By Melissa Wildstein | President & Founder, The Matchstick Group | 15+ years in medical device marketing
Last Updated: February 2026
Medical device product launch marketing is the strategic process of bringing a new device to market through coordinated branding, messaging, sales enablement, and multi-channel campaigns—all while navigating regulatory constraints unique to medtech. A successful launch requires 12–18 months of marketing preparation, alignment between clinical, regulatory, and commercial teams, and a phased approach that builds market awareness before the device ever reaches a customer’s hands.
At The Matchstick Group, we’ve launched more than 50 medical device brands across the U.S., LATAM, and EMEA markets since 2011. That experience has taught us that the companies who treat launch marketing as a strategic discipline—not an afterthought—are the ones who gain market traction fastest and sustain it longest.
This guide walks through every phase of a medical device product launch, from pre-launch planning through post-market optimization, with the strategic depth that a VP of Marketing or CMO needs to build (or evaluate) a launch plan that actually works.
Why Do Most Medical Device Launches Underperform?
Before we get into what a great launch looks like, it’s worth understanding why so many fall short. In our experience working with companies ranging from pre-revenue startups to divisions of GE Healthcare and Olympus, launch underperformance almost always traces back to one of three root causes.
Marketing starts too late. The most common failure mode. Engineering and regulatory teams drive the development timeline, and marketing is brought in after 510(k) clearance—sometimes weeks before the commercial launch date. By then, there’s no time to build the foundation that drives early adoption: brand identity, competitive positioning, sales training, or demand generation infrastructure. A launch without that groundwork is just an announcement.
Clinical value isn’t translated into commercial messaging. Many medtech companies have strong clinical evidence but struggle to turn it into messaging that resonates with the people who actually make purchasing decisions. A surgeon may care about clinical efficacy, but the hospital’s value analysis committee (VAC) cares about cost per procedure, workflow efficiency, and clinical outcomes data that map to reimbursement metrics. If your marketing doesn’t speak to the full decision-making unit, you’ll win clinical champions but lose procurement battles.
There’s no post-launch plan. A product launch isn’t an event—it’s a transition from market entry to market growth. Companies that pour resources into a trade show debut or initial PR push but have no plan for the following 6–12 months typically see a spike of attention followed by a slow fade. Sustained growth requires ongoing demand generation, physician education, sales enablement refreshes, and campaign optimization based on market feedback.
What Does a Medical Device Launch Timeline Look Like?
There’s no universal timeline, but most successful launches follow a three-phase structure that begins well before regulatory clearance and extends well after the first sale. Here’s the framework we use with our clients.
Phase 1: Pre-Launch Foundation
(12–18 Months Before Commercial Launch)
This is where the strategic decisions are made that everything else builds on. Think of this phase as laying the foundation for a house—the work is invisible to the outside world, but it determines whether the structure holds.
- Market and competitive analysis: Before you build a brand, you need to understand the landscape. Who are the current players? What are the clinical and economic gaps in existing solutions? Where do HCPs currently go for information? How do hospitals evaluate and procure devices in this category? This analysis informs every downstream decision.
- Customer research and insight: Before you build a brand or develop messaging, you need to deeply understand your customer—and not just the obvious buyer. The most valuable insights often come from what customers aren’t saying: the unspoken frustrations, the workflow friction they’ve accepted as normal, the decision-makers who influence a purchase but never show up in a sales call. Rigorous customer research—qualitative interviews, advisory boards, ethnographic observation, and competitive perception studies—uncovers the pain points and unmet needs that your launch messaging should be built on.
This work is especially critical for companies undergoing brand transformation. When we partnered with Avery Dennison, a CDMO providing component parts and technologies to medical device manufacturers, customer insight research revealed something the company had been missing entirely: procurement was the gatekeeper. Engineering, R&D, and marketing teams might champion Avery Dennison’s capabilities, but if the company wasn’t on procurement’s approved vendor list, none of those conversations would ever convert to revenue. That single insight—discovered through customer research, not assumed—fundamentally reshaped the brand positioning and go-to-market approach to address the full decision-making chain, including the audience that had been invisible.
The lesson applies universally: don’t build your launch strategy on assumptions about who buys your product and why. Invest in the research that tells you what’s actually happening in the decision-making process—especially the parts that aren’t obvious.
- Brand development: Naming, visual identity, brand guidelines, and core messaging. When we worked with Empyrean Medical Systems on their corporate rebrand, the goal was to establish a visual and verbal identity that communicated the technical sophistication of their radiation oncology platform while making the brand accessible to a clinical audience evaluating it alongside established competitors. The brand had to signal innovation without sacrificing credibility.
