Medical Legal Regulatory (MLR) Review Process in Pharma

The medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) review is undoubtedly one of the most important procedures in the pharmaceutical industry. Yet, it is also one of the most complex and time-consuming as well. For many experts, especially in pharma marketing, MLR review often feels a bit drawn-out due to old methods and outdated software. Still, it remains a huge element of any content validation process. Learn all the basics of MLR reviews, their challenges, and their benefits in our guide.

What is MLR Review?

MLR review, or medical, legal, and regulatory affairs review, is an important process in the healthcare industry that helps companies ensure that all their content complies with current standards and laws and can be published without posing any risks to patients and healthcare professionals.

The Role of MLR in the Pharma Industry

Regulatory hurdles in pharma rank among the top three biggest challenges in the industry. Even the smallest misstep can lead to significant problems. This is why medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) reviews exist: to help companies create digital content that won’t harm their patients’ health or the company’s reputation. Let’s take a look at a few more reasons why MLR is so important in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.

  1. Ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of all your content

Every pharmaceutical or healthcare organization, company, or even small business that creates and publishes any type of content faces a huge responsibility: providing both healthcare professionals and patients with true information backed by facts, studies, and other evidence. Even the smallest mistake can put someone’s life in danger, which makes an optimized MLR review an important part of any content creation process.

  1. Promoting content worldwide

When a pharmaceutical company publishes content, it often considers the norms and laws of the country in which it operates. But what if this company decides to expand worldwide? How can it ensure compliance with the laws it is not familiar with? This is where MLR reviews play a huge role. With the right MLR process, pharmaceutical companies can ensure compliance in medical marketing not only in their country of origin but anywhere in the world as well.

  1. Adhering to legal regulations

Distributing inaccurate and misleading information can lead to serious repercussions. The pharmaceutical industry is very strict about complying with the laws; even the smallest mistake could result in huge fines. When an organization is found guilty of fraudulent marketing or misrepresenting its content and offerings, it could face fines amounting to millions of dollars, if not more. For example, Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion for the illegal marketing of four of its off-label drugs, which became one of the biggest fraud settlements in the healthcare industry.

  1. Maintaining a good brand reputation

If your marketing content is inappropriate, filled with errors, contains misleading information, and includes made-up facts, it’s likely that sooner or later, it will make the news. This will put not only your patients but also your entire organization at risk. Your reputation will be severely damaged, and restoring it will be a huge challenge. At the very least, it will be a time-consuming and expensive process, potentially taking many years to settle.

Limiting MLR review versus creating more content: what's the priority?

Types of MLR Submissions

Many pharma and life sciences companies integrate MLR reviews into their workflows in the wrong way. MLR reviews are often conducted when there is a serious paper about to be published or a huge conference coming up where everyone would be listening to what the organization has to say. The truth is that MLR reviews are needed in 90% of cases, whether it is a website blog post or an important research paper. Here are some of the most common types of MLR submissions:

Promotional content

In many countries, companies might be fined for false advertising. Combined with pharmaceutical industry regulatory standards, it becomes crucial for every organization to ensure compliance in every promotional piece they create, even if it is a small tweet or Instagram post.

Educational content

This type of content might be used by both patients and healthcare professionals. If there is a mistake in it, many people are likely to remember it and might even subconsciously use this incorrect knowledge in the future. MLR review filters out false information, errors, and other types of mistakes from infiltrating educational content and influencing patients’ health.

Scientific publications

Even though research is always published by scientists who are experts in their field, their publications should still be reviewed to catch any potential oversights or errors. This includes verifying the evidence presented, the research results, and even the factual information.

Compliance documentation

Compliance documentation, such as pharma regulatory guidelines for audits and reviews, standard operating procedures, reports, and records, should also be verified by an MLR team. Just a small error could lead to many people adhering to compliance documentation and making the same mistake in their work.

Internal communication

All in-house communication, such as training documents, newsletters, surveys, and learning programs, often requires review if there is a possibility that any information mentioned in these documents might harm someone’s health or safety. All communication within the firm determines the work of people who are just starting to work there, directly impacting their interactions with patients and healthcare professionals.

MLR Review Process Challenges & Their Solutions

Ensuring pharmaceutical regulatory compliance is not an easy task. From creating a thriving environment for your MLR review team to meeting all possible deadlines, there are just too many details too important to forget. So, how can you polish the MLR review process, and what are the challenges behind it? Let’s discuss:

Unfitting technology

MLR reviews heavily depend on the software used to conduct them. If the chosen tools are not up-to-date, don’t consider all current laws and regulations, and simply don’t work well with all formats your organization works with, it’s likely that the final MLR review of your content will be incomplete and even incorrect. Instead of spending money on new tools and an additional workforce for additional reviewing, it’s best to invest in innovative software and tools that are regularly updated, fit your organization’s needs, and are easy to use for everyone who creates and submits content.

High workload

Speaking of the workforce, companies often rely too much on too few experts who can handle reviews of marketing materials. As a result, two possible issues arise. First, when just a small team of people work on the same important task all the time, it’s likely that at some point, most of them will feel overworked and even burned out.

Moreover, when professionals responsible for MLR reviews eventually leave, they will also take all important knowledge with them, such as the location of any documents, specifics, and nuances inherent to an MLR review for a particular company, formatting requirements, the best content approval strategies specific to different types of documents, etc. All of the knowledge accumulated over the years will be gone without a proper management system that allows for not only streamlining MLR processes but also gathering insights from already conducted reviews. Ensure that you create a healthy environment for your employees and integrate proper solutions for MLR efficiency.

Lack of communication among reviewers

When MLR reviewers barely talk to each other, this causes a number of issues, including transparency problems. To better understand why this is a huge deal, let’s picture a situation. One of the reviewers looked at a piece of content submitted by a marketing team and left a few comments. After going through the document, another reviewer decided to message one of the authors regarding a few issues found in the text. The other reviewer is not aware of these issues and proceeds to contact the author to provide the same feedback, forcing a person to go through the identical process twice.

In another scenario, some reviewers might create multiple versions of content without even knowing so, resulting in a lost final version and delayed content delivery. Situations like this happen all the time, and to avoid them, reviewers should treat any task as a collective effort and focus on communicating problems and ideas instead of just doing their jobs separately from others.

The time-consuming content review process

Content creation is a lengthy process itself, often requiring a lot of resources and time to be finished. And when, after all this time, content gets cut or, in the worst-case scenario, doesn’t even get approved, marketers feel like they have wasted all their time for nothing. For both MLR and marketing teams, situations like this cause a lot of stress, which is why some companies have started to adopt a modular approach to creating content. Instead of being a single unit, modular content can be broken down into different pieces or modules that work interchangeably. This way, marketers save time on content production, and MLR experts can focus on reviewing separate blocks of content.

Difficulty coordinating promotional review committee (PRC) meetings

Marketers and promotional review committees might not see eye to eye all the time. There is always a risk of a conflict in schedule, opinions, and priorities. For many companies, PRC meetings are quite rare, and when they do happen, there is a high chance that they will be inefficient. Remember that no matter how different everyone might be, they are still colleagues and share the same goals, so it’s best for everyone to focus on distributing roles and responsibilities within the teams and finding the most fitting solutions to the present challenges. For example, if there is a problem meeting deadlines, it might be a good idea for the marketing team and pharma review committee to discuss what both sides can do to speed up content delivery.

