Tag Archives: STP Marketing

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Important Aspects of Segment Targeting in the Medical Device Market

Targeting

Target as a descriptor is used in several different ways in Marketing. The Targeting that is referred to in this post is Segment Targeting. Targeting can’t be accomplished until you have the Segmentation of the Market complete. As a reminder the S-T-P in STP marketing stands for Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning.

  • Targeting is simply selecting the segment or segments that will afford you your first right successes.

Why Should We Target a Segment at All?

Ideally, your product or company would be equally appealing to the entire market. Seldom is that the case. To gain effectiveness and efficiencies you target a limited segment which focuses your resources on the customers that you are most likely to be successful with.

Targeting Challenge

The challenge with targeting is that it is a process of inclusion and exclusion. Very few sales organizations have reached the level of sophistication where they are willing to firmly accept exclusions. Honor this and leave room for deviation from your target. By leaving a little room for individualism for the sales professionals you will avoid an instantaneous negative reaction to a rigid set of rules and you will leave open a channel for exploration for secondary targeting or follow-on targeting.

Leakage from your target segment into those you have excluded is unavoidable and in the long-term can be very beneficial, as long as it doesn’t get out of control. Leakage typically comes from three sources:

  • Physician driven to adjacent segments
  • Sales force driven through tangential relationship or opportunistic contact
  • Peer – to –Peer recommendation outside the targeted segment

Examples of Target Segment Leakage

From the segmentation example provided, lets assume you choose OR and Post-Op vs. Surgeon as the target segments for your product. Trauma surgeons work in both the ER and the OR, there will be some natural overlap of product utility that can lead to leakage; this would be an example of physician driven leakage.

Or, lets say that your Sales Professional was scheduled in surgery and that appointment was cancelled, they can go home, or they can stop by the ER to visit a loyal customer from a previous stop on their career journey, assume they close this sale; this is an example of relationship driven leakage

A real life example from my history is, that an ER physician presents at an M&M conference and one of your OR surgeons says, “in the OR we would have prevented that death by using this product, this way.” The next day your representative gets a call from the ER doc that just experienced a death. How can you not take that customer call (perhaps the product manager takes the call); this is an example of peer-to-peer leakage.

Critical Consideration for Targeting

  • Is, or are, the segments large enough for you to reach your strategic goals/objectives?
  • Even though the segments may have been differentiated enough in your segmentation scheme to be considered separately, are they similar enough to be combined?
  • Does your product deliver strong utility to the target?

Key Lessons

  • Targeting is not about a single customer, yet.
  • Targets must be large enough to be worthwhile.
  • Targets must be able to realize the utility of your product or company.
  • Practically, you will have leakage between segments.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day,

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success.

© 2017, The Experia Group, LLC

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A Practical Approach to Segmentation in the Medical Device Market

The Set Up

It just occurred to me that I had not completed the STP market trilogy. This post will introduce the concept of segmentation, the S in STP marketing. As a reminder the S-T-P in STP marketing stands for Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning.

Segmentation Defined

  • Segmentation is a methodology to cluster customers with similar buyer behavior (i.e., desired experiences, behaviors) into meaningful groups that can be differentially targeted with unique marketing mixes

Why should we segment the market at all?

  • Segmentation can be a significant source of competitive advantage
    • If you can “see” and “act on” a group of customers — that competitors “don’t see” — you can quickly gain advantage
    • If you segment the same way as competitors you give up a very big potential source of competitive advantage

Segmentation Challenge

Of the three, segmentation has the most potential to set you apart in a significant way from your competition. Segmentation is also the most difficult to do well.   It’s potential comes from the fact that you can segment a market in a large number of ways:

  • Geographically
  • Technology
  • Customer persona
    • Customer type(s)
    • Customer charaturistic(s)
    • Customer preference(s)
    • Customer buying behavior
    • Customer attitude
    • Customer demographics
  • Therapeutic method
  • Care facility type
  • Price point
  • Distribution channel

The difficulty comes from having so many choices. How do you know which way is best for you? Difficulty also comes from the fact that you are likely to use multiple segmentation schemes for different reasons. The segmentation choice I am referring to here is to optimize your product based segmentation. In other words, how will segmenting the market help in my defining or selling the product that I currently am developing.