- Messaging and positioning framework: This is the most under-invested asset in medtech marketing. A strong positioning framework defines who you’re for, what problem you solve, why you’re different, and how you prove it—for every audience in the decision-making chain (clinician, administrator, procurement, patient). It becomes the single source of truth that aligns sales, marketing, and clinical teams.
- Regulatory-aware content planning: Start building your content pipeline now, while regulatory review is in progress. You can develop educational content about the clinical problem, create preliminary sales collateral with “pending clearance” designations, and plan your launch campaign creative. Waiting until clearance to start this work costs you months.
Phase 2: Launch Activation
(3–6 Months Before and After Commercial Availability)
This is the phase most people think of when they hear “product launch,” but it’s only effective if Phase 1 was executed well. Launch activation is about converting your strategic foundation into market-facing assets and campaigns.
- Sales enablement toolkit: This goes beyond a brochure. A comprehensive sales enablement package includes product sell sheets, clinical evidence summaries, objection handling guides, competitive comparison matrices, ROI calculators, and video demos. Your sales reps should be able to walk into any meeting—whether it’s with a surgeon, a materials manager, or a CFO—with the right tools for that specific conversation.
- Website and digital infrastructure: Your product needs a dedicated web presence that serves as both an information hub and a lead generation engine. This means dedicated product pages with clinical evidence, an SEO-optimized content strategy (so HCPs searching for solutions to the clinical problem find you), and conversion pathways—whether that’s scheduling a demo, downloading a white paper, or requesting a sample.
- Trade show and conference strategy: Major medical conferences remain the most concentrated opportunity to reach your target audience. When we helped introduce EsoGuard to the market, the trade show presence wasn’t just a booth—it was a fully orchestrated launch moment with pre-show outreach, on-site demonstrations, targeted meetings, and post-show follow-up campaigns. The booth design, messaging, and sales team preparation were all coordinated to maximize the impact of that finite window of attention.
- PR and thought leadership: Medical trade press (MedTech Dive, MassDevice, MD+DI) and clinical publications are where your audience goes for industry news. A coordinated PR strategy around clearance announcements, clinical data presentations, and executive thought leadership places your brand in front of the right audience at the right time.
- Physician education and KOL activation: Identify and engage key opinion leaders before launch. KOLs who believe in your technology become your most credible advocates. They present at conferences, author case reports, and influence their peers’ adoption decisions. Building these relationships early—and equipping KOLs with the right materials and clinical data—is one of the highest-ROI launch investments you can make.
Phase 3: Post-Launch Growth
(6–18 Months After Commercial Launch)
The launch event is over. Now the real work begins. Post-launch is where most medtech companies either build sustainable market share or watch initial momentum fade.
- Ongoing demand generation: Shift from awareness campaigns to lead generation and nurturing. This includes paid media (LinkedIn, Google Ads targeting relevant clinical searches), email nurture sequences, webinars featuring clinical data and physician testimonials, and retargeting campaigns for website visitors who didn’t convert. But the most effective demand generation in medtech often goes beyond digital advertising—it combines a tangible value offer with targeted outreach. When we developed a lead generation initiative for Synergy Surgical, we created a specialty suture sample kit targeted at private practice clinics and promoted it through a focused advertising campaign. The result: over 1,800 qualified leads in six months. That’s the kind of post-launch demand engine that turns initial market interest into a predictable pipeline—giving sales reps warm conversations instead of cold calls.
- Sales enablement refresh: Your initial sales toolkit was built on market assumptions. After 3–6 months in the field, you’ll have real-world feedback: which objections are reps hearing most often? Where are deals stalling? What competitive claims need to be addressed? Update your collateral and training based on what the field is actually experiencing.
- Clinical evidence marketing: As clinical data accumulates—from post-market studies, case series, and real-world use—your marketing should evolve to incorporate it. Pleural Dynamics, for example, built significant market credibility when positive data from their prospective multicenter ACES study was presented at CHEST 2025, demonstrating a 53% mean reduction in pleural effusion volume. That kind of clinical milestone needs to be immediately woven into every customer-facing touchpoint, from the website to the sales deck to the next conference presentation.
- Market expansion: Once you’ve established a beachhead in your primary market segment, plan your expansion. This might mean targeting additional clinical specialties, entering new geographies (international launches often follow U.S. launches by 6–12 months), or addressing adjacent use cases for the device.
What Are the Essential Marketing Deliverables for a Medical Device Launch?
