The medical device launch marketing playbook: from clearance to first hundred customers

Most device launches are planned around the regulatory date and the sales hire. Marketing gets a website refresh and a booth. Then the reps discover that nobody they call has heard of the device, and the ones who have can't say what it does. This playbook is the marketing side of a launch, in the order it should happen, so the first hundred customers come from a system and not from heroics.

Ninety days before clearance: the sentence and the five versions

Write the one sentence a clinician would use to describe the device to a colleague. Outcome first, mechanism second. Then write the five versions of the story: clinician (outcomes, workflow, evidence), purchaser (cost, reimbursement, throughput), patient (what happens to me, does it hurt, is my doctor using it), investor (market, moat, path) and recruit (why this company). Every asset you make for the next year is built from these.

Sixty days out: the explainers

Three short videos. The founder or CMO explaining the problem and the device in ninety seconds. A clinician who used it in the trial walking through a case. A patient, if the indication allows, saying what changed. Filmed once, used everywhere: the website, the sales deck, the demo follow-up, LinkedIn, the conference screen. These videos do more work than any brochure because they survive being forwarded.

Thirty days out: the pages and the funnel

A landing page per audience, not one homepage. The clinician page ends in "request a demo" or "download the evidence summary." The patient page ends in "find a physician." The investor page ends in a contact. Behind each: an instant response with the right document, a booking link, and a nurture sequence timed to how that audience actually decides. Instrument every step.

Launch week: the outbound

A list of target accounts: hospitals and practices by procedure volume, plus the clinicians who publish in the space. LinkedIn content from the founder daily for two weeks. Targeted ads to clinicians by specialty with the case-walkthrough video. A press note written in the one sentence, not the regulatory one. Conference presence only where the target accounts actually are.

Days 1 to 90: evidence content and the loop

Every two weeks: a case, a data point, a workflow tip, an FAQ answered in plain English. Each piece is a reason for the rep to follow up and a page for search to find. Track demo requests, demo-to-trial, trial-to-purchase, by channel and by message, and move budget toward what converts.

Compliance is built in, not bolted on

Every claim stays inside the cleared indication. Off-label promotion is the line that ends careers. Patient stories carry disclosures. A review step sits in the workflow so it takes a day, not a rewrite.

What to measure

Demo requests. Cost per demo. Demo-to-purchase rate. Time from first touch to purchase. Share of target accounts reached. Not impressions, not followers.