Summing Up

Healthcare marketing has always been challenging. Creating content that offers correct medical information, complies with current regulations, and properly represents the company’s vision is quite a conundrum. However, with the right approach, it’s possible to always stay ahead of the competitors while keeping up with all the trends and staying on the same page with stakeholders.

If you would like to learn more about MLR approval in healthcare and how you can create content that will be 100% approved, contact us now. Our experts will provide you with a personalized consultation on the best solutions for pharmaceutical companies.

Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing Strategies for OTC Brands

According to the FDA, there are up to 300,000 OTC drugs marketed in the U.S. alone. Without a solid digital marketing strategy in place, how can you expect to stand out from such a massive crowd, drive sales, build brand awareness, and cultivate long-term customer loyalty?

Consumers are increasingly turning to digital channels for research, purchases, and engagement with brands. Rising healthcare costs have led to a surge in self-medication, with 27% of patients across 17 international markets choosing OTC drugs over prescription drugs due to expense, as revealed by a YouGov survey. This trend presents opportunities for OTC brands to connect with consumers through tailored digital experiences.

Source: YouGov

To stand out in this highly saturated OTC market, you must embrace digital transformation, harness data-driven insights, and deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences that resonate with modern consumers’ needs and tastes. 

In this article, you will discover digital marketing strategies for your OTC brand to help you establish meaningful relationships with your target audiences.

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

In the past, businesses used to communicate with their target audience through marketing channels like television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and outdoor advertising.

Digital marketing strategy refers to using online channels (such as your website, social media, organic search, paid ads, and other platforms) to improve your online presence and reach your marketing goals, like enhancing your business’ visibility and gaining new customers.

Let’s explore the topic further with this digital marketing strategy example. Imagine you want to increase traffic to your website by 25% in the next 12 months. First, you would define your target audience analyzing everything from their demographics to interests. Then you should pick the digital channels you’re going to involve. For instance, paid social media advertising, Google search ads, and content marketing. Your key strategies would be:

  • Paid social and Google ads to drive website traffic for high commercial intent searches
  • Use social media posts and videos to nurture the audience and showcase products
  • Create high-quality blog content optimized for SEO to build organic traffic

You can test social media ad creatives and audiences, multivariate landing page optimization, monitor top organic traffic sources, and put an emphasis on what works best. To help you launch and successfully run omnichannel campaigns while having a strategic overview, you can employ content experience platforms like eWizard.

Importance of Digital Marketing for OTC Brands

OTC drugs are essential for public health as they provide accessible solutions for common health problems. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the eCommerce sales of OTC drugs spiked, with people giving preference to shopping online over going to physical stores due to its convenience and competitive pricing. With the consumers’ tendency to search for information online before making purchasing decisions, OTC brands must leverage digital marketing to reach customers where they spend their time to educate them on their products.

Digital marketing enables you to build closer relationships with your customers through multiple channels like your website and social media. Moreover, you can precisely target specific consumer segments, based on demographics, behavior, and interests using digital marketing tools. They allow to create personalized messaging and product suggestions, enhancing relevance and engagement. On top of that, with robust analytics OTC brands can accurately measure engagement, conversions, and ROI, as well as continuously optimize their strategy based on their performance data.

As eCommerce disrupts traditional retail, OTC brands must differentiate themselves from the competition through compelling digital brand experiences, content, and consumer value-adds their competitors may lack.

Besides, digital marketing can be highly cost-efficient compared to traditional channels while enabling OTC brands to reach a much larger audience through organic, paid, owned, and earned media strategies.

Main Components of Digital Marketing Strategy

An effective digital marketing strategy should consist of well-thought-out paid advertising, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and web analytics. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Paid Advertising

Numerous platforms can be utilized for paid advertising. Each of the platforms may have different ad types available, like search ads, display ads, native ads, video ads, and others. This diverse range of paid advertising formats enables brands to develop integrated strategies that span several platforms in order to meet awareness, engagement, and conversion goals.

Social Media

As of 2022, it was estimated that over 4.59 billion people were using social media worldwide, and spending almost 2.5 hours there daily. This is why OTC brands have to leverage social media in their marketing efforts. They can reach a wide audience there and raise awareness about their products and their benefits. Moreover, social media provides a channel for direct interaction and customer engagement.

SEO

Search engine visibility is paramount for success in today’s digital landscape. Google Health Vice President reports that an estimated 7% of Google’s daily searches are health-related, equivalent to 70,000 every minute. Both patients and doctors look up and research products, symptoms, treatments, and insurance questions using search engines.

Web Analytics

Web analytics provide quantitative insights that OTC brands need to refine their digital presence, enhance user engagement, and drive conversions. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics show how people interact with the brand’s website and content, which includes metrics like traffic sources, popular pages, conversion paths, and bounce rates. In addition, analytics can reveal where your visitors tend to abandon the website or purchase process which will let you know where optimization is needed. 

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

Creating a proper digital marketing strategy takes experience and expertise, so be ready to test your theories, and don’t get discouraged if your first campaign doesn’t get the traffic you wish. With so many other brands competing for customers’ attention, it’s crucial to consider what can set your product apart and highlight it in your marketing content. And if you want to involve experts to create your digital marketing strategy, drop a message to Viseven.

Let’s go through the key steps to creating a pharma digital marketing strategy.

Determine your target audience

Digital marketing allows you to reach new audiences. However, not all of them are going to be interested in what you have to offer. You need to conduct market research to identify your buyer personas whose interests and preferences match your offerings. Personalization is a big trend with consumers now, so you also have to think about segmenting your target audience into smaller groups to customize your messaging for each of them.

Engage and educate through content

Content marketing is essential for your brand for a few reasons. First, well-optimized content can bring you organic traffic from search engines, spreading the word about your brand and products. Secondly, both providers and patients use the internet to find information about symptoms, treatments, and products. By providing them with interesting and educational content targeted to various groups, you can not only address their pain points and concerns but also establish your brand as a thought leader.

In-depth blog articles, innovative email marketing campaigns, and engaging social media posts can all play a crucial role in your content strategy. Additionally, high-quality content helps build trust and credibility with your audience, positioning your brand as a reliable source of information. Moreover, content marketing can support your lead generation efforts by attracting and nurturing potential customers through the sales funnel. Finally, it allows you to showcase your expertise, differentiate your brand, and foster stronger connections with your target audience, ultimately driving better brand awareness, loyalty, and conversions.

Gather and utilize data

The beauty of digital marketing for OTC brands lies in the wealth of data it generates. Website analytics reveal traffic sources, user behavior, content performance, and audience insights vital for optimization. Search data displays consumer intent and common queries to guide content strategy. Social media listening unlocks brand sentiment, product perceptions, and messaging opportunities.

During marketing campaigns creation, OTC marketers can leverage this data to shape targeting, develop resonant messaging, enhance user experiences, plan digital marketing tactics, and measure performance. An insights-driven approach fueled by tangible consumer data allows continual campaign refinement and improvement over time.

Current Landscape of the OTC Pharma Market

The OTC drugs market size is estimated at $137.39 billion in 2024, and is expected to hit $163.10 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 3.49% during the forecast period. 

The OTC drug market is witnessing substantial growth, primarily driven by the escalating costs of prescription medications. As healthcare expenses continue to soar, consumers are increasingly turning to self-medication with OTC drugs as a more affordable alternative.

According to Bloomberg, the average American spends an astounding $1,300 per person annually on prescription drugs, with the launch price of a new drug in the US reaching an average of $180,000 for a year’s supply in 2021. This massive rise in Rx drug prices is fueling the demand for self-care solutions through OTC medications.

