BPL Medical Technologies is a leading Indian medical devices company backed by a reputed global investment bank. Santosh Abraham, Founder and Lead Analyst at Research NXT, got talking with Dr Karthik Anantharaman, who as the Chief Marketing Officer for BPL Medical Technologies drives the company's business objectives through impactful marketing initiatives.
As someone who is responsible for new product launches and the product roadmap at BPL Medical, Karthik shares his company's marketing strategy and the extent to which marketing automation has been successfully implemented at BPL.
Digital brilliance and digital expertise should be an integral part of the hiring process. Somebody who is digitally illiterate, or semi illiterate, is no longer a valid candidate for sales and marketing.
Please tell us about BPL Medical Technologies and its target market.
I represent the medical technology business of BPL Medical. We also own another medical technology company called Penlon Limited, which is into anaesthesia and critical care solutions and is based in the UK.
The larger part of our product segment is primarily B2B. However, a year back we also entered the B2C home care segment, which is picking up well now. Outside of the BPL Medical division there are other businesses within the BPL group which are predominantly B2C, such as FMCG, which has a separate marketing team.
Could you give us a brief on the products in your B2C segment?
Let me tell you the list of products that we have in the B2C space. Our handheld Bluetooth enabled 12 lead ECG with glucometer device, the BPL Lifephone+, has won six global product innovation awards in MedTech, and our other smart tech product is our Bluetooth enabled fingertip pulse oximeter. We are talking about handheld healthcare gadgets which can be purchased and owned directly by consumers, that is patients and health and fitness enthusiasts, and that come with mobile app compatibility.
Other customer centric products include BP monitoring devices, a fetal heart rate detector, thermometers, a heating pad and a weighing scale, and we are soon coming up with air purifiers as well.
In your handheld devices, do I have to punch the data in manually or does it automatically feed into the mobile app?
It is all automated. The device acquires the data; once the sample is collected on it by the user, that data is processed within the device. Then via Bluetooth the data is pushed into the app.
The cardiology glucose meter does not have a display, because the data to be displayed is complex and it would make the device very bulky. Therefore the actual display of the ECG and sugar value happens on the mobile app of the user. The primary objective of adding innovations and new age channels like mobile apps to our products was to enhance consumer experience and make the whole process simple.
It is interesting to know that you are using mobile apps to enhance consumer experience. From a business standpoint, how are you monetising these apps?
From a revenue perspective we are not looking at monetising apps. Our business model is based on the device and cloud revenue.
We launched the app for the cardiology glucose meter a year back and have several thousand users for the device and app. For the pulse oximeter the app is recently launched and is at its early stages. As of now we only push app updates to the users. Though we are not looking at generating revenue directly from the app, in-app notifications, push notifications and promotions would be important to keep users informed for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
Are these apps developed by your company? How are you marketing these apps to prospective users?
We have an in-house development team which has done the core design and development of these apps. As of now we are using the internal infrastructure built by our team to communicate with the users of the app, and once we expand to a larger user base I feel there would be a need for additional technologies for more robust in-app marketing.
Marketing of these apps at present is organic to our existing users and through our sales team. We are working on a well defined strategy to market these apps on a larger scale.
Apart from apps, are you using other channels to promote your products in the market?
We do multiple online and offline activities for lead generation. Online activities include SEO of the website, blogs, content management, email campaigns and all different types of social media promotion. Offline activities include direct mailers, telemarketing, clinical trade shows, events and conferences.
Could you share some insights on how your campaigns are designed, considering the different target markets, that is business and consumers, for global and Indian markets?
Some of the campaigns adopt a carpet bombing marketing strategy, which go out generically on the website and on our social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But some of them are quite targeted, say to the top doctors, and that is where we effectively use Google AdWords, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn Groups.
We do run campaigns which are time bound. Depending on the relevance of the technology, the product USPs to talk about and prospect segmentation, we come up with a complete campaign calendar for weekly, fortnightly and monthly communications.
The leads gathered through all these online campaigns are channelled through two specific contact points:
- A centralised email ID which automatically collects all online and inbound web and email leads.
- A call centre to take inbound calls. India specific leads are put into a separate bucket list, and similarly there are other region-wise bucket lists.
Of all the channels you mentioned for your campaigns, which are the most effective in lead capturing, in terms of volume and quality of leads?
The best qualified leads come from the service team of the company. The reason and logic behind it is that once any medical device or product is sold to the customer, these products are owned by our customers for a minimum of four to five years. So it is very important to maintain the relationship through good quality, timely service. This will create more satisfied customers, and satisfied customers are bound to offer positive referrals to their peer groups.
The second most effective medium is publications: publishing content in the form of both editorials and advertisements in the leading healthcare journals, which are distributed to several lakhs of recipients from the purchase and management side of a hospital. We are also subscribing to third party channels who are official publication partners for leading clinical conferences and trade shows. We also subscribe to third party telemarketing services where inbound enquiries regarding medical technology get routed to our company. So primarily online and offline publications and direct mailing activities help us in getting the right quantity and quality of leads.
What kind of technology or tools do you use in the backend for marketing and sales?
For email marketing, SEO, social media marketing, website management and customer journey mapping, we use the campaign management module of SAP ERP.
We are also using the CRM module of SAP, through which our entire demand generation process is automated. All leads are properly funnelled and qualified before they are passed to the tele-calling team, and post qualification leads are assigned to the sales team. This entire process is managed in the CRM and it is our centralised source of data.
