Rob Holder is Marketing Director of Activa Healthcare, a fast-growing wound care company based in Burton-on-Trent. Activa is a market leader in compression therapies.
![Rob Holder Head & shoulders 2[1]](http://www.medtechbusiness.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RobHolderHeadshoulders21.jpg "Rob Holder Head & shoulders 2[1]")
What are your main priorities as Marketing Director of Activa Healthcare? How do you divide your time?
The strategic direction of the business is my main priority and so most of my efforts are aimed at getting feedback from the team and customers. As part of the Lohmann & Rauscher Group, we have to look at wider objectives and consider where the business is currently and where we’d like to be in the next five or ten years, particularly with new products, product innovation and staff development. My team is also responsible for the training and clinical service to customers, so a lot of my efforts go into supporting them so that they continue to provide these elements to the highest of standards.
How has Activa gained its recent successes, including the Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2008?
We’ve always had a strong and innovative programme of new product development. Healthcare in the UK is constantly changing, so it’s important that we work very closely with our customers and make sure we provide them with the right products – that area of business is easily overlooked, as it’s very easy to get wrapped up in your own product ideas without keeping an eye on what the customers want.
Ultimately, you can have the best products and the best marketing strategy – but without motivated staff who truly believe in what they’re doing, you won’t get very far. We’re very proud to have come fourth this year and sixth last year in the Times Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For list, and we’ve worked closely with our employees to develop the right level of motivation and a winning attitude.
We’re also proud of the fact that close to 80% of the organisation is customer-facing. Whether the customers are external (clinicians) or internal (suppliers), we work very closely with them. For clinicians, we have regular training courses and a clinical services team who work with KOLs to develop new ideas and monitor the marketplace. Our priority is to make sure the company responds accordingly, so it’s a multifaceted approach.
How is Activa’s marketing strategy meeting the challenges of the UK wound care market?
There are pressures on the healthcare system in the UK, particularly in terms of limited resources, which means that they’re looking for good value from companies, so it’s important for us to ensure that we offer that level of value.
We provide a lot of customer support; we do a lot of clinical work, case studies and so on, to make sure that we can justify the claims we make and people can see value there. We also work very closely with the NHS buyers and the drug tariff to make sure the products aren’t overpriced.
Activa also strives to add additional value; we have over 40 trainers who provide training and education to clinicians, either at university level or at the workface in the clinical environment – for example, the development of their measuring skills with hosiery or their wound care skills. The critical thing is to listen and respond to the changes – and that’s never easy; maintaining the best products and the best service is critical in achieving our goals.
Activa’s marketing materials are distinctive in appearance. How important is design to your marketing approach?
We’ve worked with the same design company, Magic Box Creative, in Borehamwood, for 11 years now. As an organisation we’re happy not to take ourselves too seriously. In business it’s easy to get too wrapped up in things to an extent where creativity is stifled. We’ve always said as a business that the critical thing is to have fun, and if you’re not having fun then there’s something wrong. So when we look at creative design, we will often change on a regular basis. Corporate branding is very important, but so is being fun and innovative.
At the moment, we have a product called Suprasorb X that contains a new antimicrobial called PHMB. Two other companies have products that include PHMB, but our view is that Suprasorb X has the edge – so we call it the X Factor. Most companies would stick to the traditional healthcare approach: this is who we are and what we do, take it or leave it. But we thought having a bit of fun with the marketing, while at the same time recognising that we’re dealing with a serious area of healthcare, would help to drive the brand forward.
It’s always a balance in life. You can go too far one way and appear too conservative, or go too far the other way and not appear credible. Our design agency, like us, is responsive and creative in its thinking. That works for our customers too. I used to be a nurse, and many of us at Activa have a healthcare background. Health professionals are very empathetic by nature, as well as being scientifically informed; they’re very responsive to the human side. I think it’s important to humanise what we do.