Every launch is different, but in our experience across 50+ launches, the following deliverables form the core of a launch marketing program. Missing any one of them creates a gap that your competitors will exploit.
| Category | Deliverables | Primary Audience |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Identity | Name, logo, brand guidelines, visual identity system, core messaging platform | All audiences (internal alignment first) |
| Sales Enablement | Product sell sheets, clinical summaries, objection handling guides, competitive matrices, ROI calculators, demo scripts | Sales team → clinicians, procurement, admin |
| Digital Presence | Product website, landing pages, SEO content, lead capture forms, marketing automation setup | HCPs, hospital administrators, researchers |
| Conference & Events | Booth design, on-site collateral, pre/post-show campaigns, demo materials, meeting scheduling system | Clinicians, KOLs, distribution partners |
| Video & Animation | Mechanism of action animation, surgical technique videos, product demos, testimonial videos, training modules | Clinicians, sales reps, patients |
| Clinical Education | White papers, clinical evidence summaries, webinars, KOL presentation decks, peer-reviewed publication support | Physicians, researchers, VAC committees |
| Demand Generation | Paid media campaigns, email nurture sequences, lead magnets, social media content, retargeting | Full decision-making unit |
The depth and scale of each deliverable will depend on your market, your budget, and your competitive environment. A startup launching a novel device into an established category needs a different emphasis than a large OEM extending a product line. But the categories themselves are consistent—and skipping any of them introduces risk.
How Does Regulatory Status Affect Your Launch Marketing Strategy?
Your regulatory pathway—whether 510(k), De Novo, or PMA—has direct implications for your marketing timeline, claims, and go-to-market strategy. This is one of the areas where medtech marketing fundamentally differs from marketing in almost every other industry.
510(k) Clearance
The 510(k) pathway, which demonstrates substantial equivalence to a predicate device, typically allows for faster time-to-market and more flexibility in referencing existing clinical literature. From a marketing perspective, this means you can often begin building your commercial narrative earlier, leveraging the predicate’s clinical evidence base while differentiating on specific features, workflow improvements, or cost advantages. The marketing challenge with 510(k) products is standing out in a category that, by definition, already has established competitors.
PMA (Pre-Market Approval)
PMA products—typically higher-risk, Class III devices—require more extensive clinical trials, which means a longer development timeline but also a larger body of proprietary clinical data. This is a marketing asset. Your clinical evidence is your competitive moat. The marketing strategy for a PMA device should center on clinical superiority, safety data, and outcomes that competitors cannot replicate. The tradeoff is that your marketing claims are subject to closer FDA scrutiny, so every piece of promotional material needs to be carefully reviewed for compliance.
De Novo Classification
De Novo is increasingly common for novel devices that don’t have a clear predicate. From a marketing standpoint, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge: you’re creating a new category, which means educating the market about the clinical problem and your approach simultaneously. The opportunity: first-mover advantage. If you define the category, you set the standard against which every follower will be measured. Your marketing should invest heavily in disease-state awareness and clinical education—you’re not just selling a product, you’re building market demand for a new treatment paradigm.
🔥 TMG Insight: Timing Your Marketing Around Regulatory Milestones
Don’t wait for clearance to start marketing. The months between regulatory submission and clearance are the ideal time to develop your brand, build your sales toolkit, and create pre-launch buzz. You cannot make commercial claims about an uncleared device, but you can create disease-state awareness content, build your digital presence, engage KOLs, and prepare your sales organization. Companies that use this window strategically launch faster and stronger when clearance arrives.
How Much Should You Budget for a Medical Device Product Launch?
This is the question we hear most often, and the honest answer is: it depends on the scale of your ambition, the competitiveness of your market, and the maturity of your commercial organization. But here are some general frameworks to help you plan.
Startup / First Product Launch: If you’re a pre-revenue medtech startup launching your first device, expect to invest 15–25% of projected Year 1 revenue in marketing. This feels aggressive, but underfunding a first launch is one of the most common mistakes we see. You don’t get a second chance at a first impression with a surgeon or a VAC committee. The investment typically ranges from $250K–$1M+ depending on the complexity of the device and the size of the addressable market.
Established Company / Line Extension: If you’re adding a device to an existing portfolio, you can leverage your established brand equity, existing customer relationships, and proven sales channels. Marketing investment is typically 8–15% of projected Year 1 revenue for the new product. The emphasis shifts from brand building (you already have that) to product differentiation, sales enablement, and demand generation.
Enterprise / Global Launch: Large OEMs launching devices across multiple geographies and clinical specialties should plan for significant investment in market-specific adaptation, multi-language content, regulatory compliance across jurisdictions, and coordinated global campaigns. These launches often involve dedicated marketing teams and agency partners in each region.
