G M Butcher Suggest you look into Medical Device Marketing and Sales Workshop as a venue.

Cold calls to top physicians via their office manager with offers of lunch and learns, ceu's are extra incentive to look at your product.

Daniel Daily With a strong digital marketing plan that incorporates, brand awareness, engaging content development, some advertising and using growth hacking techniques. Honestly, it's how product launches are done today!!!

Don Kloos What do you think of purchasing groups for hospitals and MD groups? I understand it's essential to get in, but perhaps difficult to get acceptance and mind share. Thoughts?

Don Kloos Daniel: Good stuff. I think I get the digital - emailers, FB, Instagram, banner ads on med websites, I'm not sure what you mean by growth hacking.

Don Kloos Thanks folks.
My understanding is cold calls to MDs and office managers are minimal these days. Who would do these calls? Reps, distributors? I'm under the impression big Rx companies have armies of sales reps calling on MDs, or used to. That would be expensive for a start up. Any thoughts?

Roger Cepeda, JD, MBA, RAC Do you already have a medical advisory board set up? This would be a group, or perhaps a few groups, oriented around your ENT, FP, etc medical specialties, to develop the value proposition, which can be cost, ease-of-use, prevention of future complications/expenses, or whatever differential benefit you think can be shown with data. Then you build testimonials and small studies (n=20) to show your benefits, conveyed at medical societies through scientific posters, presentations, maybe an ENT journal, and the like. Once you have 2-3 academic medical center KOLs talking about your product, you can consider larger sales volume strategies, but a GPO will be like selling to Walmart- they will demand the lowest margin you can tolerate, not counting their 2% "admin" fee that might commoditize your product. Until you have your own sales & marketing "feet on the street," the key is to have clinical voices touting your value in clinician-to-clinician environments.

A start-up climate sure does mean keeping it lean! Are there professional associations or patient advocacy groups willing to endorse it? For keeping sales and marketing costs down, suggest exploring partnerships with consumables distributors already selling to your target customer base.

Roger,well said.

Agree with Roger. To expand, it sounds like an opportunity for an MR channel who's go-to-market is physician groups and/or they already have expertise selling ENT products and consumables. In this case, they may also have the KOL relationships to leverage as well.

Don Kloos Thanks for the insights, Roger. There is clinical data and studies from Europe, I believe, that might be used to validate the product which would help, but I believe the US market will want a domestic KOL voice. Prior to GPO, I wonder the most efficient way to reach the 300,000 FP, GP, ENT targets....

Todd Abraham A bit challenging as we somewhat have an equation without all of the variable defined..... so I will take some liberties on assumptions.

Based upon the tone of your note and responses I will assume that you do not intend to pursue a direct sales model... given the price point that is wise.

For channel I suggest identifying distributors that have the best reputation and clear strong presence in the call point for your product (ENT, FP, GP, audiologists) . It will likely take a few distributor to cover all these call points and/or all regions.

You need to create compelling sales collateral to go along with the product. This collateral should clearly differentiate your product versus current alternatives and include appropriate clinical data / references. Collateral pieces should also address healthcare economics for c-suite and payer appeal (not just that it is reimbursed), clinician practice improvement (how your device will help them treat patients and {continued next post}

Very useful thanks all

Pat Licata Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business. Growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business.

Mark Proulx, CQA, cSSBB Don Kloos any way that gets the doctors making money is a way to push the product to the end users. Putting money in the pockets of the ones who would prescribe the product is a sure fire way to get patients using it. No profit, no interest.

If you connect with me via LinkedIn in I can share a digital marketing platform that will work to directly target the exact physicians that you want. It can also be used to target patients and help drive business to those physicians.

What is it? Get in touch, we are looking for great products for our customer base.

