info@podymos.com, Author at Podymos

How to avoid spammy outreach

Have you been sending out messages to prospects but aren’t getting the response that you expected? Maybe you’re not even receiving responses at all? It could be that the messages you’re sending are being considered “spammy”.

When we say spammy, we don’t necessarily mean that your messages are being seen as malicious or fraudulent, rather than the person receiving them knows that they are being sent a message that is sent out in bulk.

It’s fair to say, these messages often won’t get a response. Think about it, when was the last time you responded to one of these messages?

Although we’re inbound marketing specialists here at Podymos, we fully believe in the power of multichannel marketing, which means sending out your marketing messages across different channels for maximum effect.

After all, there’s no point in creating great content and then not sharing it!

Direct messages, such as email, can be included in those channels to create a well-rounded, integrated campaign.

So, we’re going to let you in on a few of our tips for creating outreach messages that convert, whether they’re emails or direct messages on social media.

Give, don’t just take

One of the worst things you can do when sending someone a sales messages (other than getting their name wrong!) is ask for something straight away, without building any rapport or offering anything of value to them.

We think that a great way around this is to send your prospect 3-4 pieces of really valuable content to them. This might be a video or an article that will be helpful for them in some way.

This is what we mean when we talk about an integrated campaign. The content you create can be used across all your marketing channels, and even as part of your sales process.

So, wait to ask for an action from your prospect until you have shown that you have something to offer first.

Answer their questions

Consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they trust. This can become even more important when dealing directly with a person who is representative of a brand.

One of the best ways to win over the trust of your audience is to create content that openly and honestly answers their questions. Answering their questions before they even ask them and showing that you understand their concerns is what will ultimately persuade them to trust you.

The content you send over in your messages should always be addressing a question that your audience might ask.

Want to learn more about answering your audience’s questions? Check out our article on “How to come up with great content ideas”.

Go through the buyer’s journey

When you’re writing your messages and deciding what content you’re going to share, you should consider how it leads the reader on their buyer’s journey.

Initially, you need to make the prospect aware of who you are and what you do. Hopefully, using our tips, you’ll have done this is a way that sparks their desire.

It’s then your job to nurture that desire and lead them through the consideration phase – this is where your content should be answering the questions that they may have before decide to proceed with you.

Finally, you can lead them to the decision phase. This is where you should suggest an action for them, such as setting up a meeting, which is usually considered a conversion.

When creating your stream of message, ensure that you’re thinking about their buyer’s journey and which content will most effectively lead them through the consideration phase.

Segment your audience

The key to avoiding your messages appearing as part of a set of pre-prepared messages to be sent out in bulk is to ensure you’re sending the right messages to the right people.

When creating your messages, consider your audience carefully. Segmenting your audience and adjusting your messages so they’re entirely relevant to each segment can help to avoid appearing spammy.

For example, if you’re sending information only relevant to those based in the UK to people outside of the UK, you’re probably not going to get the response you were hoping for. It can seem lazy and even careless.

Market segmentation

Instead, you can segment your audience by geography, role, seniority and many other factors. From there, you can decide what information will be important to them. What questions are they likely to have? Are you able to answer them? This will help you to craft messages that are appropriate and probably more successful.

Personalisation

A little personalisation goes a long way in building trust. 93% of buyers say they are more likely to engage after receiving a personalised communication. It shows that you’ve taken time to do your research and you’re not just sending out another copy and pasted message.

Personalisation can take many forms. Obviously, you should include the prospect’s name (spelled correctly!), but you can also mention mutual connections, your thoughts on a recent post of theirs or something that you can see their interested in.

It doesn’t have to be anything too in-depth, but it will help you to cut through the noise and earn responses from the people who receive dozens of sales messages a week.

Make it about them

Our final tip is to make your outreach entirely about them.

Similar to giving instead of trying to take, you want to avoid talking too much about what you can offer and more about how they will benefit. Instead of “my device is amazing, it can do this”, you could try something more like “you’ll receive better patient outcomes and fewer bed days”. This is all about being benefit driven, rather than feature driven.

As a general rule of thumb, try to keep discussion of yourself to only what is necessary to raise awareness. After that, you should have a ration of 1 we/our for every 5 you/yours.

Outbound marketing with Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality direct messaging and email campaigns as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in multichannel Medical Device marketing.

We’re more expensive than non-specialised agencies and freelance teams because we only work in the Medical Device space so we have specialist knowledge and experience that other agencies may not be able to offer you.

If you want high-quality, compliant campaigns that help achieve your business goals, we’d love to hear from you. Simply leave us your contact details below and we’ll get back to you very soon for a no obligation chat.

What are the best platforms for building Medical Device websites?

Have you been considering building a website but aren’t sure which platform is the right one to build on? Are you overwhelmed by the number of platforms out there, each of them telling you they’re the best?

Well, at Podymos we’ve been thinking about it a lot and have put together a comparison of three of the best website platforms that could help take your online presence to the next level.

Your website is the hub of your business, so we know how important a decision this is to get right. As an agency, we’ve done extensive research on many different platforms so that we can find the right one for our clients. We would love to share what we know.

In this article, we’ll be looking at how Wix, WordPress and HubSpot work and how they could benefit you. We’ll be focusing on the following:

Ease of set-up
Usability
Customisation
Cost
Reporting

Wix

Wix has a huge range of unique features that can help to make your website look great. Statistically, Wix is one of the most popular website builders with an estimated 8.25 million websites user on this platform. It’s an “out of the box” platform, meaning that sites are built using pre-configured templates. Similar platforms include Strikingly and Weebly.

It’s favoured for its easy-to-use interface but may not be suitable for bigger companies looking for more advanced customisation.

Wix can be used for:

Blogs
Booking and scheduling appointments
Collecting contact details
Publishing new online content
Building an online store

On the downside, Wix only sells products in one currency at a time which means that your sales can only target one Currency union. It wouldn’t be suitable for global Medical Device suppliers with a direct-to-consumer business looking for an eCommerce site.

This section of the article is going to run through everything that Wix has to offer and provide an honest review of its highs and lows.

Set-up

Setting up Wix is straightforward as you don’t need any knowledge of coding.

There are two different ways to approach setting up a website. The first is with Wix Editor and the second is with Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence).

Wix Editor is the default version of Wix which most people work with. This version allows you to manually build your site. Using their online tools and features, you can choose your colour scheme, photos, branding and content to build your website just the way you like it.

Wix ADI on the other hand can do it all for you. If you’re not sure what you want your website to look like or are in a rush, you can just answer a few questions about what your website is for and how you want to use it.

This is best for someone who is new to building a website. It can help you understand how you want your site to look and will allow you to switch to Wix Editor when you’re ready. However, the main drawback of this is that your site could be less personalised, and you could potentially see other sites with it.

If you’re looking for a step-by-step on how to set up your Wix account using Wix Editor or Wix ADI check out this recommended guide.

Usability

Wix Editor uses the ‘drag and drop’ method with all its building programs. This means that you can move a photo or a button by dragging and dropping an object anywhere on your website, so even beginners can feel confident making updates.

It’s a cloud platform, meaning there’s no need for anybody working on the site to install any local software as everything is accessible on the internet. Wix also hosts all their websites, so you don’t need to have or buy any hardware for your website to run.

One of the most important things to consider when building a website is: how easy is it to optimise for mobile?

Wix allows you to see what your site would look like on mobile and make updates, but it doesn’t adapt designs as well as some of its competitors. It relies on ‘absolute positioning’ meaning that all your website elements are positioned by pixels.

This does give you more flexibility when it comes to design but when moved to a smaller screen, the elements won’t retain their neat layout. With Wix, you’ll always need to check how your page looks on mobile before publishing and you may find that quite a few adjustments are needed.

Customisation

When it comes to customising your website, Wix Editor has tools to help.

When setting up your website, the free version of Wix allows you to pick from over 800 predesigned templates which outnumbers other competitors like Squarespace who only offer 150. With sites like Shopify and WordPress, you must pay to have access to the templates.

Although you’re able to customise templates to an extent, Wix doesn’t give you access to the background HTML code or CSS files so you can’t code changes that the editor doesn’t offer to you. So, you’re quite limited in how you can adjust the appearance of your site.

Once you’ve chosen a template to build from, you’re unable to change it. You can change small things such as the font of your titles or a picture here and there, but any larger changes are out of the question.

Ultimately, if you were looking to change your template, you’d have to change your whole website.

Additionally, if you choose to move away from Wix they don’t allow you to export your website to another provider, meaning if you choose to move away from them, you’ll lose everything that you have created on your website already.

