.
Office managers have seemingly endless responsibilities. They must deal with staff from different backgrounds, use outdated technology, handle patient needs and more. Sometimes, a new solution means everybody will come to them with questions, concerns, and even IT issues. Creating content that shows how your product addresses these challenges will help alleviate those pain points and make an officer manager more likely to get on board with your solution.
Those are just two examples, but you can (and should) create content for every audience segment involved in the buying process. Always be sure to provide subject matter expertise, leverage copywriters who understand your industry, and include trusted statistics and sources to avoid misinformation.
5. Diversify Your Marketing Channels
When it comes to healthcare SaaS marketing, focusing on one channel likely won’t work. Your audience segments spend time on different platforms, and it’s critical to get your brand in from of your targets on several different channels and find the ones that resonate with them.
Leverage a multi-channel strategy, including ads, content marketing, social media, webinars, email and search engine optimization (SEO). Use competitor analysis to select initial channels and closely monitor and track your campaigns to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
This may take time, but by testing various channels, you’ll be able to optimize and iterate on the media that work and eventually hone in on the areas that lead to more conversions while spending less time and money on the campaigns that don’t work.
6. Invest in RevOps
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the alignment of sales, marketing, customer success, and other relevant departments to maximize revenue growth while minimizing manual effort. RevOps aims to map out the customer journey and provide a strategy that provides end-to-end visibility into revenue-generating activities for all departments.
Because healthcare SaaS is in the B2B arena, the only way to turn marketing into revenue is by streamlining and aligning the marketing and sales processes through RevOps. Visit the RevOps Implementation Checklist for a step-by-step guide on how to make RevOps work for you.
Marketing Your Healthcare SaaS Product: The Conclusion
Breaking into and staying in the healthcare SaaS market requires patience, persistence, and, above all else, strategy. Having an industry-specific, informed, multi-channel marketing strategy from day one gives your SaaS product the best chance to succeed.
At ProperExpression, we’ve spent years revitalizing healthcare tech companies through everything from content creation and marketing automation to CRM migration and omnichannel analysis. One client drove 92% marketing ROI over 15 months, while another achieved $2.2 million in new revenue over just 6 months.
Get ready to transform these tips into actionable strategies that will enable your healthcare SaaS organization to achieve similar results with ProperExpression’s healthcare SaaS marketing experts?
