Everyone talks about omnichannel. Few do it well.
In medtech, digital transformation isn’t optional. It’s survival. Yet for all the noise about AI-driven journeys and seamless customer experiences, even the top players are still building the plane mid-flight.
So what can smaller European medtech companies learn from the current leaders? I reviewed the publicly available cases of digital and omnichannel strategies of three global giants Medtronic, Siemens Healthineers, and Stryker to surface actionable insights and best practices.
Medtronic: Building Ecosystems, Slowly
Medtronic remains the largest medtech company by revenue. But when it comes to omnichannel, it’s evolving cautiously.
What they’re doing:
- Co-marketing with Siemens Healthineers on the Multitom Rax imaging system as part of the AiBLE spine ecosystem (source).
- Leveraging social media, clinician education tools, and content platforms to increase reach and engagement (case study).
What’s missing:
- No visible digital marketplace or open ecosystem for partners.
- Limited public evidence of AI-driven personalisation or predictive content.
Ecosystem thinking is valuable, especially in surgical or complex therapies. But without deep digital integration, especially around the customer journey, the ecosystem risks being a brochure, not a behaviour driver.
Siemens Healthineers: The Platform Pioneer
Siemens Healthineers offers perhaps the most mature digital and omnichannel setup among major medtech players.
What they’re doing:
- Operate a Digital Marketplace that enables customers to explore, demo, and procure software solutions from Siemens and third parties (source).
- Use Bynder DAM to centralise content across regions and channels (source).
- Build audience-based personalisation using Adobe tools (source).
What’s missing:
- Real-time sales integration and next-best action logic remain largely invisible.
- Little public info on commercial outcomes (conversion lift, sales acceleration).
You might not build a full marketplace, but the lessons around content centralisation and partner integration apply universally, especially to smaller firms with limited resources.
Stryker: Agile Personalisation at Scale
Stryker isn’t the biggest, but it punches above its weight in digital marketing innovation.
What they’re doing:
- Reportedly implemented AI-driven content personalisation, boosting engagement by 50% and cutting costs by 25% (source).
- Use marketing automation tools to deliver educational content to clinicians and reps (source).
What’s missing:
- Limited visible platform strategy; more campaign-centric than ecosystem-driven.
- Attribution and full-funnel metrics remain hard to trace.
Stryker shows how even non-software-heavy medtechs can benefit from AI and automation. Start with content relevance. Scale later.
Learnings and Best Practices for European MedTech Marketers
1. Centralise your content before you personalise. Don’t jump to AI before you’ve cleaned up your content chaos. You need a workable Digital Asset Management setup.
2. Think ecosystem, not brochure. Medtronic’s AiBLE play works because it ties devices to a procedural journey. Even small firms can do this by connecting education, support, and product content into a workflow. Dont’t make artifical breaks between marketing, sales enablement and post-sale support.
3. Use digital to empower field, not replace it. True omnichannel means your rep knows when someone opened the email, attended the webinar, or downloaded a manual. Feed that data back to the front line, improve on data and feedback.
4. Focus on one journey and automate it well. Pick a narrow use case like onboarding surgeons to a new device and build a full journey. Then automate and replicate. Don’t try to boil the ocean.
5. Measure what matters. Don’t stop at clicks. Track whether digital engagement shortens sales cycles, improves training uptake, or drives service revenue.
Final Thought
The leaders aren’t perfect. Most are still struggling with full integration, attribution, and ROI. But they’re moving. And in medtech, movement is momentum.
If you’re a European SME, you don’t need a marketplace or AI engine to start. You just need a map, a message, and the will to connect the dots.
This content has been enhanced with GenAI.
See also:
Complete Guide to Omnichannel Marketing in Pharma and Medtech