Self-medication with OTC drugs is becoming a global phenomenon, with prevalence rates ranging from 11.2% to 93.7% across different countries and target populations. This growing trend towards self-care is further propelling the growth of the OTC drug market.

As the cost of prescription medications continues to rise, consumers are embracing the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of OTC drugs, enabling them to manage minor illnesses and maintain their overall well-being without breaking the bank. This shift in consumer behavior, coupled with the increasing approval of new OTC drug options, presents a significant growth opportunity for the industry.

Furthermore, online sales of OTC medicines through e-pharmacies, retailer websites, and marketplaces like Amazon are booming, necessitating an omnichannel marketing approach for brands. 

To remain competitive in this landscape, OTC pharma brands must leverage digital marketing capabilities, focus on consumer education, eCommerce enablement, and innovative product offerings aligned with self-care trends.

Best OTC Pharmaceutical Marketing Strategies

Here are several ideas that can help you map out and execute a more efficient digital marketing strategy.

Think Outside the Box with Mobile

56% of shoppers globally use their smartphones to shop or research items while in a store. The majority of pharma brands already provide mobile-optimized sites to boost their mobile presence. However, few utilize mobile in creative or innovative ways. This is your chance to set yourself apart from the competition. For instance, Pfizer offers a mobile app that allows patients to track their injections, log symptoms, set medication reminders, and access a wide range of resources to help them set and maintain goals throughout treatment.

Engage with Health Apps & Wearable Gadgets

The adoption of mobile health and fitness applications witnessed a surge in recent years, propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, these apps were utilized by 23% of consumers in the United States. However, specific categories like health tracking, workout apps, and meditation apps saw broader adoption, reaching approximately 36% of the U.S. consumer base. 

When it comes to wearable tech, in 2021 it was estimated that about 526 million wearable devices were shipped globally, with more than 80% of consumers believing that wearables are beneficial to their health.

OTC brands can tap into the health tech-savvy user base by leveraging targeted advertising within popular health and fitness apps, as well as forming partnerships with leading health tech companies and influencers in the digital wellness space.

Allocate Resources to Both Time-Specific & Ongoing Marketing Efforts

Undeniably, OTC medications are intrinsically linked to seasonal cycles as consumer needs fluctuate throughout the year. Flu, colds, allergies, and sports-related ailments resonate with different consumer segments during their respective peak seasons. To capitalize on these cyclical demands, OTC brands can implement ongoing marketing activities and tailored time-specific activations. These initiatives not only foster brand loyalty by addressing timely health concerns but also provide a strategic avenue to highlight the seasonal benefits of their OTC offerings. 

Ongoing marketing efforts can include subscription-based models or loyalty rewards that incentivize repeat purchases aligning with the ebb and flow of seasonal ailments. Targeted time-specific activations can consist of a multi-channel marketing blitz, spanning digital marketing campaigns, in-store promotions, influencer collaborations, and educational content tailored to the relevant health issues of that period.

Develop and Share Valuable Online Content

Content is king, and it’s vital for all industries, especially for pharma where people may rely on it to improve their well-being. With consumers’ tendency to research their symptoms and possible treatment online, it’s crucial to share valuable content about your products, what they do, and how and whom they help. Consider branching out from just full-blown blog articles to videos and infographics to bring variety and originality to your content. 

Your content distribution plan is of the same significance. It doesn’t matter how great your content is if your audience doesn’t see it, so make sure to think through your distribution and repurposing plan.

Utilize Social Media Platforms

With approximately 50% of users considering health information obtained from social media as reliable, OTC pharma brands have a prime opportunity to utilize this channel effectively. OTC brands can reach out to this large, health-conscious audience by sharing educational content on health conditions and self-care tips, highlighting product information and usage guidance, engaging with customers through responsive service, collaborating with influencers for credible endorsements, gathering consumer insights through social listening, running targeted advertising campaigns, and seamlessly integrating social efforts with their broader omnichannel strategy.

For instance, P&G’s Vicks and Metamucilt have vibrant presences on Twitter and Instagram. Vicks frequently shares cold/flu season remedies and collaborates with influencers, while Metamucil focuses on digestive health through recipes and expert advice on social.

Summing Up

At the end of the day, the digital world opens up a huge playing field for OTC pharma brands to really connect with their customers in new and innovative ways. But it’s not just about blasting promotions everywhere. It’s about using data and consumer insights to have totally relevant, engaging conversations across channels like search, social media, and eCommerce.

As consumers keep evolving, craving more personalized experiences, a focus on preventive wellness, and digital self-care solutions, the brands that truly tap into the digital marketing game will be the ones calling the shots. They’ll have built genuine relationships and empowered people to take control of their health journeys. The future belongs to the brands that can adapt quickly, get creative and innovative, while always putting the consumer first in their digital approach.

Omnichannel communication strategy in healthcare: scrutinize your content

Let’s dive into the topic and find out how omnichannel communication works in healthcare.

Nowadays, it is essential to take care of customer service due to the high competition between players in the markets; the bar of service delivery is higher than ever. Technological progress and the spreading popularity of review sites and social media have made modern customers always compare options and choose the best one. And if they find the service does not meet their expectations, they march on quickly.

When you have so many choices, you pay less attention and patience to the companies that fail to arrange efficient omnichannel communication, especially in healthcare. According to healthcare organizations’ research,

72% of customers state that it’s easier for them to “keep going with certain brands until they deliver a bad service and move on right after,” and 63% “decided to switch a brand to another when online experience is imperfect.”

To control the patient experience, you must pay much attention to your communication strategy. It means additional investments in the tools and development of a single approach to keep a consistent customer experience.

Omnichannel communications definition

What is omnichannel communication? In a nutshell, it involves the usage of compatible channels or means of connecting with prospects and combining them, so the patient experience is indifferent and seamless of the channel they use.

Any communication flows in different marketing channels can be united into healthcare omnichannel communications. The objective of the omnichannel communication system is to unify and standardize the healthcare providers’ daily activities and interactions with customers. For instance, a company may offer sales or services via different channels, platforms or resources —over the phone, by text, email, etc.

With omnichannel communication for marketing, the assets and communication approach will stay solid across every channel because omnichannel flow considers all of them.

Why it’s important?

With omnichannel personalized communication, you receive an increase in your primary key performance indicators and customer satisfaction. It justifies additional investment and time on its implementation, as researches show us.

  • Using customer journey maps reduces service by 15-20%.
  • An omnichannel communication strategy is costly as companies need to create extra expenditure on advanced tools, technology, solutions and processes. Nevertheless, it has a deep-rooted effect on general metric growth. It requires a broader vision by decision-makers and must be inflicted from the very peak for success. However, funding in customer engagement strategy ends in 2x-3x RoI in the long run.
  • It provides an 89% increase in customer retention and a 9.5% YOY growth in annual revenue. Hence, it is urgent to check with customers at what stage they are and supply consistent support across all channels. Brands that struggle to engage their customers with an omnichannel approach prevent customer lifetime attrition.

What is an omnichannel customer communication strategy?

Omnichannel communication starts when a company charts its customer’s journey and delivers an accordant customer experience (CX) through any online and offline touchpoints (or marketing channels), such as webpages, platforms, social media, mobile apps, physical stores, and face-to-face visits. These touchpoints are wired into a single communicational chain that delivers cohesive customer experience and marketing key messages to the target audience via different channels.

