Medical Copywriter – Writing When You Can’t Say Anything

The challenges that come with writing persuasive medical marketing copy are numerous. Every word you write must be factual and really mean something. Why?

Because today’s medical marketing materials are under intense scrutiny from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), state agencies and even your own internal regulatory and legal departments.

Given such tight parameters, writing compelling medical marketing content can be extremely difficult—especially when as a medical copywriter you find yourself confronted with a question that is common to our industry:

“How do you write strong copy when you can’t say much of anything about the product?”

 There have been many times over the years when I have been given this directive before writing marketing copy for a medical device:

“We know our product works, but it hasn’t gone through clinical trials. So there’s not much we can say about it—but we need you to write great sales copy for it.”

What do you say when you can’t say anything? This is a common challenge when writing sales copy for medical devices, especially those that have only gained 510K clearance from the FDA.

In such situations, your device may be placed in a standard category, and you are only able to make general benefit claims that apply to products in that category.

For example, a few years ago I wrote medical marketing materials for a product from BioCare Systems called, LumiWave™. LumiWave uses the benefits of infrared light and heat to rejuvenate damaged cells and reduce body pain.

At the time, LumiWave was placed in a 510K classification that was common to heating lamps.

This put me in a position where I couldn’t make marketing claims about LumiWave that were any stronger than what I could write for a heating lamp.

Although I didn’t have clinical data to prove what LumiWave could do, I could write compelling sales copy that described what LumiWave was intended to do, and the results that it may achieve.

The secret to doing this was to avoid the use of definitive benefit statements in my marketing copy, and instead use well-written messages that included strategically placed “qualifiers.”

The example that follows demonstrates this technique. To illustrate my point, I have underlined my “qualifiers.”

EXAMPLE

LumiWave is designed to use the long-known therapeutic benefits of light to help ease long-term pain. When an area of your body is in pain, the cells are typically damaged and in need of nourishment and repair. LumiWave may provide this nourishment by using the most optimal wavelength of invisible infrared light.

It works like this. Light is made up of a stream of particles called photons. To gain nourishment, damaged cells absorb photons from light and transform their energy into a new form of energy the body uses to repair and regenerate cells. The result can be healthier cells and a significant reduction in pain and discomfort, which can give you greater control of your life.

As you can see in this example, it’s still possible for a medical copywriter to create persuasive copy by simply converting hard selling points into qualified statements.

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About the author: Casey Demchak

Casey Demchak is an award-winning copywriter and consultant who is a proven expert at writing sales copy that sells, persuades and generates leads. Casey’s sincere, heartfelt passion is inspiring his clients and helping them skyrocket their success. He is dedicated to achieving this through his copywriting, e-books, coaching, and his highly authentic inspirational writing. You can learn more about Casey by visiting CaseyDemchak.com.

This article was first published by Casey Demchak