In the rapidly evolving medical industry, staying informed about market trends, emerging technologies, and competitor activities is essential for shaping your competitive strategy. A key source of these critical insights comes from monitoring relevant medical conferences and trade shows. These industry events offer a valuable opportunity to gather competitive intelligence to stay on top of the evolving market landscape.

This case study provides an overview of how conference monitoring can improve your visibility of market movements and strategy. It provides examples of potential value and insights gained by recent Proactive Worldwide clients.

Stay Out In Front^® of Industry Developments

Attending medical conferences provides real-time access to the latest updates in treatments, devices, and technologies that directly impact your market. The presentation data and product demonstrations offer a unique opportunity to benchmark emerging innovations against your own offerings or industry standards. Through a deeper analysis of the clinical data, you can uncover potential weaknesses in competitor products and identify areas of unmet need where your organization could capitalize.

These meetings also highlight new and emerging industry players, revealing potential competitors or future partners. Conferences often serve as a platform for clinical teams in early development to showcase their data, generating interest from investors or collaborators. Closely monitoring these up-and-coming entities can inform critical decisions about your product roadmap and help you anticipate competitive threats on the horizon.

Through our services, we provided a client in the oncology market with day-to-day alerts highlighting new data and its implications from the annual European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2023 congress. At the event, leading researchers presented groundbreaking studies in lung cancer that reshaped the standard-of-care treatment landscape for patients in the setting. Based on the development, our client was able to quickly shift their earlier stage program to a patient segment with a high unmet need.

Gain Actionable Competitive Insights

Medical conferences provide an opportunity to gather important primary data directly from industry leaders, researchers, and thought leaders. Speaking directly to these individuals allows you to ask detailed questions tailored to your specific needs and strategies.

Information from primary sources may offer additional context or perspectives on how competitors are likely to message and position their offerings based on the perceived strengths and weaknesses highlighted in the presentations. Ultimately, the ability to gain in-depth knowledge from these primary sources represents a powerful strategic tool.

For example, data presented at a recent conference showed that a competitor treatment showed weaker-than-expected efficacy. The primary intelligence collected from the presenter suggested that the competitor will likely shift their focus to the favorability of the safety profile through quality-of-life studies. Based on this information, our client was able to proactively shape a messaging strategy for their medical liaisons that focused on the strength of their product.

Understand Market Reactions to Key Events

Conference monitoring can be taken a step further by incorporating a holistic view of the surrounding media coverage and expert commentary on the event. Closely observing key opinion leaders on social media, healthcare blogs, and other digital platforms allows you to gauge the broader impact and reception of your product or a competitor’s product. Commentary from these industry experts can also offer insights into how the new information may influence your market landscape. Together, this expanded approach provides valuable context beyond the data shared during the conference.

For example, social media monitoring of a medical conference identified concerns from industry thought leaders about our client’s clinical study design. This information allowed our client to prepare for questions and make the appropriate adjustments to their study.

Conference monitoring can provide your company with a rich source of data points that will go into building a strategic plan for your organization. Real-time conference coverage gives you the ability to quickly identify and respond to market changes. In a highly competitive market, the competitive edge gained from this information may make the difference in successfully positioning your product.