Segmentation Schemes

To select a segmentation scheme it must be: Meaningful and Actionable. See the table below for an example. Typically you would brainstorm the demand side variables and then score them with type of method.

Example

 

 

For each segment you need to consider:

  • Size?
  • Competitive implications?
  • How this might drive future success?
  • How these might box you in?
  • Is there a pathway for future growth?
  • Is it possible to prioritize the segments?
  • What are the channel implications?

Key Lessons

  • Segmentation can help you see your customers differently than competition.
  • Segments must be meaningful and actionable.
  • Segmentation must lead to a targeting that works with your current sales force or be prepared to change it.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day,

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success.

© 2017, The Experia Group, LLC

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STP Marketing Brings FOCUS to Medical Device Commercialization

The Story

A couple of years back, I was leading a discussion with a group of Product Mangers about, “Getting the Message Heard” in the crowded arena of Medical Device Marketing. The group felt as though their product messages were getting over shadowed by the “Big Boys”.   They were complaining that to reach every physician in the relevant specialty they would have to spend an enormous amount of money.

The question I asked in return was, “why are you trying to reach every physician?”

I received several blank stares, a few chuckles, and a yawn. The conversation turned toward the power of FOCUS. My follow up question was, “When you are in a crowded room, say a cocktail party, how do you make sure you are hearing the person that you are talking with?” The responses: get closer to them, lean in, watch their lips to see if I can see what they are saying, isolate them in a quieter location, if it is important we leave the room.

The last question was, “what do all those techniques have in common?” The response: FOCUS. By increasing the Focus, concentrating our attention on the one voice that was important made their message and in return our message get through.

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So what is the allegory in marketing? Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP). STP Marketing is the thought construct that provides a vehicle for bringing focus, narrowing the beam, to those physicians who are most likely to want to use the device that you are preparing to launch.

Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning

For this post, I am really just trying to introduce the topic. There will be subsequent posts that go more into detail about each of these three elements. There are whole books dedicated to STP marketing and I encourage you to read them. The really cool aspect of STP marketing is that it can be used upfront in the new product development process to determine where the next right device opportunity is, or at the backend to focus the messaging of a device that you have inherited.

When you think about STP marketing or if you are trying to explain it to a colleague or supervisor I use the analogy of hunting.   Perhaps not politically correct but quite effective in getting the concept across.

Segmentation – Identifying the part of the forest you should hunt in. Typically looking for habitat that is conducive for your desired prey.

Targeting – Knowing the nature of your quarry to an extent that you are excluding large numbers of alternative quarries.

Positioning – Using the right equipment, bait, where to build your blind, what type of call or decoy might be helpful.

Practical Example

My first successful application of STP marketing was quite by accident. The device that we were commercializing was used to cool a blood-based mixture referred to as cardioplegia. This particular device utilized counter-current flow to optimize the efficiency of heat transfer.   It also featured two other features, it had the lowest priming volume of any competitive devices and it was easy to use, once you had it set-up.

3M Plain & Simple

Segmentation – hospitals with high procedure volume (ease of use), a focus on pediatric surgery (low priming volumes), which believed in cold-blood cardioplegia, had an active PTCA practice (quick set up required), and was a teaching hospital (ease of use)(more likely to have University educated Chief Perfusionists).

Targeting – In those hospitals identified above, the probability of success went up dramatically if the Chief Perfusionist was a graduate of The Ohio State University Perfusion program. Why, because on the final exam was a physics question, ‘Which type of flow is most efficient when trying to remove heat from blood?’   The answer, “counter-current flow.” No selling or education was needed from the sales representative; they were already biased to believe.

Positioning – For perfusionist who are required to provide cold blood cardiolpegia in the most demanding of environments. The [device name] provides the most efficient cooling, lowest prime, and over all easiest to use system on the market. Utilizing a heat exchanger technology that maximizes cooling surface area, uses the most efficient exchange method (counter-current flow) all packaged in an innovative compact housing to minimize prime volumes.

The [device] went on to become the market share leader at a premium price.

STP thinking is not easy to reduce to practice with meaningful results. It requires a good deal of insight that can only come from un-paralleled understanding of your customers. For me, Segmentation is always the greatest challenge. To make it meaningful and differentiated from the competition requires a truly unique perspective.

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More to come…

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day,

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com.

 

© 2015 The Experia Group, LLC