Cost

Wix offers eight different pricing plans when it comes to charging its customers. Depending on the type of website you’re interested in creating and picking the right plan is important and can help get the most out of your website.

Wix websites are all hosted with Wix so you wouldn’t have to pay for hosting. This means that you wouldn’t have to pay for the physical server space where your website lives in the real world.

Combo — £7.50 per month

The combo package is the most basic package and is best for personal use. With this package, you get a custom domain, 3GB of storage space, a free SSL certificate (SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is a security technology which establishes an encrypted link between a web server and a person) and access to Wix Analytics and much more.

Unlimited — £11 per month

The unlimited package is best for entrepreneurs & freelancers. With this account, you get everything that you get in the Combo account with the addition of 10GB of storage space, priority customer care and much more.

VIP — £21 per month

With the VIP package, you get the Combo and the Unlimited package with the addition of 35GB, 5 hours of video time, and the option of having a professional logo designed for you along with social media files created for you that tie into your website.

Business Basic — £15 per month

Business basic is the ideal package for small businesses just starting out. With this plan, you can process secure online payments (only in one set currency), set up your own payment plans or recurring payments, develop your own customer accounts and customer domain, removal of Wix ads and much more.

Business Unlimited — £20 per month

With the business unlimited package, you get everything in the Business Basic with the addition of 35 GB of storage.

Business VIP — £27 per month

In this VIP package, you get everything included in the other packages along with Priority customer care and customisable reports on how your website is doing.

To see the full list of features that you get in Wix pricing we recommend checking out their website.

Reporting

Wix Analytics is the platform’s reporting tool. It’s free with every paid package that Wix offers and is translated into a simple and easy-to-read format so that anyone can understand it. So you don’t have to be an experienced marketer to create actionable insights to improve your site.

It provides an overview and key stats on how well your website is performing to inform decision-making. Some of the things you can learn are:

What day and time is your website’s busiest
What types of people are coming to your site
What people are doing on your site?
Which products, content, and services you offer are the most popular

Not only will Wix analytics help you understand your website demographic, but how they behave once they get to your site. You’ll be able to see who is visiting your site, where they are coming from and how to better improve their experience.

All of this is crucial information to help your platform evolve, grow and troubleshoot any problems you may have.

WordPress

WordPress is used by 43.2% of all websites on the internet and is favoured by professional and amateur website builders alike. The platform boasts a wide range of features and options that allows users to create interactive and professional-looking websites.

Set up

Setting up your WordPress website is technically difficult for beginners, in particular non-technical people. WordPress can be auto-loaded onto your hosting package with easy however manual installation can be a little bit more difficult and requires knowledge about setting up a database.

A hosting package typically includes server space, bandwidth, email accounts, and other features that are necessary to run a website or application.

With access to templates, you can set up your site with a predesigned layout, you can also easily download plugins that can change your site without the need for coding. However, if you want a bespoke element on your site that cannot be achieved through a plugin, you will need a working knowledge of coding.

To keep your website up-to-date and healthy, you’ll need to keep up with WordPress and plugin updates. While this can be automated by the WordPress hosting server, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on it and be sure it doesn’t create any conflicts that would bring down your site.

Usability

The platform’s interface can be very user-friendly once you’re used to the software. Whether you’re setting up a blog post or building a landing page, users will be able to pick it up quickly.

However, unless you’ve chosen a theme with a visual builder such as Divi, all edits happen behind the page either hand coded or in a page builder rather than on the front. This doesn’t necessarily make it more difficult to use, it just means you won’t be building it on the front end.

On the other hand, one of the strengths of WordPress is that it gives you complete control over every aspect of your website so you can build anything you want using HTML, although, you will probably need to hire a developer to do this or outsource an agency.

Customisation

WordPress is extremely customisable as it gives its users access to the behind-the-scenes CSS or PHP code so you can make changes right into the foundations of the site. This is accessible through the theme editor.

Customizing a website on WordPress can be a simple and straightforward process. To start, log in to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Appearance tab.

Here, you can choose a theme to apply to your website with many themes offering customization options such as changing colours, fonts, and layouts. If you want even more control over the appearance of your site, you can use a page builder plugin like Elementor or Beaver Builder.

These plugins allow you to create custom layouts and designs for your pages using a drag-and-drop interface. You can also add widgets and plugins to your site to add functionality like social media integration, contact forms, or e-commerce capabilities.

Be sure to preview your changes before publishing them to ensure that everything looks and works as intended. With these tools and a bit of creativity, you can customize your WordPress website to meet your specific needs and stand out from the crowd.

The WordPress theme editor can be a useful tool for making quick changes to your website’s theme code, but it should be used with caution as it can also be risky, so changes like this probably will require the help of a developer.

The editor allows you to modify your theme’s PHP, CSS, and HTML files directly from your WordPress dashboard, without needing to access your website’s files through FTP or a text editor. However, any changes you make can have unintended consequences and potentially break your website if you are not careful.

Cost

While you can set up WordPress for free there are several payment plans that you can purchase to streamline building your website without having to worry about which add-ons you need to purchase.

This section will walk you through their four pre-existing payment plans.

Personal- £3/month

The personal plan is best for accounts that focus on websites for personal use. This is the most basic of all the plans and with it, you get a free annual domain, website hosting, ad removal, payment collection capability, and unlimited email support.

Premium- £7/month

This version is best for freelancers and with it, you get everything in the personal plan with the addition of access to premium themes, the capability to earn ad revenue, the capability to upload videos, google analytics integration and much more.

Businesses- £20/month

With the Business plan, collectively you get everything in the two previous plans as well as advanced SEO tools, the ability to install a large range of plug-ins, and with many other features. This plan is best for small businesses.

eCommerce -£36/month

The eCommerce plan is the most expensive but is best suited to online stores. With this plan, you get all the benefits of the previous plans with the addition of accepting payments from different countries with different currencies. To see the full list that this pay packages offer, check out the WordPress website.

However, another cost that you should also consider is the cost of your developer or designer. Because of the nature of WordPress, you’re reliant on waiting for your developer to update and maintain your website. These ongoing costs can be expensive to outsource.

Reporting

WordPress doesn’t have its own built-in reporting system, instead, you can download a Google analytics plugin which comes with both Business and eCommerce plans.

Google Analytics is a free online tool that can be used in Chrome, the WordPress plugin just allows you to have everything in one place, it doesn’t offer you any more data or information than it would in chrome.

Google Analytics is an amazing tool that helps track your website engagement. It has a range of different in-depth tools to help you track website activity. For a full breakdown of Google Analytics and how you can make it work for you check out this article for beginners.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM (Customer Relations Management) platform used to manage interactions with customers and to nurture customer relationships, increase sales and streamline your marketing campaigns.

Since it’s primarily a CRM rather than a website builder you have to either purchase the website builder, called CMS Hub, on its own or as part of a suite of HubSpot tools.

HubSpot’s main strength is having everything in one place, while most marketers go to different platforms to manage their social media, emails, and websites, HubSpot collates information from the various platforms.

Set up

Setting up a website with HubSpot is easy as it doesn’t necessarily require a web developer or anyone who specialises in coding unless you want custom HTML elements.

With HubSpot, you have access to a large range of editable themes that can be changed later if you decide to update your look. These templates are editable through both the drag-and-drop method and access to the site’s HTML and CSS code.

When it comes to setting up and building pages for your website, there’s a variety of things that you can do depending on the package that you bought. With the free version you can have up to 20 landing pages with the starter templates and 25 website pages, but upgrading allows for more landing pages and templates.

Starter templates are made up of rows and columns of blocks or modules for content. By grouping these together, you can add backgrounds, and styles to your page.

Additionally, this setup is mobile-friendly as there is an option to check the website from a phone view and edit it to fit the new screen size. This is important as 60 % of people access the internet from their tablets, phones or another device.

One of the main reasons why setting up a website is easy is due to the HubSpot academy, a free service to assist and educate users on how to make the most of the platform and create sleek professional-looking websites. If you need help setting it up check out this guide.

Usability

The HubSpot suite is a powerful platform that can be overwhelming for people who are just starting out with websites and website design, so it wouldn’t necessarily be the recommended platform for beginners.

However, the CMS Hub uses a drag-and-drop editor which can be very intuitive.

Customisation

Design with HubSpot is very straightforward, especially for those who don’t have a design background. With HubSpot’s custom template builder users are given the freedom to change and alter a range of already-established templates.