Omnichannel customer communication re-examines the interactions and provides an amplified customer service experience.

Why is it important for healthcare businesses?

The omnichannel consumer engagement model proactively engages patients with consistent access to their healthcare information, communications with doctors, and recommendations anytime and anywhere. It makes the treatment process much more accessible and comfortable for both doctor and patient.

What are the most critical issues in healthcare communication today?

Lack of up-to-date communication disrupts patient and physician interaction. Here are two omnichannel customer experience examples of how it works without and with this approach so you can judge yourself:

Kate tore a muscle, and her doctor told her she needed surgery. The surgery has gone well with no aftermath issues. Kate’s doctor’s office still works with orthodox communication healthcare follow-up. Upon discharge, the team provided Kate with printed instructions for after-op care and a reminder card for follow-up appointments. In the days after surgery, Kate was responsible for her post-surgical treatment at home and keeping in mind her follow-up appointments.

John passed the same surgery operation as Kate. His operation has gone great, but John’s doctor’s office deployed an omnichannel health support center follow-up for post-surgical care. John went home without any paperwork or reminders upon discharge. The office has invested in comprehensive omnichannel engagement. The organization is aware of John’s communications preferences (mobile, text, or email) and has turned data across the care continuum into practicable insights. The system also suggests John’s care team with the right actions at the right time in the proper channel.

The next day, a nurse rings John to check his condition, answer any questions, and ensure accordant care. He also receives an SMS reminder about a follow-up appointment and a call saying his prescriptions are up to be picked up. John gets emails with a customized post-care checklist each day for two weeks. He also can receive text notifications for each procedure throughout the day.

John receives another phone call the next day because his prescriptions are still waiting. John misses the ring, which follows a voicemail message. On the third day, John still does not take his medicines, leading a nurse to call John, check-in, and inform the importance of the medication.

So you can see that omnichannel communication solutions give decent care to clients and makes them trust their health and time as if you are their parents.

What are the industry challenges, and what are the benefits?

Physicians are hard to reach because they have a short time to check your messages. At this point, high-engagement strategies, like omnichannel, are a must. Such approach helps cover many different channels without simple ad spamming but by building a creative customer journey via all communication channels.

Sticking to omnichannel digital transformation will bring you what you expect from customer interactions. Let’s move on with some tips.

How to plan effective omnichannel communication in healthcare?

Step 1: Choose the service platform for your omnichannel strategy

Step 2: Elaborate and use consistent branding across all channels.

Step 3: Establish a brand voice guide for your employees.

Step 4: Build strong communication channels between company divisions.

Step 5: Implement technology

Clear as the sky. To make it on time for your business and customer needs, you can use our tailored solution called eWizard.

Viseven team presents eWizard

Imagine a medical representative’s dream – smart-organized content that updates/changes/re-designs for all channels simultaneously and quickly, plus cost reduction and cross-connected channels as benefits. What if we tell you that it is not a dream and you can easily implement such a solution?

eWizard is an omnichannel communication platform that extends the standard Veeva Vault functionality offering seamless content management. eWizard makes the dream of flexible, reusable content a reality! It allows the new COPE (Create Once – Publish Everywhere) approach to reuse all previously created content for different marketing channels and purposes. Also, it is deeply integrated with Veeva Vault PromoMats, a solution for digital asset management and content deployment. Both eWizard and VeevaVault allow you to handle your marketing campaigns and deliver correct messages to the targeted audience without additional expenses, even if your materials require rework or MLR review.

As healthcare and life science industries are getting used to becoming more omnichannel-oriented – brand managers should use the arsenal of diverse digital skills and models. Therefore, generating a high-quality omnichannel content strategy is a critical priority that can’t be neglected. Digital Content Factory, powered by the eWizard, is designed specifically to augment audience experience.

If you are wondering how to create a powerful omnichannel strategic approach, fill out the form below and our team of experts will reach you out shortly.

5 highlights from Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit Online 2020

There is nothing special about the fact that a summit hosted by the pharma digital tech giant Veeva is special every time. The North American edition of the Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit 2020 on June 9-10, however, was even more noteworthy. This was not just because of its online format or the very slowly dispelling shadow of COVID-19 lockdowns – but also since so many relevant topics were addressed from a practical point of view. Modular content, AI, digital engagement, customer journeys, omnichannel, data integration – over the past years, these topics were presented at pharma events from a theoretical, somewhat idealistic position. This time around, we are seeing a whole bunch of more practical takes on these. The seed of new tech-inspired visions seems to have come to fruition at last.

Much of the content from the summit (except the roundtable talks) is still available on demand until July 8 on the official event page. Now, this would be too bad of a spoiler for the audience to give away everything we the Viseven team have appreciated about the sessions – and this would take at least 5-7 blog posts like this – so here are just the 5 top highlights for your consideration. Our own experts have more or less unanimously agreed that these will have the most impact on the way digital pharma will run engagement campaign and manage content in the coming years. Before we take the plunge, though, let’s have a very brief overview of the topics that defined the summit and its atmosphere.

Veeva Summit Online: a bird’s eye view

One of the recurrent topics at the summit was (naturally enough) the forced transition to different forms of remote engagement when interacting with HCPs and other stakeholders. With the “new normal” being the buzzword of the year so far, its meaning for pharmaceutical marketing and communications is more or less clear: it is time start that digital multichannel engagement already. With the new accent on remote eDetailing, online events and Approved Emails, enterprises are trying to discover digital engagement that is as personal as the F2F rep calls. An anxious-looking question on whether or not Approved emails can really be considered personal engagement (posed at one of the sessions) was a perfect illustration of that eagerness to stay in contact. Further delving into the issue was done in a session by Crossix on “bridging the gap” between personal and non-personal promotion. As part of the commercial operations flow within the summit, Mark Fleischer, CEO Physicians World, Veeva, delivered a presentation on virtual events organization, including the choice of content and platform.

This, naturally, makes the companies lay more accent on customer engagement strategy – in an effort to avoid simply aggregating digital channels and look at the way it looks from the customer’s perspective. Jennifer Turcotte of Salesforce presented a practical take on building automated customer journeys. On the other end of the spectrum, an entire session (led by Veeva’s Ian Hale) was dedicated to the relevant metrics throughout the content lifecycle. Measuring content performance was an idea that reverberated across several superb presentations, including a take on modular content by Jay McMeekan of Bayer (accidentally, also the highlight #3 in this list, see below). An interesting moment was letting an HCP have a say and describe their perspective on digital engagement – in a Q/A session with hematologist/oncologist Andrew Moore, M.D.

Another big question was data. The current situation requires a more progressive approach to insights – and approaches are not something that is solved in terms of CRM metrics alone. In Jay McMeekan’s words,

Compared with other industries, and pharma in other countries, U.S. pharma has a preponderance of data. But for the most part, it’s not about access to data, it’s more about ho w to use it – and how we plan our engagement, taking into account that information, and not just using it as an afterthought, or justification for an outcome.

An entire section of the event was dedicated to data and intelligence issues, with sessions on Veeva OpenData, Vault API use for data exchange (a topic that fascinates IT departments), as well as a marketer’s and strategist’s take on customer reference data from Biogen. A Veeva Data Cloud Overview (including planning, patient segmentation, commercial analytics, AI, territory design, targeting, and incentive compensation) on Day 1 should be noted, as well.

Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive overview of the summit – with still more on commercial operations, expanding role of the rep, Veeva Nitro, compliance and Approved Notes worth noting for all those who plan to request the summit sessions. Meanwhile, let’s move to the highlights that impressed our specialists and are most likely to produce long-lasting impact.

#1: Best Practices for Approved Email Success (roundtable)

Approved Emails, Veeva’s own service for rep-triggered email messaging, has provided pharma with a way to sidestep the shrinking rep admission rates and keep up the frequency of interactions even before the pandemic. Now its relevance has skyrocketed for Veeva users, who are increasingly interested in, and aware of, the possibilities of this tool. This roundtable featuring Cindy DiNitto, Manager, Commercial SMB Customer Success, consultant Amy LaForgia, and Maria Ruoto, Senior Customer Success Manager (all Veeva professionals) reveals the key points about the service and channel. While Approved Emails present the way to maintain contact and is easily combined with other channels, recent months have seen increased use, not only with the traditional cases but also as a way to invite the HCP to a remote meeting.

On the other hand, there is the problem of overloading the target audience. Email is a great channel as long as it is not annoyingly frequent. Everything above a certain saturation level turns it into spam, which is a great concern. According to Cindy DiNitto,

It’s not like, “wow, I have all these templates on my iPad, let me just start sending these out”, it’s really having use [case] based training for your field so then you know when is the good time to send that email.

Although (or even because) the system does not impose any hard limits on the amount of emails sent (only a warning message), field reps have to be trained in order to develop a sensitivity as to when sending an Approved Email is appropriate. We can add that this is, in fact, one of the staples of omnichannel thinking – operating in terms of touchpoints – applied to CRM field activity.

Of course, there is also growing interest in the possibilities of personalization, such as free text fields in the templates. That factor draws in its “evil twin”, namely, the need to track and maintain compliance. As mentioned by Maria Ruoto, among other things, a good practice is setting restricted words for free text inputs; however, the truly best practice is providing adequate change management to allow reps feel in control while keeping compliant.

#2: Automating Claims Management with Novo Nordisk (Session and Q/A)

A core claim is an object that represents a piece of information, e.g. “Brand® demonstrates 48% higher efficiency in eliminating long-term effects of [condition]”. Besides the text, this object holds fields for supporting data, obligatory and desirable references, maybe diagrams and additional meta information (from text variants to notes as to how an agency should place this claim on a slide or email they develop). Managing claims is new and promising approach in pharma brand messaging, and was discussed by Bernie Klemmer, Director Marketing Operations at Novo Nordisk in a session and Q/A at the summit. At the time of writing this, his team is in the process of approving the first batch of such claims – the first stage out of four in a process of implementing this innovative mindset.

Apart from, obviously, achieving greater consistency and compliance with medical and regulatory, the approach allows to streamline MLR review and make it easier and quicker for agencies to create compliant content. Once the claim document template has been developed with brand team and MLR, it becomes possible to build a library of preapproved claims for such use. Potentially, this allows for more advanced tracking, as well.

At the initial stage of implementation, the pilot stage, Novo Nordisk singled out just one brand and one audience to test the approach and identify possible points that require attention. This involves, among other things, enhancing the claim object with fields to hold data for size and placement, additional text, footnotes, (optional) required or related diagrams, etc. At the second stage, more organizational questions are solved, covering the approval of text variations, expiration procedure for claims, etc. Overall, this approach is very likely to be adopted (with variations) across the industry, since it responds to pharma’s inherent MLR review issues and presents good opportunities to solve them.

#3: Impactful Customer Engagements – Making the Modular Content Connection with Bayer (Session and Q/A)

Modular content is a huge topic in pharma marketing circles right now. A module is essentially the molecular unit of any content – a claim (as in #2 in this review) plus a component or component group (an image, diagram, chart, etc.) that illustrates it or provides context. Such a building block is essentially channel-agnostic and can be featured in an eDetailing presentation, an email, a website, banner, or any other digital content type. This approach is now revolutionizing the way marketers and agencies work with content, with great benefits in terms of cost efficiency and message consistency.

Jay McMeekan, Senior Director, Digital / Multichannel Marketing at Bayer, with his characteristically pragmatic take, starts addressing this issue with data. We have already quoted this session above: the way pharma uses insights is a more pressing issue even than where to obtain them. McMeecan continues along the following lines: how do you know if the content your organization pays for is performing well and resonates with the audience?

In an analogy with personal finance planning, he proceeds to compare content with expenses and channels with payment methods. If you really want to track the ROI of your content, you have to be able to look beyond single channel and converge data:

You need to begin with a clear measurable goal from the start, or you will never be able to access your performance against your expectations. Especially if you only rely on historical sales data or market share. Waiting until you get your credit card bill to know if you can pay it? I think we can all agree it is not a sustainable financial strategy.

To this end, content modules created must be channel-agnostic and easy to use within different content types. This allows for an additional source of cost efficiency: not only is duplicate agency work eliminated (as predesigned modules are mixed and matched), but the marketer makes sure and continuously tracks that only the content likely to perform well is produced. This assessment of customer engagement in real time is made possible by a clear, hierarchical tagging of modules. Each module comes with a tag composed in a certain predictable was that is unified across the organization. We shall see in the very near future how this approach evolves further on – and it will be interesting to say the least. Our own expertise building modular content strategies for our pharmaceutical customers at Viseven has so far yielded impressive results and the concept is constantly improved.

For more on modular content within this article, see the bonus section below.

#4: Compliant Content to Support the Customer Journey (customer panel with Roche and BMS)

This customer panel featuring Samantha Knott, Global Customer Operations Lead at Roche, Cara Pellegrini, Senior Director, Business Practices Group at Genentech (A Member of the Roche Group), and Dinesh Salvi, Head of Enterprise Veeva and Commercial Systems at Bristol Myers Squibb, and led by Pooja Ojala, Vice President, Commercial Content, Veeva, was an ambitious endeavor. In about 45 minutes, the participants managed to cover their organizations’ approaches and solutions to current issues with commercial content and operations – an impressively wide topic with dozens of possible starting points.

In this case, the starting point chosen was a systematic overview of recent effort, starting with situation and challenges, through solution and outcomes for each of the organizations. The result was a panoramic view, with some of the challenges and aspirations overlapping.

A focus on evolving the operational model is present across the companies. Among the challenges Roche encountered and solved was the huge decentralization, with notable silos, e.g. between commercial and medical – and no dedicated project resource. At the same time, BMS aimed at resolving the challenges of competing priorities and changing marketplace. The two stories coincide in their solution – namely, evolving operating model.

The ways to achieve this were different, but sometimes involved thinking along similar lines. While Roche and Genentech supported this with end-to-end content management (and not just facilitating the MLR), Bristol Myers Squibb, too, made an effort to control and streamline the entire content lifecycle. In this latter case, the modularization (“atomization”) of content was also involved.

#5: Veeva Andi Roadmap (yes, it is AI in your CRM)

Veeva Andi is an AI embedded in Veeva CRM to make next-best action suggestions. As exciting as it is by itself, considering how this can enhance field performance with the ability to process loads of data, there is even more to help pharma users facilitate the workflows. Brian Mahoney, Practice Manager, Digital Field Engagement, Veeva, unveiled several key points about the roadmap for the upcoming Veeva Andi features.

The roadmap was presented along two principal lines – (1) customer touchpoint optimization, and (2) making AI easier. With the power of data and intelligent suggestions, Andi is “poised” to offer additional digital channel models based on the analyzed interactions, as well as suggest what content will engage and perform better. Additionally, such features as weekly top territory insights and targets and models and traits for field users are supposed to be added later on.

