There are 83 million millennials in the US. By 2020, one in three adults will be millennials.[1]
Let that sink in for a minute.
Earlier in the year, I attended the HIDA Executive Conference, a remarkable conference for leaders in the healthcare supply chain industry. As I sat in a session related to leadership in a changing marketplace, the topic of millennials arose. At that moment, I realized, I was the only millennial in the room. Listening to the Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers, it was as if they were inquiring about a different species. I thought to myself, am I really that baffling?
My next thought was, if these distinguished leaders are concerned about how to lead this new generation of workers, they should be equally concerned with how to market to them.
Millennials want information NOW. We are digital natives with instant access to information at our finger tips. If we want to know who won the Tampa Bay Lightning game last night because we missed it, we “google it.” If we want to know what Cryosurgery is, we google it. Or if we are seeking data on the latest AORN infection prevention recommendations for back table covers in the OR, we…say it with me…google it! So the question becomes, what can your company do to engage this new tech savvy, instant gratification demographic in a meaningful way? Adopt an inbound marketing strategy.
Digital advertising was the fastest-growing category in 2014, with a 16.1 percent increase in spending.[2] We are talking billions of dollars folks, not millions. Both magazine and newspaper advertising spend had decreased and education publishing increased by a mere 1%. As we continue to grow in this digital era and millennials adults increase in volume, an inbound digital strategy is mission critical.
This generation of texters and social communicators are not going to contact your sales rep if they have a question, they are going to go to your website first. If they can find it. They are looking for the answer to their problem NOW and if you don’t make it easy for them to find, they are on to your competitor. With a successful inbound marketing strategy, your company will be there to answer the young millennials question and have a conversion strategy in place for moving this prospect to a marketing qualified lead, that is ready to engage with your sales rep.
In the healthcare supply chain industry, we can be slow to adopt. In the fast-moving digital era we have entered, it’s time to pick up the pace. At the HIDA Executive Conference, William Abrams, President of the Distributed Products Division at Medline Industries, a well-known healthcare supplier and market disruptor quoted, “In hockey, you don’t skate where the puck is, you skate where it is going to be.”
Tell me my fellow marketers, in 2020, where will the puck be?
If you are a healthcare manufacturer, distributor or service provider and would like to learn more about adopting an inbound marketing strategy as part of your marketing plan, contact KBK Communications.
Image courtesy via: stockimages/ freedigitalphotos.net
[2] http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/media-and-entertainment/our-insights/the-state-of-global-media-spending
