Challenges Developing a Digital Marketing Roadmap for a MedTech startup in Ireland

The background to the study, Ireland is the second-largest MedTech export in the EU (Ardill, 2019) and is the largest exporter of Medtech products in Europe; annual exports total reports at €10.2 billion, but there is also a 90% failure rate in Irish startups in the first five years. The global pandemic has highlighted the need to have a digital presence to enter the market. The primary objective of this study was initially to create a digital marketing roadmap for MedTech startups in Ireland. However, after reviewing existing literature, theories, and in-depth interviews, the researcher identified the many challenges a startup faces before reaching the digital marketing stage. The researcher sought to explore this further and pivoted to research the challenges of developing a digital roadmap for MedTech startups in Ireland. The researcher will outline any applicable research gaps and provide recommendations on digital marketing channels that could be used as part of this digital roadmap. Research Method: The primary data was gathered through six interview case studies, a survey and desk-based research; grounded theory was used to form the topic questions to analyse and deconstruct the collected data. The interview sample size was taken from four MedTech companies, one FinTech company and a digital marketing industry expert. The survey sample size was taken from forty-five start-up companies within the MedTech sector. The key findings were that Ireland is viewed as an ideal incubator for MedTech startups globally. However, many challenges were identified, such as funding, seed investment, regulatory policies, marketing knowledge, attracting and maintaining talent. There was evidence of support at early and high-performance stages but a significant gap between these milestones to succeed as a MedTech startup. There was a significant disparity between the literature and the findings from the interviews, so recommendations were made to conduct further observation and investigation