In terms of facilitating AI use, Andi is going to be more than a smart “black box”, with the possibility for the user to choose data sources in Cross Data Source Logic Agent Builder, as well as look inside the process and take a more proactive stance with a suggestions editor.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – more functionalities covering samples and Marketing Cloud integration, to name a few, were also announced.

One interesting observation

When looking at the discourse in the pharma communications and tech circles over the past year or so, an interesting observation can be made. Business rules, workflows, people and skills, tech, content and strategy – all of these factors are now finally being treated in conjunction that they deserve. People have started talking holistic – and taking steps towards a holistic approach, where tech is part of the equation, as is everything else.

At the same time, the very tech used in pharma has become more integrated and integratable – gone are the days when business unit heads had to break everything they had in place into pieces in the name of innovation; today’s technology is plugged into the existing business models. It adapts itself – and slowly, painlessly transforms the organization from deep within.

+ even more on modular content and how to start

Modular content is an example of such a mindset. While enabled by tech solutions, the concept of modularization is a response to needs and challenges at multiple levels.

Content reuse and repurpose possibilities boost cost-efficiency; the approved and redistributed nature of modules circulating across the company’s ecosystem facilitates MLR and improves agency workflows; core claim tracking enables greater data – coming full circle at ROI again. How do we know this? Viseven team has been among the enthusiasts and pioneers of modular approach and has successfully implemented it with a number of global pharma and life sciences customers. For example, a recent case demonstrated speeding up MLR all thanks to a modular content authoring solution integrated with Veeva Suite.

This is where we as a Veeva Technology Partner help start with modular content approach. eWizard content authoring solution not only supports the creation of modules, but is integrated with Veeva, provides the possibility to dive into deep editing directly from Vault PromoMats, serves as a connector between Veeva and systems like Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

You can see how easily all of this is done in practice in a set of videos showing the functionality and workflows – the shortest possible guide into starting out with modular content. Additionally, have a look at what eWizard platform can offer you to streamline Approved Email production and approval in Veeva. Select one of the sections below to access the overviews.

Pharma Content Marketing: How to Create once and Deliver your Content across Channels

The way your brand is presented matters. It’s crucial for pharma and life sciences to build new connective “tissues” between their brand and the audience. This new stage requires from pharma not just delivering their brand stories but making them valuable – if pharma ambassadors want to be “value providers” (not just product promoters, or data deliverers). When it comes to a more in-depth definition of this new approach, the quantity of the content matters less, while quality ultimately goes first.

The multichannel way of thinking in pharma content marketing is consistently spreading: promotional messages become channelless; they are tied, thoroughly mixed, and ready to provide relevant information to healthcare professionals (or other audience) in the moment of search. That’s the new promise of multichannel, and, consequently, the new promise of pharma content marketing: creating and distributing relevant content with consistent messages across channels to attract the target audience and earn its loyalty. In a nutshell, there are two alternatives for pharma marketing leaders how to meet an ever-increasing demand from tech-savvy consumers: to care about the content only or to care about the customer first. In our guide, we will tell you more about content marketing production, explain what any given marketing strategy of pharmaceutical companies is, and share some pharmaceutical marketing tips with you.

What is a Pharma Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy for pharmaceutical products is a detailed plan for reaching the company’s target audience and converting it into its customers. A pharma marketing strategy is about understanding who might be interested in your services and what might motivate them to choose your company as a service provider. Effective marketing strategies in the pharmaceutical industry should include the following elements:

  • Market analysis;
  • Company vision;
  • Assessment of the company’s target audience;
  • Branding & messaging;
  • Risk evaluation.

The chosen pharma go-to market strategy must not only help your team determine the target audience but also be aligned with the overall company’s goals and objectives. The development of strategies for pharma marketing requires a lot of time and effort, and it involves high-level planning of all the necessary steps in order to achieve the desired results. An effective digital marketing strategy for pharmaceuticals should consist of defining priorities, identifying the target audience, allocating resources, and managing the implementation of all the stages that were determined beforehand.

And don’t forget that often pharmaceutical strategy works in tandem with other processes and tactics, such as a marketing plan or a sales strategy. Even though marketers are not responsible for pharmaceutical sales strategies, they should work with sales representatives to ensure their marketing strategies are aligned with the objectives of other teams. Collaboration is key to success, and without it, both strategies won’t be as successful as they could be.

What Kind of Content Will Win in the Pharmaceutical Industry?

There are many types of pharmaceutical marketing strategies, but the one that is likely to be winning has to include the kind of content that’s both engaging and useful. That is the so-called true multichannel content, which is:

  • Inspirational;
  • Relevant;
  • ABM-friendly;
  • Measurable;
  • Closed Loop;
  • Emotional;
  • Adaptive at every stage of decision making.

To succeed in marketing strategies for pharma, the chosen type of content should address the concerns of a multichannel customer, and multichannel content is just the right choice in this case.

What is a Pharma Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan is a roadmap, meant to guide you through all the hurdles and ordeals on the path to the implementation of a chosen pharmaceutical digital marketing strategy. In other words, pharmaceutical strategies can be served as a high-level overview, while a marketing plan is an outline of all your marketing objectives, tactics, and efforts needed to achieve your goals. Here are some of the components a marketing plan typically includes:

  • Content plan;
  • KPIs;
  • Situation analysis;
  • Timeline;
  • Budget;
  • Team roles.

Your pharmaceutical marketing plan should come next after your strategy, meaning that first you come up with the latter one, and only then you devise a marketing plan and use it to execute your ideas. The marketing plan is supposed to support your strategy and help you answer such questions as “Why? Where? When?”. Pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies and plans should come together, since implementing just one will not have such a positive effect as having both of them in use.

How to Get Started with a Top-notch Pharma Marketing Strategy?

Whatever marketing strategy was chosen, it needs to deliver the right content to the right audience. Thus, it’s worth relying on an account-based pharmaceutical marketing strategy (ABM) that allows targeting specific groups at the right time, place, and in the manner they expect pharma to reach them. How to switch your content marketing flow to the next level of quality, and make your content a trusted source? Before implementing a content strategy into a marketing campaign, do deeper research on your audience, using automated marketing tools such as content management systems, advanced web analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. A platform for content creation can take over all the stages of your content marketing campaign. Such a solution helps to keep brand identity, maintain recognition on both global and local levels, and avoid redundant costly operations.

Good pharma content should be based on strong customer insights from prior interactions (how HCPs/patients are interacting with your content; how much time they spend on each content piece; what actions are taken upon the initial interaction, etc.). By reviewing all past activities, your customers have with your pharma content, you can easily identify the types/formats of data which they better respond to, or what content was turned down. This is how an account-based content strategy works: it helps to create targeted messages that will impress and engage customers.

Explore Content Marketing Production: Veeva & Viseven Integration

Over the years, Veeva has been supporting global life sciences and pharmaceutical enterprises helping to bring their products to market faster and in compliance with all regulatory requirements. A powerful integration of Viseven’s deep expertise in omnichannel content creation and the full pack of Veeva products and services guarantees streamlined workflows and advanced digital content development and distribution – that, in turn, ensures the highest level of brand awareness. You can easily create the best-in-class interactive content from scratch, localize or approve your content in a few clicks – and distribute it across channels assuring a genuine omnichannel customer experience.