Website templates are very important when it comes to designing your website and with HubSpot, you can either build your own or use and customise HubSpot’s already pre-made ones.

The templates can be edited in a large range of ways, from the page’s structure, design and layout, however, similar to WordPress, there are only so many changes that you can make without needing to create custom code, which will require the use of a developer.

Cost

HubSpot’s marketing tools come in a range of different packages that help you to run different types of marketing campaigns. Depending on the package you get you’ll not only get different types of tools for different prices, but you can get a combination of different tools for different prices.

This section will focus on specifically the CMS hub and how much that would cost by itself, to see their full pricing check out their website here.

Free version

With the free version of CMS, you get to design website pages, and blogs, access to the drag-and-drop editor, basic SEO recommendations and website traffic analytics. This version gives you the basic tools to run a website and is best for personal sites or small businesses.

CMS Hub Starter: $25 per month

This is the most affordable option for businesses just starting out as in this package you get everything in the free version with the addition of the removal of HubSpot branding, additional website pages, personalised tokens and live chat and email support.

CMS Hub Professional: $360

This option is designed for growing businesses with more advanced needs. This package includes everything in CMS Hub Starter, as well as features like multi-language content creation, A/B testing, and dynamic content. It’s a significant step up in price, but also a significant step up in capabilities.

Hub Enterprise: $1200

The Enterprise is designed for large businesses and enterprises with complex needs. This package includes everything in CMS Hub Professional, as well as additional features like custom dashboards, advanced security, and access to HubSpot’s API. CMS Hub Enterprise is a custom-priced package, meaning businesses will need to contact HubSpot for a quote.

It’s important to note that HubSpot CMS Hub pricing is based on a yearly contract, which means businesses will need to commit to paying for a full year of service upfront. Additionally, businesses may need to pay additional fees for things like extra storage or additional users.

Another one of the downsides of using HubSpot is that contracts are firm and have little flexibility, once you agree to a contract for 6 months or 12, you’re locked in for that period. They don’t offer refunds or cancellations even if you don’t use the whole product.

While this may work for companies who know how to maximise HubSpot’s features, it can be a significant expense for companies that are still learning to use it.

Reporting

HubSpot CMS Hub also gives its users access to analytical software to help you find out what is and isn’t working for them and your website.

As well as a built-in CRM, CMS Hub also provides basic SEO recommendations and website traffic analytics. As you upgrade in price, you’re given access to more advanced analytics. This is something to factor in when making a choice about budgets.

HubSpot enables full tracking of inbound marketing ROI so it’s a must-have for any company that is focusing on inbound marketing an inbound marketing strategy.

What does all this mean?

At the end of the day, you want to know which one is right for you and the answer completely depends on what type of business you are, how much you know about websites and what you’re hoping to achieve.

For complete novices to the website side of marketing or a new business just setting up shop, Wix is an easy tool to start with. It’s a great starter platform for you to work with and develop yourself as a brand.

If you’re a little more website savvy, then WordPress is more your speed as it’s an ideal site to work with if you have technical website knowledge or the budget for a developer/agency.

However, if you’re looking for more from your platform than just a website, then we’d recommend HubSpot. As a website builder on it’s own, CMS hub is uninspiring, so we’d only really recommend it for those who want it in combination with HubSpot’s other products, which can really elevate your inbound marketing campaigns.

If you’re still unsure you should reach out to us here at Podymos and have a chat with our specialists, so we can help find the right one for you.

Medical Device marketing at Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want a high-quality website to be at the centre of your multichannel marketing campaigns? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

Check out our other articles on:

How much does a Medical Device website cost? A comprehensive review
Keyword research for Medical Device websites

The top things you should know to work more effectively with graphic designers

Are you overwhelmed by the world of working with graphic design? Do you want to know how to work more efficiently with a designer? How to speak their language and streamline projects?

We’re here to answer some of the most frequently asked design questions we hear, so that you can feel confident embarking on a project involving an element of graphic design.

You won’t be a designer by the end of this, but you will be able to communicate more effectively with one.

We’re a marketing agency and we act as the go between for our designers and our clients all the time, we’ve learned to speak their language and we think that this is information that will greatly benefit all marketers.

So, if you’re looking for basic information like the difference between a digital file and a print file, this is the article for you.

What are the different file types and when should each be used?

PDF, PNG, JPEGs… a world of acronyms all thrown about casually, but what do they actually mean?

PDF

The most common file type you’ll likely see is a PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format, and it’s just that.

PDFs are the universal file format used to send documents, as they not only preserve your fonts and images, they also tools which allow you to edit, sign and comment on the document.

Although they’re an Adobe software you don’t need an Adobe subscription to view or edit them, meaning they can be viewed by everyone which is what makes them so popular.

One of the greatest benefits of the PDF to a graphic designer is that you can save Adobe illustrator documents (with editing capabilities enabled) as a PDF and it will still maintain all its editing functions when you then reopen it in Illustrator. This makes it the perfect format for sending documents between you and your designer.

Top tip: Designers will usually send you files as a PDF because they are much smaller but still retain all of their editing capabilities when opened in Adobe.

AI

Now, you might be asking what is Adobe illustrator? Illustrator (also known as AI) is the industry standard software for vector-based graphics.

Vectors are comprised of paths rather than pixels, which is the case with raster-based files like JPEGs and PNGs. This means that vectors can be resized indefinitely without losing quality, whilst raster files can lose quality and end up appearing pixelated when enlarged.

Any graphics such as logos, social media posts and small documents will most likely be created in Illustrator.

An Illustrator file is saved with the ‘.ai’ tag but you will need an Adobe subscription to view these, which is why designers will save Illustrator files as PDFs so anyone can view them.

PNG or JPEG?

Files you might be more familiar with are PNGs (Portable Network Graphic) and JPEGS (Joint Photographic Experts Group).

These are the most common way to export images and graphics. But you might ask what is the difference?

PNG

Well, firstly PNGs offer transparency whereas JPEGs don’t, this means you don’t have to have a background on them, which is what makes them perfect for graphics such as logos.

PNG compression is also lossless which prevents loss of data in the file, so it maintains the same image quality and sharpness, unlike a JPEG which can lose quality when edited and saved multiple times.

JPEG

You might be wondering why JPEGs are still around if the PNG has all these benefits, but the JPEG does have advantages of its own.

JPEG offers a much smaller file size than PNGs which means it can be great for websites where you need the page to load quickly, or you’re sending an email and the attachment can’t be too large.

Also, even though it doesn’t offer a lossless compression like the PNG, JPEGs can still provide a good quality image. It’s all about choosing which file is most suitable for your needs.

Something to remember is that PNGs and JPEGs are both raster files, this means that unlike vector files they can’t be enlarged without losing quality. So, if you do choose to use PNG or JPEG you need to make sure the artwork is set to the correct size, or it may appear blurry.

PSD

A common file type graphic designers use is a PSD. This is the file format for Adobe Photoshop, which is the industry standard photo-editing software.

PSDs are raw editable layered files that a designer will create and edit from, they will then export the file as either a JPEG or PNG to send to you, since PSD files can only be viewed if you have the Adobe suite.

INDD

Adobe InDesign files (.indd) can also only be used with an Adobe subscription, so your designer will export the document as a PDF when it’s ready for you to review it.

Graphic designers use InDesign for any long-form multipage documents such as magazines and brochures. It arranges your pages ready to print, which is what makes it popular for long, text heavy documents.

If you do have an InDesign file that you want to be able to edit, or give to other people to edit, it will need to be packaged. This means that all the documents and fonts used to build the file, are put into one folder that InDesign can access.

What you need to know about colours

RGB, CMYK… what does it all stand for?

Surely a colour is the same no matter what screen you look at it? Well, actually, designers use different types of colours depending on how and where the file will be used.

RGB

RGB is what’s used to display colour on a screen, it combines red, green and blue (hence the name RGB) spectrums of light to create any colour in the RGB spectrum.

Ever wondered why when you print something off it doesn’t look like it did on the screen? Well, that might be because you were working in RGB. As you can see above, the RGB spectrum of colours is much larger than that of CMYK.

This means when you print something off in RGB when it converts the colours to CMYK. Some of the RGB colours can’t be recreated in CMYK, so they’ll lose vibrancy.

CMYK

CMYK stands for the four colour plates used in a process print, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Key is a printer’s name for black). In CMYK printing different levels of each ink is applied in small dots to create a solid colour.

If you see a CMYK colour written as C80 M40 Y10 K0 this refers to the different percentages of ink needed on the page so 80% cyan, 40% magenta, 10% yellow, and 0% key.