Any device used by the provider on the patient will need to demonstrate ease of use or significant cost savings especially if it is displacing an available product. High volume ENT practices should be approached, and especially ENT practices embedded within multi specialty managed clinic systems. If the device can defray costs of other insured products or maintain health, insurers should be approached for co-marketing. Conferences maybe useful and KOLs.
I would not wait for consumer marketing unless there is potential for harm or misuse. If it is applicable to a younger or wide age audience, make an app with a digital simulation of its use and gameify it. Patients can learn about a disease and "practice" using the device.

KAVEER GIRRAN is this a hearing device?

KAVEER GIRRAN ENT's, audiologists, MD s and speech therapists

Todd Abraham (continuing my prior post).... and how your device will help them make more $$$. Identify the referral base as well and appeal to them with targeted materials.

In parallel as other have suggested you need a few strong KOLs driving some publications and creating podium presence in the right forums where your clinical target audience attends and reads.

I agree with the plugs several others have made for digital leverage. To support your distributors and in preparation for direct to consumer marketing you will need to establish a strong online presence with outstanding SEO. A robust digital approach should leverage the sales collateral and KOL contributions previously described. It should also have different pages based upon if the visitor is a clinician or a patient.

Kudos on getting this forum to provide free consulting and good luck!

Don Kloos Thanks all for your feedback. I like them and really appreciate some of the detail and thought going into this. The depth of experience here just blows me away. I wish I could, but I can't disclose anymore at this moment - soon I expect. I'll reach out individually to those who have suggested / requested it.

Generating inertia in KOL is something I also value for this. It's hard to connect with MDs at work, and I often contact corresponding local association chapters, since many of the leaders are MDs. Visiting trade shows and meetings has worked well for me, too. Sometimes, I've contacted editors to gain industry perspective and network for leads, too.

Regarding large distributors (McKesson, Cardinal....) I've previously received interest in just filling orders I generated for a product, but there is an unwillingness as a distributor to proactively generate business. Thoughts?

Agree with the digital approach, would at the same time do some simulations with patients and docs to see if real patients like the product and how they use it (get some real time feedback for your patient journey), also double check who's going to pay for it vs what is available in the market and what evidence you need to bring. Check out the ISPOR site for value based data examples. www.ispor.org

John R. Miller Trying to imagine an outer ear device that you claim is Class 1. Are you sure it is not exempt? The only thing that comes to mind that would cost under $10 is some type of ear wax removal item or earplugs for swimming. If it has the potential for retail I would drive it through facebook focused on pediatricians and mothers.

Additionally set up meetings with Walgreens, CVS, etc.

You will find it very difficult to find sales individuals or distributors interested in detailing a $10 item.

Perhaps licensing to a company already in the space could be an alternative approach.

Many questions is $10 the total price or co- pay price after reimbursement? Depending on the price, the product will have a perceived value. The perceived value will determine how to market the product and needs to be known before you develop business or launch plans.

Depending on product I personally would go for end user, forget the docs for now. Unless you have distributors that have access they are a tough bunch unless they get a piece of the pie. If you want to explore manufacturing alternatives. Thats my expertise and business.

Don Kloos Thanks all very much for the helpful comments and input - mostly right on. I'm not free to disclose more product details at this time, but it would replace a more lengthy and costly approach. Very helpful and a good chance to interface and learn from my colleagues in device and marketing development space.

Interesting thought to skip MDs and go mass retail. MDs seem really hard to reach. Have seen other great disposables that never make it on the tray. After attempting retail for my last launch, I'm not sure which is harder!

"Let’s assume IP, packaging, production (overseas), inventory are all complete and take a price of ~$10" and "So, pre-launch work is done," --- Sorry to be direct, i am afraid to say that your pre-launch work has not even begun, as opposed to be "done". you may still need a lot of audience warming up, audience communication, audience interest testing, audience warm list building, etc. Otherwise, you may be launching into a "cold" audience, especially in mass retail.

Don Kloos Patrick, I agree with you. Maybe a nomenclature issue, though the product is ready to sell, to a point, but the market is not. Most of the comments above deal with the market validation and 'warm-up' stage as you call it. Thanks.