A strong tool for multichannel content management is a must-have for every pharma professional. There’re countless capabilities incorporated into the eWizard platform to boost your content creation productivity. Thanks to the customizable integration of eWizard with Veeva Vault PromoMats, users gain a vast array of opportunities to skyrocket their content management to a whole new level: access global repository, find or leverage approved digital assets, publish them across multiple channels, and speed up time to market.

When you have your eDetailing created in eWizard, you can open it in your Veeva Vault account, and get a deeper view on the exported PDF or any initial materials as well as find all the details of related modules.

A New Concept of Pharma Content Management

Truly multichannel content is channel-independent, limitless and timeless

Viseven team has recently introduced its new concept of such a type of content creation to the digital pharma universe. A clear message is created once, and then distributed via channels to which that message perfectly fits. Don’t get it wrong, the channel matters; however, it cannot have the same power as the content behind the channel – that matters much more. The channel should become rather a means, not an end. To stay on the new level of content creation, pharma has to think of the message first.

Based on these principles, here are some marketing strategy tips on possible steps to be taken:

  • Forget about the one-size-fits-all market approaches

The point here is to look through customer’s point of view, to feel their emotions. Let’s say, at what time, through what channel, and what content type they prefer to consume.

  • Focus on interactive content

Find a shortcut from static PDF presentation to create multichannel content for an excellent eDetailing; it would be perceived as an engaging story with a wide array of interactive visual aids. Such presentations are working in the most engaging way, especially when it comes to HCPs-pharma reps’ interactions.

If you already have a PDF file, you can convert it into an interactive, Veeva compatible format as well as add navigation or any interactivity to your eDetailing if needed, and automatically publish it to the Veeva environment in a single click.

  • Analyze, Localize, and Measure

A quality measurement system is a stepping-stone for future success. Measure the time spent on the page, the number of downloads, shares on social networks, etc. – to calculate your return on investment. In such a turbulent pharma environment, it will be a tough task to sustain success in the long run if your assets are not updated regularly and adapted to local needs.

The Importance of Storytelling as a Pharma Content Marketing Tool

Storytelling in healthcare and pharma matters no less than in any other industry. Let’s make it clear, a good, uplifting story helps to tailor your content to customers’ needs. Initially, it comes from analyzing the pieces of content that are stronger than others; in other words, the ones that better resonate with physicians’ needs. Healthcare and pharma enterprises should tap into these particular emotions with whatever content type is chosen (engaging IVAs, videos, blogs, triggered email campaigns, messengers, etc.), and make effective use of them in the marketing. Your content should be able to affect, motivate, encourage, and inspire physicians to take the needed actions around your brand. No matter how well-structured your content is – it won’t work if it doesn’t stir emotions. This way the loyalty to your pharma brand won’t be lost.

4 basic practices that are of crucial importance to pharma professionals: 

  • Have all your assets constantly updated;
  • Personalize each interaction;
  • Use remote detailing for greater engagement;
  • Deliver your content across all the digital channels instantly.

Where data is, matters

Let’s face it: the HCP audience has different needs at different stages. The initial stage (this is the so-called awareness stage) is where physicians gather data for early diagnostics. Then goes the consideration phase – HCPs focus on a myriad of pharma products; choose the brand that resonates with their needs. The last phase is the evaluation phase when the product is chosen, and it’s time to justify the ROI, gather analysis or get a more in-depth understanding of the brand.

The peculiarities of these stages should be mapped to your marketing strategy. However, a multichannel marketing for pharmaceutical companies is often as good as the technology that powers it. To keep up with channel diversity, tech-savvy physicians, or Big Data splash you need to have an automated instrument at hand that is enriched with actionable insights.

Get rid of content silos

To jumpstart the launch of your multichannel campaign, consider using a content management system that will make your content creation flow fast and easy, and align your internal teams around a single, centralized data repository. The Viseven team has proven experience in transforming messages into channelless, flexible modules. This smart approach allows you to create content once – and reuse/republish it everywhere, from email to CLM presentation to the system of your choice.

Our unique solution eWizard is integrated with Veeva Vault PromoMats, Adobe Experience Manager and IQVIA for easy access or distribution of content and modules. This is how pharma can meet any specific need and keep high-quality content lifecycle that’s digestible for HCPs’ audience to consume. Here, at Viseven, our pharma professionals can provide you with full support in executing a truly winning content marketing campaign. Fill out the form below and start creating winning multichannel strategies that will surpass your expectations!

Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing in Pharma

Marketing is no longer about promoting and selling products and services. It’s about providing  an exceptional and continuous customer experience.

According to the State of the Connected Customer research conducted by Salesforce with the participation of nearly 17.000 people:

  • 88% say that customer experiences provided by businesses are as crucial as their products and services;
  • 73% anticipate companies to understand their unique needs and expectations;
  • 56% always expect offers to be personalized;
  • 43% prefer non-digital channels to engage with businesses.

Digital and non-digital have emerged into a unified hybrid environment where healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients consume and generate terabytes of diverse data across multiple channels using multiple devices.

Here’s a table of available channels and their limitations:

multichannel omnichannel difference

The pharmaceutical multichannel approach has become a tried-and-tested technique for many companies that are still hesitant about adopting the latest customer engagement techniques. Time proved that even being multichannel isn’t enough for a pharma business to create caring and unsuspicious relationships with customers.

The overwhelming success of creating personalized customer experiences in omnichannel e-commerce retail led to the adoption of this practice by pharma businesses of all sizes. Each asked the same question: “What is the difference between omnichannel and multichannel?”

If you want to compare omnichannel vs. multichannel, read this guide until the end.

What Is Omnichannel vs Multichannel?

The omnichannel approach is a marketing method that unifies different channels companies use to reach out to customers and fosters a consistent brand voice and messaging across all platforms and devices. Omnichannel is a customer-centric approach, meaning that all marketing efforts evolve around ensuring that users have a seamless customer experience every time they interact with a brand.

The multichannel approach also uses various channels to communicate with customers and promote products or services, but it does not necessarily integrate all channels into a unified customer journey. For example, a promotion sent by email might be completely different from an ad a customer sees on Instagram.

Omnichannel Marketing vs Multichannel Marketing: What’s the Difference in Pharma?

The main difference between omnichannel and multichannel marketing strategies in Pharma is in the focus of the company’s strategy.

A multichannel strategy focuses on the product or service by promoting it with the same static message across multiple channels that act separately.

An omnichannel strategy focuses on the healthcare professional who gets a seamless experience with consistent brand messaging across all the channels integrated into a single communication environment.

Another important distinction between the two strategies lies in their levels of personalization. It’s true that for both approaches, personalization plays a significant role. However, when it comes to omnichannel marketing, there are many more opportunities to personalize customer journeys and create a unique experience. Based on the information marketers receive about their target audience, it becomes possible to deliver specific content that meets individual customer needs.

How Does Pharmaceutical Multichannel Marketing Work in Pharma?

Search engines and social media revolutionized the way pharma customers consume content.

Patients have more data about their healthcare than ever before. According to Clinician of the Future: A 2022 report by Ipsos, 56% of clinicians worldwide agreed that patients have become more empowered to manage their conditions over the last decade.

HCPs can find feedback on any pharma product or a company that produced it in a wink (of course, if the company has a website or active social media profiles).

In addition to search engines and social media, representatives of multiple communities across pharma and life sciences use many other channels for communication with colleagues and businesses.

They receive messages via email, messaging apps, and SMS. They visit websites and download mobile apps. They attend events, visit websites, participate in webinars, and have face-to-face meetings and video calls.