CMYK is a cost-efficient way to print as it can produce a wide array of colours to a good standard, using just four inks.

RGB

RGB is what’s used to display colour on a screen, it combines red, green and blue (hence the name RGB) spectrums of light to create any colour in the RGB spectrum.

This means when you print something off in RGB when it converts the colours to CMYK. Some of the RGB colours can’t be recreated in CMYK, so they’ll lose vibrancy.

CMYK

If you see a CMYK colour written as C80 M40 Y10 K0 this refers to the different percentages of ink needed on the page so 80% cyan, 40% magenta, 10% yellow, and 0% key.

CMYK is a cost-efficient way to print as it can produce a wide array of colours to a good standard, using just four inks.

PANTONE™ spot colours

PANTONE is different to RGB and CMYK in that it’s a series of spot colours made up by the company Pantone, Inc..

Spot colours are created using a specific premixed ink, and PANTONE is the most common brand of spot colours.

Every colour has its own ink, which means each needs to be printed one at a time making it more time-consuming and therefore more expensive. The upside of spot colours such as PANTONE is that they guarantee a consistent and high-quality colour.

Spot colours are great if you have a specific brand colour, or colours such as metallics and neons which can be hard to create in CMYK.

What’s the difference between a raw design file and a preview file?

Designers will usually send you a preview file, rather than the actual raw file they’re working on.

A raw design file is where the artwork is created and has all the editing capabilities. It’s where any updates or changes will be made.

On the other hand, preview files aren’t editable and usually come as flattened PDFs with all layers and functionality removed. They are sent rather than raw design files because they’re lower-resolution and therefore easier to send. Also, everyone is able to view them, whereas with files like AIs and PSDs require an adobe subscription.

It’s important to know this as the final exported file in whatever format you require it will be higher quality, so is something to keep in mind when reviewing previews.

Preparing files for print

Once approved, files to be printed will be updated by the designer to expedite the printing process.

Your designer will obviously handle this whole process, but it’s useful for you to have an understanding of how a print file differs.

Embedding images

One of the first things designers will do when setting up your file for print is to embed any images. If the images are not embedded, they’ll appear pixelated and will be rejected by the printer or they’ll be printed at very low resolution.

Some printers prefer for the images to not be embedded and to be sent as links, in which case all assets will be packaged accordingly.

Outlining text

Next, the text must be outlined.

Outlining turns your text into vector paths, meaning that it is no longer editable as text. The text has essentially become a series of lines rather than something that the software recognises as text.

Designers do this so that printers are able to view text without needing to know the font used. If you send your file to the printer without outlining the text and they don’t have the fonts used, it will be rejected by the printer or printed with different fonts.

Spot colours

If your project is to be printed in spot colours/PANTONE colours, your designer will remove all unused colours from the colour palette in Illustrator and rename your spot colours with their PANTONE name or print effect.

This makes it clear to the printer which and where spot colours are being used.

Saving your print file

Firstly, when going to print , your design will need to be in CMYK. Your designer will also add a bleed (usually 3mm). A bleed is to ensure that ink prints beyond the edge of the design so that when it is trimmed off afterwards, you’re left with a crisp, precise edge.

Your designer will save the print file as a new file, so that the original file is still editable. Once a file is set up for print, it cannot be easily edited, hence why it’s important to keep the original design file.

They will select the ‘High Quality print’ PDF preset and add crop/trim marks to the document (these can only be seen once doc has been exported/saved as pdf). They will also select ‘use document bleed settings’.

Did we miss anything?

These are the topics we find that our clients most commonly need guidance on, but please feel free to get in touch with us if you feel that we’ve missed anything out or there is a topic you would like us to cover.

Graphic design from Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality marketing materials to support your wider multichannel strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

Email marketing vs. social media: Which is better for Medical Device?

Have you thought about adding email or social media to your marketing campaigns but aren’t sure which one is best for your company? Are you unsure about the benefits of introducing more channels into your medical device marketing?

We’ve thought about this a lot and have put together this article to help you make that all-important choice.

Adding value

Before you consider the benefits of expanding your marketing campaign, you need to first consider why you think introducing social media or email marketing will help add value to your business.

Adding value should always be the priority when considering introducing new channels to your marketing strategy, specifically how each this will help achieve your goals.

Are you looking to expand your brand awareness?
Are you looking to get more sign-ups for your events?
Or are you simply trying to gain new leads?

This article will go through the benefits and downfalls of both email marketing and social media for promoting your Medical Device, to help you decide which is the best choice for you.

What’s so great about social media?

Social media can help boost your marketing in a range of different ways. Let’s look at how.

Visibility

On average, your message needs to be seen between 15- 25 times before any action is taken by your audience. To expedite this and see leads rolling in quicker, you need to post on as many appropriate channels as you can – social media is fantastic for this.

Your posts could be seen by thousands of people daily, if not more and the more you post, the more times you’re likely to be seen by your audience.

There are a few things you can do to increase your visibility on social media and expedite leads.

Platforms use algorithms to determine what content is shown when and where. They tend to favour accounts that are active on their platform daily, whether that be commenting on pictures or liking posts. All activity is good activity.

Furthermore, accounts that post regularly are more likely to see success, so we suggest posting at least three times a week, but more if you can.

To learn more about how you can bring social media into your marketing campaign check out our complete guide to social media in Medical Device.

Building stronger customer relationships

Have you heard the phrase “online community” thrown around and not really known what it meant? An online community refers to an account or several linked accounts that act as a platform or virtual meeting space for like-minded users.

Sharing relevant content and updates from your field that you feel might interest your followers will help you establish yourself as a trusted brand, and your audience will come to rely on.

In Medical Device building up your network and connections with doctors, institutions and patients is a fantastic way too, not only bring people together but drive new conversations and support one another.

Building these relationships with your audience is intrinsic to the success of social media platforms so think carefully about what they want to see on their timelines.

What are the disadvantages of social media?

While social media can offer your brand a large number of options, there are some drawbacks to working with and maintaining an online presence.

Content limitations

Social media is incredibly versatile in the types of content that you can share with your audience, but there are some limitations regarding how much content you can share. While there is no limit to the number of times or the number of things you can post, most platforms do have a word limit.

Twitter: 280 characters
Instagram: 2,200 characters
LinkedIn: 3,000 characters
TikTok: 2,200 characters

Furthermore, most platforms have guidelines on what you can and cannot post, for instance, graphic images go against the rules, meaning you wouldn’t be able to post images or videos of surgery. Likewise, on some platforms you’re not allowed to feature images of body parts in paid advertising, which can pose an issue for Medical Device companies.

So, as you can see, there are some limitations and not all of the content you want to post will be suitable for social media.

Time

Another disadvantage of social media is that it can be very time-consuming. It requires daily activity and consistency in how often you post on the account to be successful.

For instance, if you start your account at three posts a week and then are forced to move down to two or even one, you’ll see a drop-in activity which can hinder your account.

What are the benefits of email?

Email offers a lot of creative freedom when it comes to the type of content that you can send out to your subscribers. It’s a platform solely created by you where you can make up the rules.

Direct to your audience

Email is the consumer’s choice for the preferred method of contact with brands and businesses as statically, 99% of people check their inbox daily.

You should take advantage of this direct channel that you have with your audience and use it to help build a relationship with them. Try to incorporate this personalisation as much as you can, even going as far as to cater the email’s content for them specifically.

Using a name in an email could be the difference between an email your audience engages with and one that they ignore. Personalisation draws your audience in and encourages them to look through the content of your email.

Targeting your audience

One of the best features about email is that you can segment and target your audience. By grouping your mailing list by categories like; location, age, and previous purchase, you can tailor your emails specifically for your audience.

Sending them helpful information, videos, events, surveys, and links to online tools that are directly relevant to them will help make the most out of your emails.

Surveys suggest that over 57% of people are influenced by emails in their purchasing decisions, so make sure that they have all the information they need

For more information on how to maximise your emails have a look at our article on how to optimise your email campaigns.

Audience marketing

Relationship marketing

By signing up for your mailing list, your subscribers have already demonstrated a significant level of commitment to your brand and your products.

This either means that they’re interested in the brand and would like to know more, or they’ve already established customers who want to keep up to date with what’s going on with you.

What are the drawback of email?

Email campaigns are effective and relatively easy to create, but when it comes to Medical Device marketing, email does have a few drawbacks.

Limiting reach

While email is a great way to maintain and deepen your relationship with customers, it’s not a good medium for finding a new audience and nurturing your brand awareness and visibility.

