While most industries already implement VR/AR technology as a part of their successful business practice, modern medicine is not an exception. From cultivating innovative life-saving methods to training the physicians of the future, VR/AR technology has multiple applications in the current healthcare system. At the turn of the decade, traditional medical marketing also gains a new, more future-oriented approach toward promoting healthcare products and services. Read our latest article and explore some of the ways VR/AR technology is used in medical marketing today!
Virtual and augmented reality has become an inseparable part of modern marketing, and not only because VR headsets were among the hottest and most massively promoted technologies during the past year. As branding and marketing in general are based on straightforward, authentic, and informative storytelling, technologies that assist in generating a well-informed and trusting customer base may benefit healthcare marketing. VR/AR technology allows MedTech companies to market their medical equipment or drugs to doctors, nurses, and patients along with technology that will help them better explain the specificities and advantages of their products.
Experiential Marketing
Thanks to VR/AR technology, companies can simulate particular scenarios and propose experiences that engage clients and form an emotional attachment to their products or services. Needless to say, visual experience adds considerable value to the marketing process when it comes to attracting, persuading, and retaining consumers. For example, Bayer Pharmaceuticals successfully adopts VR/AR capabilities to provide customers with qualitative experiential content. According to Dr. Suneil Malhotra, director and head of scientific communications, medical education, and oncology at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, virtual and augmented reality has destroyed the limitations posed by regulatory standards and passive, low-interaction medical content that hampered their ability to introduce new products on the modern marketplace.
Just imagine that physicians can visualize the impact of treatment on human anatomy, patients gain an ability to see exactly how a drug works in their body, while staff can learn how a medication dispensing machine works!
Preventive Care Marketing
Try to imagine your body under the conditions you would undergo from long-term drinking, smoking, eating junk food, or illegal drug use. At first glance, this scenario sounds like science fiction, but virtual reality truly allows a person to mentally process the transformations in their body in the same way they do a real-life experience. For this reason, VR/AR technology is a perfect solution for pharmaceutical companies that produce treatments for the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles. Virtual and augmented reality influences clients’ emotions and decisions more effectively than an ordinary commercial advertising or pamphlet.
VR/AR technology has great potential in terms of preventive care because MedTech companies can inform patients on the benefits of the treatment strategy they propose along with demonstrating what health-risky behaviors could lead to in the future.
Storytelling and Digital Interactions
While traditional forms of advertising offer limited end-user interaction capabilities, VR/AR technology combines branded content with interactive experiences, allowing marketers to implement storytelling through visualization. Moreover, the audience feels an increased sense of responsibility and engagement due to resonant experience and a sense of presence provided by virtual and augmented reality. Even though storytelling is considered a generally accepted marketing technique, VR/AR brings new meaning to this well-known practice.
Immersive storytelling not only expands customers’ experiences but also brings the story behind each product/service to life, transforming storytelling into “storyliving.”
Trusting and Informed Customers
With visual representations similar to real-life experiences, potential customers are more likely to trust MedTech companies. Most marketing strategies are usually ad-driven, however, this method is not effective when it comes to promoting healthcare technologies, services, or drugs. In contrast to these traditional methods, VR/AR technology concentrates on creating visually captivating and informative content that has educational and engaging nature instead of proposing simple advertising. Patients can better understand their treatment with these innovations, so pharmaceutical corporations that employ and market VR/AR technology along with their products will undoubtedly have a competitive advantage.
Therefore, VR/AR technology helps to build trustful connections between pharmaceutical companies, medical technology innovators, healthcare practitioners, and patients.
Summing Up
Nowadays, incorporating AR and VR into marketing seems an essential component of the technology-driven future we have dreamed of. The potential of virtual and augmented reality is limitless. That is why this technology is the appropriate platform for healthcare marketing. The 21st-century world signifies the urgent need to implement VR/AR technology into your marketing initiatives in order to facilitate new experiences for your customers and forever transform the way they interact with your products/services and your brand as a whole. Boost your medical marketing with modern technologies today and become the leader on the market of the future! If you are ready to enhance your healthcare marketing strategies with innovative tech-driven approaches, do not hesitate and start your journey toward the world of future technologies right now!