Regardless of scale, the most important budgeting principle is this: front-load your investment. The highest ROI comes from the pre-launch and launch activation phases. Under-investing early and trying to course-correct later is significantly more expensive than doing it right the first time.
How Do You Measure the Success of a Medical Device Launch?
Traditional consumer marketing metrics (website traffic, social media engagement) are useful but insufficient for evaluating a medtech launch. You need a measurement framework that maps to the medical device sales cycle, which is typically 6–18 months from initial awareness to purchase decision.
Leading Indicators (Months 1–6)
- Brand awareness among target HCPs (measured through surveys or digital engagement metrics)
- Website traffic from target keywords and clinical searches
- Trade show engagement: booth traffic, demo requests, scheduled follow-up meetings
- Sales pipeline creation: number and quality of qualified leads entering the CRM
- KOL engagement: number of activated advocates, conference presentations, case reports in progress
Lagging Indicators (Months 6–18)
- Revenue against forecast: are you hitting your commercial targets?
- Unit adoption: device placements, procedures performed, utilization rates
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): total marketing + sales spend divided by new accounts
- Sales cycle length: how long from first touchpoint to purchase decision?
- Market share progression: are you gaining ground against competitors?
- Reimbursement traction: for new-category devices, is payer coverage advancing?
The specific metrics will vary by device category, but the principle is consistent: measure the things that predict revenue growth, not just the things that make marketing feel productive.
Should You Use an Agency or Build an In-House Team for Your Launch?
This is a pragmatic question that deserves a pragmatic answer. The right choice depends on where you are as a company.
The case for a specialized agency: If you’re launching one or two devices and don’t have a fully staffed marketing team, a medtech-specialized agency gives you immediate access to brand strategists, designers, copywriters, web developers, and campaign managers who already understand your industry’s regulatory constraints, buyer dynamics, and competitive landscape. You’re not paying to train a generalist team on the nuances of 510(k) marketing claims or VAC committee dynamics—they already know. You also get the benefit of pattern recognition. An agency that’s executed dozens of launches brings a playbook that would take years to develop internally.
The case for in-house: If you’re a large medtech company with a continuous pipeline of products, building internal marketing capabilities makes sense for long-term cost efficiency and institutional knowledge. But even large companies frequently partner with agencies for launch-specific sprints, creative production, and specialized capabilities like medical animation or trade show design.
The hybrid model: In practice, the most effective approach for mid-stage medtech companies is a hybrid. Keep strategic oversight, brand stewardship, and sales team coordination in-house. Engage agency partners for creative production, campaign execution, digital marketing, and the specialized expertise you need during the intense launch window but don’t need full-time year-round.
What Are the Most Common Medical Device Launch Marketing Mistakes?
After 15 years and 50+ launches, we’ve seen these mistakes repeatedly—and they’re almost always preventable.
- Treating marketing as a cost center instead of a growth driver. If your leadership team views marketing as “making the brochure” rather than “driving market adoption,” your launch will underperform. Marketing needs a seat at the commercial strategy table from day one.
- Building a brand identity in a vacuum. Your brand should be informed by competitive analysis, customer insights, and commercial strategy—not by what the CEO’s spouse thinks looks nice. Test your messaging with your target audience before committing to it.
- Underinvesting in sales enablement. You can have the best brand in medtech, but if your reps walk into a meeting without the right tools, the best messaging in the world won’t matter. Sales enablement isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s where strategy meets revenue.
- Ignoring the full decision-making unit. Marketing only to the surgeon when the purchase decision involves a VAC committee, a materials manager, an infection control team, and a CFO is a recipe for stalled deals.
- No digital infrastructure. In 2026, an HCP’s first interaction with your brand is almost certainly digital—a Google search, a LinkedIn post, an email from a colleague. If you don’t have a strong digital presence with clear pathways to engagement, you’re invisible during the research phase of the buyer journey.
- Declaring victory too early. A successful trade show debut is not a successful launch. The launch isn’t over until you’ve built a repeatable, scalable commercial engine that generates demand without relying on one-time events.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to launch a medical device?
What is the most important element of a medical device product launch?
How much does medical device launch marketing cost?
Should a medical device company hire a marketing agency for its launch?
What role does digital marketing play in a medical device launch?
Ready to Launch Your Medical Device?
At The Matchstick Group, we’ve helped medtech companies launch more than 50 brands—from first-to-market devices to global product portfolios. Whether you’re 90 days from launch and need to move fast, or 18 months out and building your strategy from the ground up, our team brings the specialized expertise that turns a device clearance into market traction.
Schedule a call to discuss your launch timeline, or explore how we work with medtech companies at every stage of commercialization.