With only your email list to work with, you’re limited by the number of people who have signed up to be contacted by you.

What is GPDR?

GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation refers to the legal method requiring all companies to keep and protect all information stored or shared by an individual with them.

This could mean information like:

Name
Address
Email
Card Information

GDPR will limit your ability to build up a mailing list, but it’s incredibly important to adhere to. It helps to invest in data protection software to store your mailing list. Be clear and concise to users when they sign up about where their information is going and what they’re agreeing to.

What about multichannel marketing?

Of course, you can incorporate both social media and email marketing into your overall marketing strategy, but you must be sure that they will work just as well independently as with each other.

Multi-channelled marketing is a strategy that is being used more and more marketing managers and agencies. It involves using several different channels to complement one another is a great way to ensure that your message gets across.

It’s good for all your channels to feel uniform, with the same branding, the same tone, and the same message – this way all your marketing has a cohesive and united feel to it.

Building a brand and a story across all your platforms will help make sure you hit that 15- 25 mark.

Social media and email campaigns can feed into one another. Your social media channels could advertise your email list, whilst your emails could highlight the latest updates from your social media page.

However, don’t feel as though you need to take up both channels before you have the capacity to do so, otherwise one or both will feel lacking. It’s always good to go for quality over quantity.

How do you decide what’s best for you?

While both email and social media can bring so much to the table, you need to think about what’s right for you and your brand. If you’re still struggling to decide you need to think clearly about what your goals are and think about what you want to achieve by introducing a new marketing channel.

Are you looking for a platform to share the latest news from your company? Then an email newsletter may be right for you.
Maybe you want to raise brand awareness and generate more website traffic? Give social media a go.
Want to let people know about your upcoming webinar? Emailing them an update might work best for your demographic.
Thinking of showing off your new branding? Social media is definitely the one for you.

Consider which channel and content will help add value to your company and will help your audience understand your message.

Medical Device marketing at Podymos

Hopefully, this article has given you a good overview of email campaigns vs social media and will help you figure out which one is best for you and your brand.

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality email or social media campaigns as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

How does Podymos create email campaigns?

So, you’re planning to work with Podymos for an email campaign, or maybe you considering whether or not we’re the right team for you? Well, in this article we’re going to let you in on what you can expect when working with us to create an email campaign.

Our goal is to maximise the success of your campaigns and this article will explain our process and how you can help us to help you.

We’ll cover the full process from setting you up on our systems to sending the finalised email, and we’ll also give you some tips on how to prepare.

Without any further ado, let’s get stuck in.

Getting you set up with Podymos

Before we can get to the fun stuff and start creating sensational emails, we’ll need to get you set up on our systems, which will require some input from you.

During this stage (and throughout all of your campaigns with us), your Account Manager will be your main point of contact. They’ll be the one to communicate your needs to the rest of the team, and if you have any questions, they’ll be more than happy to help you.

1. Setting up your Campaign Monitor account

We will need to get you set up our email platform. We use campaign monitor because of the personalisation and the reporting it allows. Let us know if you would prefer for us to work on a different platform as we have experience with most email platforms, however, as we work with Campaign monitor on a regular basis this is where we are most efficient!

Your Account Manager will need a few details from you at this stage.

2. Authenticating your domain

To ensure that your emails are not blacklisted (sent to a spam or junk folder), we’ll need to authenticate your domain, meaning you’ll need to add a TXT file to your domain DNS, which your IT team will be able to handle. Again, your Account Manager will be able to guide you through this.

3. Creating or cleaning your mailing list

We can either import an already existing mailing list over to Campaign Monitor, or we can source a mailing list from a third party.

If we import an existing mailing list, we’ll need to clean the data. This means ensuring all data is present and correctly formatted, so we don’t run into personalisation issues. This is when we’ll be able to tell the level of segmentation we can introduce.

People may not be willing to hand over information such as their job title and location, which means you won’t be able to segment them by these categories. If you have managed to collect that data, then we can certainly work with that.

At this stage, it would also be beneficial to discuss how we can grow your mailing list. For example, we can help you implement a sign-up form on your website or run a social media campaign to encourage people to register. Webinars are also a great tool for growing your mailing list.

Creating your email campaigns

Once we have your brief following a discussion with your Account Manager, we can get into the fun stuff.

1. Copy

We start by creating the copy for your email. Our specialist writers are trained to optimise writing for different types of campaigns, allowing them to create content that will engage your audience. They will work with your Account Manager to ensure that their work reflects your brand and is accurate. As all our writers are in-house any revisions can happen quickly, allowing us to rapidly move through this stage.

2. Design

Once your Account Manager is happy with the copy, it’s time to design your email.

The first time the graphics team create an email for you, they will create a template using your existing branding. This will make it easier to create emails in the future and save you money.

Your Account Manager will send the design to you to check you’re happy with it. At this stage, you can highlight anything that you’re unhappy with. Only once you’re satisfied with the design will we move on to the next stage.

3. Build

Your email will be built, with tracking built into all of the external links, so we’ll be able to provide you in-depth analysis of which buttons were clicked by whom. This will allow us to segment your audience once the first email has gone out.

4. Test

Before any email is sent, there will be several tests to ensure that there are no typos and all images and links are working. We never want to send out an email with a mistake, so we will test, test and test again and we will have several sets of eyes check it.

Finally, you’ll be sent a test once everything in the email is approved by us, for the final sign-off.

5. Send

Yes! Your email will be sent to your subscribers, and you can sit back and relax whilst the email works its magic.

6. Resend

Remember when we said it’s possible that your email might be ignored? Well, to reduce the chances of this, we’ll send your email again to those who missed it the first time. And then we’ll send it again to the people who missed it the second time as well.

What do we mean by missed it? Well, this will include everyone who has not opened your email and those who haven’t completed the desired action (if there is one).

This normally increases our open rate to well over 50% which is pretty good in email marketing.

7. Report

The final stage of an email campaign is to check the results. We can report on many different metrics for you including how many people opened it, when they opened it and what links were most popular.

It is also useful to look at email campaigns as part of your wider multichannel strategy. Was there an uptick in traffic to other channels such as your website? Were there more conversions when people visited your site via your email?

How to prepare

We’re here to make your life easier and we want to take as much stress off you as we can, but we’ll always need your input for certain things. Here’s some things you can do to maximise the success of your campaign and streamline the process.

Know what you want

Of course, we’re very happy to advise you and recommend what we think would benefit your marketing strategy the most, but the choice is yours ultimately. If you’re able to tell us what type of emails you’re looking for, whether you want ad hoc emails or a recurring campaign like a newsletter, we’ll be able to get started much quicker.

Prepare your mailing

As mentioned earlier, we’re happy to purchase a mailing list for you, or clean your existing one, but if you’d prefer to do it yourself and save a bit of budget, that’s more than fine as well.

Prepare guidelines

Do you already have brand guidelines? This could save a lot of time during the copy and design phase, but if not, we can work without them, but we’ll need information from you on details such as tone of voice and the sort of look you’d like for your emails.

Ready to get started?

If you feel like you would still like us to clarify some things, then please feel free to reach out to your Account Manager.

If you haven’t already contacted us about working together on email campaigns, get in touch with us below and we would love to talk to you.

7 things to check before filming yourself online

Are you wondering what you need to be aware of before stepping in front of the camera? You probably have lot of questions like what should you wear? How can you optimise your lighting? Or maybe you aren’t sure how to position yourself correctly in front of the camera?

If so, this checklist is the one for you.

At Podymos, we think that everyone can produce high-quality video, no matter their background or experience. So, we’ve created a list of 7 points to be aware of that will ensure all your videos add value to your brand and most importantly your audience.

1. Camera

Before even stepping in front of your webcam, it’s important to ensure your internet connection and webcam can stream high-quality footage (1080 p).

It’s even better if you have a 4K camera as some software, like Riverside FM, can save your footage locally so you don’t lose any quality and then upload it to a secure platform for editing.

2. Internet connection – upload speed

The higher your upload speed the better, however, any speed over 5 Mbps (Megabits per second) will be suitable to stream 720p and 1080p footage.

Before starting filming, check your upload speed by visiting SpeedTest.net and clicking Go.

3. Lighting

A bright room is ideal.

The main light source, which is normally a window, should be in front of you.  If you don’t have a window in the room, then an up lighter will also work, but natural light is always best.

Why is this important? Well, if the main lighting is behind you, to the right or to your left, it’ll darken the footage, making it difficult for your audience to see your facial expressions.

