Best Practices to Market Your Medical Education Seminar or Event

For continuing medical education (CME) program organizers and marketers, connecting with the right healthcare audiences can make all the difference in ensuring your programs, events and e-learning sessions are well attended. Whether your programs cater to physicians, physician associates, nurses or pharmacy professionals, today’s practitioner has many CME options to choose from — and there’s even more programming available every year. In a competitive market, creating and marketing a successful CME program or event require a comprehensive marketing plan. But what elements are most important?

Be strategic with your CME event marketing

Know your audience: The first step in marketing your CME program or event is to know your audience. Who are you targeting? What are their interests and preferences? What are their learning needs? Consider your potential audience members’ specialties, geographic locations, availability and interest to attend sessions virtually, and where they are in their careers as you plan your event — and then market specifically around those areas of interest. Understanding your audience will help you create marketing messages that resonate with them. Reaching your audience is the first step but getting them to engage with your content separates successful programs from less successful events.

Analyze your competition: Research other CME providers and programs in your target market. Evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their marketing strategies and messaging.

Determine your unique value proposition: Identify the key benefits and differentiators of your CME program compared to other providers. This could include factors such as program content, speaker expertise, format, pricing, affiliations and accreditation.

Set your marketing goals: Determine what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. This could include increasing program registrations, improving participant satisfaction, expanding your target audience or enhancing your brand reputation.

Develop your messaging: Craft clear and compelling messaging that highlights your unique value proposition and resonates with your target audience. Consider the specific pain points or challenges that your program addresses, as well as the benefits and outcomes that participants can expect. Remember to consider your audience: What’s in it for them?

Choose your marketing channels: Select the marketing channels that are most effective for reaching your target audience. This could include email marketing, social media, online advertising, search engine optimization, direct mail or a combination of multiple channels.

Create your marketing materials: Develop a range of marketing materials that align with your messaging and target audience. This could include email templates, social media graphics, website landing pages, brochures and other collateral. Digital channels allow for rapid adjustments based on engagement behaviors.

Implement and measure your marketing efforts: Launch your marketing campaign and track your results. Monitor key performance metrics such as click-through rates, program registrations, participant feedback and return on investment. Use this data to refine your marketing approach and improve your outcomes over time.

Employ a multichannel strategy

A comprehensive marketing plan should include a mix of marketing tactics such as email marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising and public relations. Your marketing plan should also include a timeline for each tactic, a budget and a way to measure success. No matter the platform, communication about your CME programs should include all relevant information, such as the dates, times and location of the CME event. Provide details on the topics covered and the qualifications of the instructors and include calls to action which encourage recipients to take steps to register for forthcoming CME events.

Utilize email marketing: Email marketing is a highly effective way to promote your CME program or event. You can use email to send reminders, updates and announcements to your target audience. You can also segment your email list to send highly targeted messages to specific groups of people. Email further allows modifications and enhanced engagement via embedded links.

Send direct mail: Tried-and-true physical mail is a great way to double down on your marketing and branding. Physical mailers with visually appealing graphics and layouts that convey the message effectively are great assets that both share information about your CME programming and add professionalism and credibility to your organization. Direct mail is durable and time-tested.

Leverage social media: Social media is a powerful tool for promoting your CME program or event. You can use social media to share information about your program, engage with your target audience and create a buzz around your brand and its robust offerings. Make sure to use relevant hashtags, and tag partners like professional associations and healthcare institutions in your posts to increase visibility.

Boost your message with paid advertising: Paid advertising can help you reach a broader audience and increase attendance at your CME program or event. You can use platforms like Google Ads, Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads to target healthcare professionals who are likely to be interested in your program.

Segment your email lists for maximum impact

While the quality of your content is incredibly important when you are marketing your CME offerings, the success of your messaging comes down to the folks who are receiving it. Your email list of providers and related staff should be segmented, and the messaging should correspond to that segment.

Identify the right audience for each of your emails: Group your email list by specialty, interest or location — locally, regionally and nationally — to create targeted messages that will resonate with your audience.

Personalize your emails: Use the recipient’s name and any other relevant information to create a more personalized experience.

Keep your emails short and to the point: Healthcare professionals are busy, so keep your emails concise and focused on the benefits of your CME offerings.

Use a compelling subject line: Use a subject line that grabs the attention of the readers within each of your segmented lists and clearly communicates the value of your email. Subject lines are not one size fits all. A/B testing is a great tool to use to identify the highest-performing subject line.

Use engaging visuals and multimedia: Use images, videos and other multimedia to make your emails more engaging to your specific segmented audiences.

Tailor your message: Segment messaging to new potential attendees, and include language that differentiates and makes clear the advantages of your medical education training relative to other training options. Reach out to previous attendees with messages to engage them in your offerings both before and after conferences. Provide opportunities for previous attendees to share feedback that could encourage future participation and engagement.

Learn from your content

Refresh your email marketing approach based on the data you gather. Continually test and optimize your emails to improve open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. Retarget content based on your recipients’ behavior. When resending emails, consider changing out subject lines or your content in between sends, and adjust your messaging to include new value-adds and calls to action based on data you receive about opens, non-opens or non-clicks. Create tracking links through your website to understand the relationship and successes between your emails and your registration website. Be sure to pull reporting to understand user engagement.

Conclusion

Marketing a successful CME program or event requires a comprehensive marketing plan that includes a mix of marketing tactics, such as email marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising and public relations. Partner with MMS for solution-based CME marketing strategies that will help you connect directly with more providers; build awareness about your educational programs; target local, regional and national audiences; and increase attendance for online and in-person courses. With MMS as your partner, your team can increase attendance, improve participant satisfaction and boost revenue for your CME program.