“Orthopedic surgeons buy from those who teach.”
I learned this axiom from John Treace 30 years ago and it’s still true today.
This is how surgeons have learned from medical school through out their entire career. They still prefer to be taught by other surgeon mentors. These surgeon teachers can be independently-acting surgeons, or surgeons working with a device company… like yours.
But you already know that “surgeons buy from those who teach”. No big secret here. Orthopedic companies have been organizing and sponsoring events, training labs and dinners for decades. However, training has all changed with the COVID shift.
Surgeons are consuming training content online now.
Training in the new age
So in the new world, how do your orthopedic surgeons prefer to be taught?
Cadaver wet labs? No.
Organized teaching dinners? No.
Medical conferences? No.
Webinars? No.
On demand video content? Yes.
Orthopedic surgeons prefer to consume surgical training content on their own time. They want to stream it and pause it just like you do. They want to consume it on their laptop, or tablet or phone, just like you do.
Psss… Here’s the secret
Here’s where you come in at the orthopedic device company. Most orthopedic surgeons don’t know how to produce content and distribute it effectively on the internet. You, the device company, will all your resources can help the surgeon teach others on the internet. This will, in turn, attract new surgeon customers to your procedures and technology.
What to do
As a forward-thinking orthopedic company, you must facilitate the production and distribution of useful content for your surgeons (product or no product). Make content daily and post content daily. Actively video your KOL surgeons teaching, training and sharing tips. They may or may not mention your product! That’s OK.
The video quality question
I get this question alot. It is push-back with “we don’t have a roving video crew”.
The video quality doesn’t matter. In fact, poor quality can be even more effective communication than polished videos. Cell phone videos draw better surgeon engagement because they are “authentic”. Cell phone videos look like useful training content captured by a surgeon on a whim. Polished videos, produced with scripts and perfect lighting, draw poorer engagement with surgeons because it looks “in-authentic”. These professionally produced videos looks like a commercial.
How to do it
Figure out which of your surgeons like to teach. Find the surgeon who want to share tips and tricks that they have learned about your procedure solutions. Invite these surgeons to do a teaching video on his/her own time. Don’t control the content. Let the surgeon talk about anything he/she wants to.
Schedule a company representative to be there and pull out a cell phone and video the surgeon sharing what he/she has learned with other surgeons in the world. Incentivize your company rep with spiff to do this. (here is a sample video that is a soft sell for MAKO- https://youtu.be/ZFNY0GuX86I)
Upload the video to marketing in the native format (MP4, MOV, WMV, FLV, AVI) from the cell phone.
Marketing will then modify the video to make it easier to consume with editing, subtitles, enhancements. Your marketing team will brand it properly and distribute it to all the relevant platforms – LinkedIn, YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter.
Your marketing team will also lead viewers to a sales lead landing page for additional information. This is where you will capture new sales leads to follow up.
For some hand holding on attracting new customers with online training videos, contact tiger@tigerbuford.com