If you’re a regular when it comes to filming online, you may already have a ring light that you can put in front of you. If not, and you want to purchase one, there are many options and they come in many shapes and sizes, but we have listed a few below that we’ve used.

4. Backdrop

A clean backdrop is always best with a few well-placed features such as photographs, awards, certificates or logos on the wall. This can be at work or at home.

Digital backgrounds are not ideal as they often cut the presenter’s image in unpredictable ways, which can be distracting for the audience and impact the professional look for your final footage.

5. Audio

You may find your computer or webcam audio feed works just fine, however if not, you can use external earphones or a microphone to improve quality.

There are many options available. We’ve listed a few below that we use ourselves when filming or speaking online.

Wireless earphones: Apple AirPods (You’ve very likely heard of these before)
Microphone: Rode NT-USB

6. Clothing & glasses

You may not think about your clothing choice too much before stepping in front of the camera, but it can make quite an impact.

Plain colour clothes are always best, and bright clothes can really stand out, adding a pop to your video.

On the other side, stripes or cheques should be avoided as they can cause strobing in the final footage which can be distracting for the audience.

If possible, it’s best not to wear glasses during filming as your computer screen can reflect in the lenses. If you do need glasses, try to mitigate any reflections during set up.

7. Other media sources

To ensure no audio or screen interferences during filming, we recommend all other media devices and programs are turned off.

Yes, this includes putting your phone on silent and closing all applications on your computer so there is nothing to cause distraction.

Now this is all done, you’re ready to go!

Videography with Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality videos as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

How to come up with fresh, new content ideas

Content is king, but constantly having to come up with new content ideas can be exhausting: How do you keep your ideas fresh and exciting? Are there any fool proof methods for coming up with content ideas?

Don’t worry, we’re here to help!

We’re going to you through the sort of content you should be posting and give you some tips on how to generate ideas for it.

What questions are your audience asking?

One of the easiest ways, and also most important ways, to come up with content ideas is to consider the questions that your audience is asking. What is it that they want to know? What are they likely to be searching for online? What will lead them through their buyers’ journey?

You can be the one that is there to answer their questions, like a knight in shining armour. Anticipating the needs of your audience and being ready to address them is how you build trust, which is fundamental for leads becoming customers.

Marcus Sheridan writes about the importance of this in his book They Ask, You Answer. It’s one of our favourite reads here at Podymos, and it’s a stance on content marketing that we absolutely stand by.

So, how do you find out what questions your audience are asking?

Talk to your team

What better way to understand your customers than to speak to the people who interact with them every day? This might be your sales team, commercial team or maybe your marketing team. To launch a truly successful content marketing plan, you really need to have a level of enthusiasm and dedication from your whole team. The best ideas come from working together.

Your sales and customer facing teams are likely to be faced with the same questions from customers time and time again, so imagine if you were able to answer those questions before they even asked them? All of these questions make a great starting point for content.

Search engine research

If you haven’t managed to come up with enough ideas by talking to your team (which is unlikely!) there are other methods of discovering the questions your audience is asking.

Search engines and SEO keyword tools can tell you a lot about what is popular online. Keyword research can give you an idea of popular topics, whilst Google’s related searches and search predictions can give you a closer look into how people are searching for those keywords.

At the bottom of search engine results pages you will see a list of related results.

When typing a query into Google, it will autocomplete to show other popular searches.

Social listening

Social listening is all about being active in your industry on social media. What are the trending topics? What are people discussing and debating?

By following closely, and getting actively involved in talking to your audience, you will be able to glean the topics that matter to them and what questions they’re asking.

What will lead them on their buyer’s journey?

A great way to come up with content ideas is to sit down and consider the journey of your ideal customer. Think about the stages they are likely to go through and the questions they might have along the way. What matters to them? What is going to help them decide to convert?

Ensuring your audience can find the answers to these questions is what will expedite their buyer’s journey and build trust with you instead of your competitors.

The big 5

In They Ask, You Answer, Sheridan introduces “the big 5”, a set of topics that all businesses should be writing about. You can use the big 5 to quickly and easily create an impressive number of content ideas. You can use the big 5 as a starting point, creating a table and populating each topic with content ideas.

The big 5 are as follows.

1. Cost and pricing

Many companies are reluctant to discuss their costs and pricing, afraid that it will drive away customers, or reveal too much to competitors.

Whilst these are valid concerns, it’s worth considering what harm this would actually cause to your business.

Customers will find out about pricing at one point or another, so what’s the harm in them excluding themselves early on, rather than spending time and energy on converting them when they’re not appropriate anyway?

In terms of competitors, you may be worried that they will be able to undercut you, but this shouldn’t concern you so long as you’re confident in what you’re offering and that you’re doing it better than your competitors. Furthermore, if you’re talking about price and they aren’t, who is more likely to win the customer in the end?

Addressing costs in your content is so important when it comes to building trust with your audience. Instead of keeping it hidden away, you are being completely open and transparent, which will only win you favour.

2. Problems

Another of your main topics should be based around the problems your audience may be facing, but also the problems they might find with your product or service.

When you address problems up front, you are probably also able to offer solutions. Not only does acknowledging problems show a high level of transparency, it shows that you genuinely care about the needs of your audience.

When you talk about problems and are able to suggest solutions, your audience will naturally be more inclined to trust you.

3. Best

Last time you were searching for an offering of some sort, it’s likely that you used the word “best” to get the information you were looking for. As humans, we naturally gravitate towards that word, because it’s strong and it’s final.

When we put our time into something, we want it to be right, so we search for the best.

This might refer to products, to companies or even to best practices. What information could your company offer the “best” information on?

4. Comparisons

The internet has made it so easy to find out information that people have naturally become more picky when it comes to making financial decisions.

When people invest in something, be it a product or a service, they want to know how it compares to what else is out there and if it delivers everything they need.

Being the one to provide that information develops you as a trusted source. You demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and therefore can be trusted.

5. Reviews

Buyers always wanted to know what they’re signing up for before making a purchase, they want to know that they’re making the right decision and often, hearing from someone else who has tried what they’re considering will help them to decide.

Reviews are the equivalent to word of mouth, which is extremely powerful. Reviewing your own offerings and being completely honest can help to build trust. You may also be able to use customer reviews to create content.

Check out your competitors

We’re not suggesting copying any content from your competitors, in fact when you explore their content, you may find that they are focusing on creating content that doesn’t encourage the customer journey. This is also referred to as “fluff”, because it is just filling a space, rather than actually helping you to achieve tangible results.

You can look to your competitors to find what they’re missing and take inspiration from what they’re posting about. Are they talking about topics you hadn’t considered? It’s great to explore that. Are you looking at their site and thinking that something is missing? You can fill that gap on your own site.

Whatever you do, whether it’s taking inspiration from their content or ensuring that your content is in no way like theirs, you need to ensure that what you’re doing is better. That means focuses on producing high-quality content that will convert, rather than content creation for the sake of being seen. In summary, each piece of content must help move the buyer through their journey. If it doesn’t it’s most likely not worth writing.

Refresh your old content

If you’re really stumped for ideas (this shouldn’t happen if everyone is involved in your content planning, as new questions always come up from customers), why not look back at your old stuff? You may wonder if that’s actually a good use of your time – surely if you’ve already done it, you have nothing to add?

That isn’t true at all, in fact, refreshing and repurposing your old content is one of the best things you can do for the health of your website. Updating old content is considered a “quick win” for SEO as it shows search engines that you’re not just posting and forgetting about your content, you’re keeping it fresh so that it is genuinely valuable to people.

Look back at old articles and see how you could improve them or maybe you have some longer articles that could be split out into more specific detailed articles.

You can also repurpose old articles, creating videos and social media posts from them.

Basically, not all your content ideas have to be brand new, some of the best ideas have already happened and just need to be built upon.

Keeping content creation simple

As you can see, creating content is quite a big undertaking. Coming up with new ideas can seem overwhelming at times, but it really doesn’t have to be once you boil it down to addressing the needs of your audience and moving them along in your journey.

Consider idea creation as an ongoing process, rather than a stop-start process that you go through every couple of weeks. It can be something that is constantly going on in the background, every time a member of your team talks to a customer, every time you see a relevant interaction on social media. All these small instances could be just the start of a fully-fledged piece of content, or even several pieces of content.

Content creation at Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality, converting content as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing and content creation.

How to create the best Medical Device website

Are you in the early stages of developing a website for your Medical Device company?

Or maybe you already have an established website, but are hoping to improve its performance?

Either way, you probably already know just how vital your website is to your business.

