B2B Marketing: Fluid Fighter Suction Disc Campaign

In my role at Typenex® Medical, I oversaw the strategy, creation, and execution of marketing campaigns for both product and company level initiatives. Typenex Medical employs an inside sales team to sell medical devices and products directly to hospitals, surgery centers, and medical care facilities. When the Operating Room division launched the Fluid Fighter™ Suction Disc to the market, the Product Manager responsible for the product launch requested a marketing campaign to extend awareness and sales. I led the process and design of the Fluid Fighter campaign by collaborating with Product Management and Sales, while managing the design team.

Product Overview

The Fluid Fighter Suction Disc is a disposable floor suction device used during moderate- to high-fluid intensive surgical cases. It connects to a suction source, either on a wall or machine, and is placed on the floor during surgery to remove liquid. It is easily repositionable and encouraged to be moved around as needed with a foot or hand. This product was already known to the market and was being introduced as a competitive option from Typenex Medical.

Meeting of the Minds

To begin, I met with the Product and Sales Managers who were respectively responsible for the Fluid Fighter Suction Disc. During this meeting, we discussed the campaign goals, messaging, and target market. The managers at the meeting nor upper management provided any metrics as a means to measure success for the launch of the Fluid Fighter. Therefore, to encourage growth and improvement for myself and my team, I asked the immediate team in the meeting, the Product and Sales Managers, to help set a realistic goal that we all agreed felt like a win. It was important to me to measure success to show the benefit of well-designed marketing campaigns to the bottom line. Open and click rates did not resonate with product management and sales, so we decided on the number of sales opportunities created from the recipient list. While this metric does not exclusively dictate the success of the design and marketing work, it did inspire all teams to work towards a common goal and celebrate success together. To track this, I had a campaign created in Salesforce specific for the Fluid Fighter campaign. The Sales team would include their potential customers as apart of that Salesforce campaign when logging an opportunity.

Setting the Strategy

I reflected on previous discussions, resources available, and timeline to decide on a strategy to meet the intended goal. I decided the delivery would include:

• 3 emails

• 3 Social media ads

• Direct Mailer

The email campaign would start with two branded, informational emails sent from Typenex Medical. I often referenced these types of emails as brand emails because they used heavy design techniques to emphasize the brand message. The third email would be a follow-up email from the specific Sales Representative for their territory reaching out about sampling the Fluid Fighter. This was designed to be a hand-off from the Marketing to Sales team. The Sales Representative would be responsible for following up on the communication after this initial touch to meet the opportunities goal. I decided to include three social media paid ads to mimic the content and schedule of the email campaign as a way to capture new contacts. The cadence of the release for emails and social media are displayed below. I wanted to keep a steady stream of information without overwhelming our potential customers. The direct mailer was a way to add another touch to our target market’s experience and speak to those who prefer tactical communication. The direct mailer would be dropped in the mail on the first day of the campaign.

Target Demographic

The target market was 60% Purchasing Managers, 30% Clinicians, and 10% Surgery Center Managers. All of these individuals are inundated with materials and/or surgical cases all day leaving them with little time to do much else so the content needed to be short, clear, and engaging to capture attention and deliver all content.

Purchasing Managers strongly value cost savings, Clinicians strongly value high quality product, and Surgery Center Managers value both clinical value and cost savings. Considering these insights, I created a ratio for each job position between cost-savings and quality looking at what was most important to each of the three job positions. For example, even with a focus on cost-savings there is still concern for a quality product, so the Purchasing Managers were 80:20 cost-savings:quality. By visualizing the weight of each focus as it relates to the demographic breakdown as shown below, I was able to understand the best way to structure the message for the campaign.

Based on the demographic’s job focus coupled with the knowledge that similar products were already available in the market, the main message of the campaign was to introduce Typenex Medical as a player in the space who could offer both cost-savings and quality product. Based on the data, the message of cost-savings to quality was intended to be 62:38, respectively.

Visuals and Tone

With a brand name like Fluid Fighter, I decided to lean into a concept that visually articulated the name and product use. With a direct depiction of the name and product use, it reduced the time necessary to understand the product. Again, the target demographic has little to no time to give to product sales, so the faster the information can be delivered, the better. The rough mockups (shown below) presented during the concept presentation demonstrate the visualization of fighting fluid. Another key point I strongly enforced was to show the product in all marketing materials because many already knew the product on sight. With a visual confirmation of a product they already know, it moves customers to the next thought in their decision making process and closer to an opportunity created.

The tone was very important to get right for this market as well. To differentiate Typenex Medical from the market, I had been employing a smart, playful tone within all divisions, but very heavily in the operating room. A clever and clear tone distinguished the brand against the stark, dry marketing from other medical product suppliers. Strong headlines were key to deliver the intended tone successfully. Some key phrases and a social media hashtag developed early on that made its way to the final are listed below.

Fight fluids, not your finances.

Other discs clean out your budget. Our disc cleans up your floor.

#SuckItUp

Lastly, the visual concept and tone became so animated that it became apparent the animation could further enhance the experience. Because budget and resources were small, I decided to use GIFs in two of the three social media ads to showcase that animation. I did not use GIFs in emails design since a large percentage of the end users open their emails in Outlook, which does not support GIFs. See below for an early mockup of a GIF.

Final Concept: Email

The concept and strategy were approved by both Product and Sales Managers. The only change made was to save the direct mailer for future campaigns due to budget constraints. With a green light to move ahead, I oversaw the execution of the campaign by the design team. Below are the final emails and social media ads used in the campaign.

Final Concept: Social Media Advertisement

Summary

The open rate was on average 7.4%, which is a strong open rate for Typenex Medical, especially for the Operating Room division. Of those who opened the emails, 5.13% led to opportunities created. While this was one of the first times actively tracking metrics tied to a product launch, this campaign was regarded as the most successful to date. Considering that the email list comprised of contacts who had not been considered high-level opportunities by the sales team, the realized conversion rate was extremely successful for three emails and a social media campaign.

From my position as Creative Manager, I believed this campaign was the most successful to date given the design quality, thoughtful strategy, and cross-department collaboration that I actively cultivated from the beginning of the project. Also, it was one of the first campaigns to tie Salesforce analytics to a contact list allowing myself and others to realize the monetary way the Marketing team was contributing to the bottom line at Typenex Medical. Before I started leading marketing campaigns at Typenex Medical, marketing initiatives were not considered to be a viable tactic in nurturing a customer, but rather, as an added bonus. Through this campaign and the implementation of analytics, I was able to show that design and thoughtful strategy could be delivered to the bottom line. Working alongside the Product and Sales Managers to create a team-oriented goal made this campaign really strong. Overall, I was very happy with my ability to pull all teams on the same page and use data to prove the success of great design and strategy.