It’s the hub of all your activity. Sure, people can learn about you on social media, they can look across your various platforms to get a feel for your company, but when they’re making the all-important decision on whether to get in contact with you, it’s most likely your website they go to for that final step, so it needs to be the best it can be.

We’re a marketing agency specifically for Medical Device, and we’ve built many websites for clients over the years, however you don’t necessarily need to be a website expert to create a website that will deliver for your business. In fact, we know that just a few small tweaks could massively improve the performance of your site.

Whether you already have a website, or you’re considering building one, this article will tell you what you need to know to get the best out of it, from how it looks to how well it works.

Make it findable

Firstly, you need to make sure that your audience can find your website, and that it’s not hidden away in a dusty corner of the internet. Bring your website out into the light, proudly display it for the world to see.

You’ve probably heard of SEO (search engine optimisation), which is incredibly important, but you should be making sure that all your marketing channels are converging to your website, which is what we mean when we say that your website should be the hub of all your activity.

Your social media posts, email campaigns, and any other digital offerings should all drive traffic towards your website.

Even your offline materials can link to your pages using QR codes. Think brochures, packaging and congress collaterals – they could all contribute to your website’s traffic.

So, when you’re coming up with your marketing plans, always think about how it’s driving your audience on their customer journey, and on channels that aren’t your website, it should probably be by driving them towards your website.

We haven’t dived into SEO here as it is such a big topic, but, we have written several articles on it, so if you want to become an SEO expert, have a look at the below:

Creating website layout

Showcase your brand

The power of branding can be underestimated. Some companies believe branding is just a logo and colours, and nothing more.

Actually, branding is a culmination of all visual assets, as well as underlying messaging that reflects the ethos of your company.

As opposed to being something you can see, branding provokes feeling, and your website is the perfect opportunity to showcase it. Whilst your website does need to look good, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your brand.

All the visuals on your site should be built around your brand, which includes the colours, the copy and imagery. Everything down to the shape of the buttons should be consistent and recognisably you.

Answer your audiences’ questions

This is probably the most important aspect in creating a successful website – does it answer your audiences’ questions?

On average, it’s estimated that 70-80% of the buying decision is now made before a buyer evens contacts you. The internet has given us access to more information than ever before, and people want to feel confident in their decision before they commit.

So, they’ll use your website as a place to find out what they need to know about you. Only when they feel a level of confidence like that, will they decide to reach out to you. During this process, inappropriate customers will exclude themselves, making life easier for your sales team.

Additionally, being honest and answering all their questions up front will build trust with your audience. If you’re being open and not keeping anything back, they can trust that you’re not going to suddenly spring something on them that they weren’t expecting.

Marcus Sheridan’s book “They ask, you answer” discusses the power of this philosophy in depth and is definitely worth a read.

To put this philosophy into practice, try writing down all the questions your audience will have before reaching out to you. These will probably be based on the questions you hear every day from your customers and leads, so it’s important to get different members of your team involved in coming up with these questions.

If you already have a site, does it answer these questions? Where can you find them? If you’re building a site, you can use this list of questions as a basis for the content you need to include on your website.

Lead users on a journey

Once you know what information your users are looking for; you need to consider how easy it is for them to find it. Do they have to trawl through pages of content to find it? Or is it in a logical place where they would expect it to be?

If they can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll more than likely click away, to find out if one of your competitors has what they’re looking for.

You also need to consider the different journeys of the users on your site, and how you can encourage them through it. This is known as conversion optimisation, and it’s how you encourage users to take a desired action, such as getting in contact or making a purchase.

Realistically, ensuring your website is set up to convert is the key to its success, because even if you have huge numbers of visitors, if they aren’t converting, what is the point?

Monitor your performance

How do optimise for conversion? Data is one of the main ways. How can you tell how well your website is performing if you don’t look at the data?

When building your website, you need to ensure that it is set up well report. If you’re just looking to improve the performance of your current website, why not see how you can improve your current way of reporting?

analysing website

Smaller teams will probably find that Google Analytics provides all the data that they need, but larger teams with a reporting budget may want to invest in software like HubSpot. Either way, the most important thing is that you’re looking at the right metrics for your goals.

When deciding what metrics to report on, you need to consider what they actually tell you and how full a picture you’re getting. Sure, looking at the visitors to your website is exciting, but what are they doing once they get to your site? Again, is there any point in knowing this if they aren’t converting?

A few questions to ask yourself include:

What are your visitors doing on your site?
Are they staying or are they leaving straight away?
What pages are people leaving the site on the most? Why could that be?
Are they getting halfway through converting and then stopping? Why?

You can find these answers in the data, and then create actionable insights, wherein you optimise your site based on what the data is telling you.

Medical Device websites from Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want a high-quality website that looks good and performs well to support your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

How do Podymos create and execute a content strategy?

You may be considering if we’re the right agency for you, or you might want to find out what to expect if you work with us to create a content plan to add in to your marketing strategy and then to distribute it successfully.

If that’s the case, then you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll outline the stages we go through to help you identify an unlimited amount of high-quality customer-centric content.Pretty amazing, as the biggest challenge most companies have is what to write about. That will never be an issue again.

Creating unlimited high-quality content ideas

You may be asking, how is this possible? Let’s explain.

We follow the They Ask, You Answer business philosophy where we help you and your team to answer the questions your customers are asking. Why do this?

Creating a content plan

In today’s digital age, consumers in B2B and B2C have the ability to do extensive research on their buying decisions before they even pick up the phone or fill in a contact form. A recent study suggested that 70% of a buyer’s decision has already been made before they speak with the chosen company.

What if you don’t have the right information for your buyers to consume online? Well, likely they will look somewhere else, often to your competitors. What does that mean? Most likely, they’ll be lost as a future customer. But, if you can keep them on your website and provide all the information they require in an unbiased and educational way, you’ll earn their trust and alleviate all their fears and concerns about working with you.

Additionally, your potential clients will be able to validate themselves as suitable for your business or product, therefore saving your sales team time as they won’t have to spend time talking to people who will end up dropping out of the funnel anyway. For instance, they won’t be blindsided by pricing, they’ll already know if they can afford you.

Stage 1 – Strategic content workshop

The first and most critical stage in your content creation plan is the first and then 3 monthly strategic content workshops.

Why is this so important?

Because it will allow your entire organisation to align to the They Ask, You Answer philosophy and generate the content topics to really move your audience through their buyer’s journey.

Who should be involved?

This is simple: as many people in your team as possible who are customer-facing and those who will be involved in creating and approving the final content.

If They Ask, You Answer is executed correctly it will allow you to be the trusted voice in your industry within 18 months, so it’s certainly worth spending the time to do this with the full team to provide the best chance of success.

What is involved in the strategic content workshop

The workshop is split into 2 sections and lasts a total of 2.5 – 3 hours.

The first hour will introduce you and your team to the They Ask, You Answer philosophy. In the next hour and a half to two hours your team will identify and prioritise the content to be created in the first 3 months.

In fact, significantly more content ideas will be created. These will be kept on the back-burner for following quarterly strategic meetings, where more content ideas will continue to be added as They Ask, You Answer becomes ingrained in your organisation. It’s very similar to a snowball effect. The ideas just don’t stop.

Stage 2 – Creation of 3-month content calendar

Following the workshop, a 3-month content calendar will be finalised so it’s clearly mapped out what content will be released when and on which platforms.

This will also include more traditional sales channels such as the content topics that will be used by the sales teams.

Depending on who you currently have in your team, we can do the first content plan for you, but the more your team can execute themselves, with our guidance, the better as this will drive long-term success.

Stage 3 – Content creation

The next stage is to jump right in and start creating the content. As we mentioned at the beginning, we’re here to coach you and your team on how to do this, however, there are some areas where you may need our direct help, such as videography, design and maybe web development (so your content is easy to navigate).

We’re also more than happy to teach your team to do this too. It’s all about what works best for you.

video production

Videography day – 1-day filming

If you choose to produce your content in video form, then this will be completed onsite at your offices, and we’ll aim to create between 9-15 short videos (1-1.5 minutes).

These videos will cover the most important topics identified in the strategic content workshop.

What to expect on the day

Before we arrive we’ll send you and your team a full filming guide, as well as the final list of questions that each person will be addressing on camera.

Before we start filming we’ll identify the locations to film in. The best locations are normally those that are well-lit and have good natural light. Once these have been identified, we’ll ask one of your team to confirm they’re happy with the look before we complete set up and start filming.

Ideally, we’ll film in 3 locations in your office (called set-ups). The first set-up will take one to one and half hours and then subsequent set-ups will take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Will I have a script to read from

As you and your team talk about these topics every day, we prefer you don’t use scripts as this can often leave a video feeling flat, as each word is read one after the other.

It’s much better if each topic is talked about exactly as you would to a customer. The best way to do this is to imagine the camera is the customer, and it’s just a normal conversation.

We’ll still be there to direct your team throughout the day, so everyone comes across in the best way and the formats of the videos are correct to educate your audience.

But, if your team would prefer scripts we can ensure a teleprompter is there and ready to go.

How long until my videos are ready?

Once filming has finished we’ll deliver one of your videos normally within the first week so that you can sign off the editing style and labels etc.

Once that is approved, your remaining videos will be delivered in the following 2-4 weeks. This depends on the number of videos filmed and the outputs required.

Different platforms have different size outputs, so this may increase the number of editing days required, which will affect the project cost and potentially the timeline.

How will my videos be delivered to me?

All videos will be delivered to you through an online password-protected link.

Through the link you’ll be able to view your videos and download them in various sizes, depending on the platforms they are needed for.

You can also embed your videos into your website through this link if needed and benefit from the analytics our enterprise Vimeo account delivers. Alternatively, you can download each and add them to your Vimeo account. It really depends on what works best for you and your team.

Article writing

Articles (or blogs) will be the foundation of your success moving forward. Why? Because this is what your audience will read to answer the questions your team were answering before.

The best thing is content never sleeps and doesn’t go on holiday, so will be working for you 24/7! Once it’s written, it’s like a free sales team continuing to work for you day and night.

writing articles

How many articles will I need to write?

To make a significant impact in 18 months and become the online voice in your industry, you’ll require a minimum of 3 articles to be published a week. Some industries do take longer than others, however, this is the average time.

But don’t worry, we will walk you through exactly how this can be done. You’ll be surprised how easy this becomes once it becomes a habit.

Who should be involved in writing the articles

3 articles a week is no easy feat, which is why it’s important to engage as many customer-facing members of your team as possible.

This is where the quarterly strategic content meetings are so important, as it brings your team together and gets them focusing on a common goal and allows people to put themselves forward to write articles. It really must be a team thing!

Is there a certain style these articles need to be written in?

Yes, it’s critical to provide your audience with unbiased, educational and detailed information in your articles, however, we’ll coach your team through every step of the way, until it becomes second nature.

How long should the articles be?

Each article should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words (closer to 1,500 is better as it will push you to add additional detail).

Do the articles need to be SEO-optimised?

Yes, each article will need to be SEO-optimised. However, this is simpler than you think and we can easily teach your team to do this themselves.

Stage 4 – Content distribution

This is where your team will start to really see results from all their hard work.

Your content will need to be distributed across the various different channels where your audience is active

Where should your videos and articles be published?

We’ll work with your team to identify where your audience is. Are they on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook, or actually will certain content add more value if it’s sent out during the sales process by your sales team, or maybe over email?

Whatever the answer is to the above questions, all your content must sit on your website as this is the hub of all your online activity.

Ideally, everything should sit in a Learning Hub (or something similar), including all your articles and videos so your audience can choose how they consume your content.

If your website doesn’t have a Learning Centre yet, we can work with your team on how this should look and if you need us to build it for you too. Alternatively, we can work with your web agency to ensure it will deliver what you need.

Stage 5 – Metric analysis

Finally, an extremely important step. How is your content performing for you?

As the famous phrase says, you cannot improve what you cannot measure and it’s no different here.

What platform should I use to measure performance?

Ideally, we ask you to have HubSpot installed on your website as this provides you with an integrated platform that not only supports your marketing activities (email, paid ads etc) but it also provides robust data on the content that is working for you and what content isn’t.

If you don’t have HubSpot, there are other options, but they tend to be more time-consuming, costly and less accurate as they involve combining data sources from multiple places.

We can discuss all these options if you choose to implement a radical They Ask, You Answer inbound strategy.

About Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality content campaigns as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

How to incorporate interactive videos into your marketing strategy

In 2018, Netflix released an episode of their popular show Black Mirror. The episode was called Bandersnatch and allowed users to give input into how they wanted to watch the episode. Viewers were allowed to choose where the plot of the episode went next and what the characters would do. The episode was massively popular and even went on to win an Emmy.

Now, interactive video is a much more frequent in media. But what is an interactive video, especially in the context of marketing? Does it make sense for you to dive into this world with your audience?

If you’re curious about this popular tool, you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll cover how interactive videos work and whether it’s worth investing in them as part of your marketing strategy.

What is interactive video?

To put it very simply, an interactive video is a video that you can interact with using a variety of elements. Unlike regular videos, you can click on an area on your screen, like a button, to trigger different actions, such as opening a new webpage or downloading a user guide.

Many B2C companies use clickable elements (or hotspots) for shoppable links to create unique shopping experiences that connect their e-commerce websites to these interactive videos. Motion detection technologies brought this function to the next level by making a button follow a moving item on the screen.

Similarly, you can have viewing branches or alternative endings on these actionable videos where viewer participation is required. These ‘choose your adventure’ videos have been highly successful on popular video streaming platforms over the last few years.

You can also have quizzes, extra pop-up screens called overlays, video-in-video views, and so much more with interactive videos.

There are several companies that provide interactivity solutions for videos, and here at Podymos we love using the Vimeo studio.

Interacting with a video vs interactive video

Taking actions on a video is not a new concept. End screens, cards that appear from the top right corner, and subscribe links have been around for a while. Clicking on these elements is considered interacting with a regular video.

However, interactive video creates an entirely different experience where you can view the content in multiple ways. It’s a much more engaging experience to participate in a video, as opposed to passively watching one.

What does it mean for marketing?

We live in a world of noise where we get content and input from every direction at all times. It’s becoming harder and harder to get people’s attention, and businesses are looking for tools to create two-way conversations with their target audiences. To cut through the noise and be heard, companies need to find creative ways to encourage engagement from their audience.

According to Demand Metric, interactive content generates two times more conversions compared to passive content. Another study showed that 81% of participants agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.

Interactive videos are therefore a perfect way to quickly boost marketing efforts. They can be used to create trailers, product videos, shoppable videos, internal training videos, external educational videos, demos and more.

Analysing video data

Valuable data from interactive videos

Learning about the preferences of your target audience interacting with a video can be very useful when creating marketing strategies. Since viewer participation is required to move interactive videos forward, a lot of analytics can be extracted. Every time someone chooses a branch over the other or clicks on a hotspot, platforms record this to create an extensive report.

Dana Harder from Content4Demand says

“The biggest benefit that I see with interactive is really around the measurement of content. If you think of the static experience, at some point they download a PDF and that PDF goes into a folder on their computers and we have no idea what happens after that. You don’t know if they actually opened and read it. Once you make the experience digital and interactive, all of a sudden you have contact consumption data you’ve never had before.”

Pricing of interactive videos

Cost is always one of the top questions we receive, and it has been no different in the case of interactive videos.

Currently, there are many platforms that offer interaction tools, and their pricing varies.

But the costs are not only about the platform. Video production is the first step in any interactive video project. If you want to learn more about video production costs, you can read our article here.

Mapping out the experience is possibly the most time-consuming step of the process. After deciding on a clear goal and target audience, the viewers’ journey should be determined, including all the paths and turns one can take in an interactive experience.

These videos are not the most affordable; however, they can be extremely valuable. According to research by Content Marketing Institute, 79% of participants agreed that interactive content can have reusable value, resulting in repeat visitors and multiple exposures.

With that said, every interactive video project needs to be priced according to video length, possible paths, the complexity of interaction tools and so on. As a guide, interactive videos start from £2,500 on top of the base filming costs.

If you’d like to find out what your project could cost, don’t hesitate to contact for an estimate.

Should you invest in interactive video

Whether or not interactive video is something your company should invest in is down to several factors.

Despite the great statistics surrounding conversion, interactive video does have its downfalls.

Obviously, price is a huge factor. They’re not cheap, so it’s not a decision to take lightly.

Creating a video

It’s also worth mentioning that interactive videos cannot necessarily be embedded on every platform, meaning an interactive video will only be interactive on the platform it was created on. In other words, if you download an interactive video from Vimeo for example, it will no longer be interactive (as of January 2023).

You’ll need to consider how would be best to distribute any interactive videos and what role they will play as part of your larger overall marketing strategy.

Podymos

Do you want to create interactive videos for your medical device? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality and unique video campaigns as part of your marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

not be able to offer you.