Multichannel communication has spread marketing boundaries significantly. In the new world where businesses can no longer dictate anything to customers who have more control over their choices, specialists in pharma communications get an unprecedented opportunity to reach target audiences anywhere they want and need.

Along with that, there are a few other key advantages.

Main Advantages of the Pharma Multichannel Approach

A multichannel strategy allows pharma companies to upgrade their marketing on all sides: planning, management, analysis, and execution.

Absolute audience reach and strong brand awareness

When using multiple channels, a pharma business increases the maximum number of customers it can reach, which enhances brand awareness among prospects.

Multichannel distribution of content improves the level of customer engagement. In other words, the more marketing channels a pharma business uses, the more touchpoints current and potential customers can create. More touchpoints make customers remember the pharma or life sciences brand.

And more touchpoints mean more insights that would be useful for future campaigns.

More data & tools for analytics

The success of multichannel pharma marketing is all about data.

Implementing a multichannel approach to pharma marketing is the first step to systematizing customer information and its management. It is the first attempt to focus on the big picture by increasing digital maturity.

Which channels does a target audience like, and which doesn’t? Which channels are effective, and which benefits do they have? What multichannel content methods and formats do competitors use? The multichannel approach can answer these and many other questions through a customer relationship management (CRM) platform.

As a central multichannel data hub, a CRM platform can help a pharma or life sciences business automate and optimize key marketing activities. Optimization and automation dramatically reduce expenses and resources necessary for continuous growth and campaign performance improvement.

Enhanced performance measurement

Loads of data received across channels give room for maneuver. With new information continuously upgraded in real-time, multichannel marketers can create different experiments based on a closed-loop marketing approach that includes four stages:

  1. Campaign launch;
  1. Customer engagement;
  1. Data collection;
  1. Data analysis.

Such a cycle allows marketers to test different channel and content combinations repeatedly, which helps businesses make smarter decisions, generate better ideas, and increase the number of conversions and sales.

More conversions and sales

Let’s end this part of the article with the last and most important thing. The advantages we just recalled — a high level of engagement, more customer data, better data management, real-time analytics, and enhanced performance management of multichannel campaigns — lead to boosting sales force productivity and efficiency.

Main Disadvantages of the Pharma Multichannel

Even though pharma businesses have access to multiple channels where they can lure HCPs and patients, they pretty often don’t know how to do that accurately and efficiently. In these circumstances, multichannel interactions result in a few main drawbacks. Here they are:

· No Integrated Experience Across Channels

  • Channels work separately;
  • High Cost-per-Contact;
  • No Holistic View of Customer Data;
  • The Same Message Across Channels.

How Does Pharmaceutical Omnichannel Marketing Work in Pharma?

If multichannel aims to reach as many potential customers as possible, the omnichannel strategy requires a more tactical and on-point approach. A typical modern HCP is usually someone who highly values their time and has no wish to dig into a particular brand’s feed. As the average F2F visit between HCP and medical representative usually does not exceed 4 minutes (whether online or offline), these 4 minutes become a valuable moment to deliver the most important messages directly to the person.

But what is this message, and how do you fit the whole customer journey into a single presentation?

The answer is that you don’t have to.

The omnichannel approach builds communication across various marketing channels and uses highly personalized delivery methods to guide clients through all customer journey stages. This way, the customer gets a customized message required for engagement via various channels (like emails, messengers, F2F, or else) at each stage instead of wading through the flood of posts on Facebook.

According to a customer engagement survey by Axtria:

  • Nearly 77% of businesses only take the first steps in implementing an omnichannel strategy.
  • Around 66% of businesses are in the early stages of omnichannel data management maturity.
  • About 64% of businesses work with a strategic development partner for omnichannel transformation.

Main Benefits of the Pharma Omnichannel Approach

Relevance and efficiency

The omnichannel strategy helps to achieve business goals most appropriately and efficiently because you always work with your target audience’s current reality. Instead of creating a bunch of materials, deploying them to the channels, and waiting for the best (this is what basically multichannel is about), your marketing efforts are concentrated on being “here and now,” providing your customers with what is interesting for them now the most comfortable way for them to engage.

Advanced personalization and deep customer understanding

Personalization is not a destination; it’s an ongoing process of gathering data, analyzing it, and applying it to subsequent marketing campaigns to improve the next communicational iteration. The more you interact with a target audience, the better you know the specifics of their engagement and what works best for them. Next time you design your strategy after analyzing the previous campaign, you may notice an increased number of touchpoints and some new ways to engage customers.

Detailed customer journey and content management

It’s much easier to track customer engagement during successful omnichannel campaigns as you always know the customer journey stage you’re on. The Omnichannel strategy can satisfy clients’ needs in the short term by providing them with appropriate content materials right in the moment of need (determined by the campaign stage). It helps to manage content production better, giving enough resources and understanding for development.

Data-driven decision-making

Omnichannel marketing allows companies to gain better insights about their customers and make decisions based on the data they receive. Instead of investing in another marketing campaign and taking a risk launching it without knowing whether it will meet the demand, pharma marketers can use data analytics to align with the customers’ needs and create campaigns that resonate with the target audience.

So, What’s the Outcome?

The outcome is quite simple: as global digitalization goes on and business needs become more complex, your approach is usually defined by your requirements. When it comes to multichannel vs omnichannel marketing strategies, you must understand the central concept of realizing what is best for your business.

Multichannel works with one channel independently from another, allowing it to target a broad audience at once. It requires stable content flow and works perfectly for newsfeeds, community activities, or crowd marketing. Meanwhile, omnichannel marketing focuses on providing clients with a personalized experience delivered on time by demand or spontaneously — although always personally via various channels. This makes omnichannel work perfectly for pharma and life sciences.

Fill out the form below to request a consultation from Viseven’s omnichannel expert!

How to Engage with Amazon’s Omnichannel Strategy in Pharma Industry?

Omnichannel strategies are continuously implemented in many organizations that want to enhance their customers’ experience. Amazon’s omnichannel experiences are the keystone to customer retention that help to cover previous sales reductions. The omnichannel approach integrates offline and online channels where customers make purchase interactions via stores, websites, apps, mobile ads, push notifications, product pages, etc.

Abstract View of Amazon’s Omnichannel Experience

Amazon Omnichannel Retail provides a differentiated customer experience, so various channels smoothly correspond with each other to unchain an immersive journey for the customer demands and purchasing capacities.

Instead of running in parallel, the communication channels and the resources supporting them are designed and integrated to work together within the omnichannel solution. As a result, the experience of interacting across all of these channels becomes even more effective or enjoyable than using one channel separately.

Why do you need to take advantage of this marketing approach? Let’s disclose it below.

Amazon’s customer experience: excellence in service and satisfaction

Amazon marketing strategy entails integration throughout various marketing channels such as social media, mobile app, push advertisements, newsletters, laptop purchasing, and chatbots that give easy access to products and services, improving the overall customer buying experience.

For instance: Push notifications usually contain jokes or associated content. That attracts the attention and motivates customers to click through and go to the product web page where he sees descriptions of top-notch functions but hesitates to make purchase decisions. The system detects that the customer is long enough on the page; thus, the chatbot pops up with a live assistant to answer his questions and further works with the objections to complete sales.

Such an omnichannel approach talks for itself. If you establish and set up such a level of excellence in your sales strategy with this approach, you will reach an increase in the KPI of your pharma business.

Besides, pharma omnichannel marketing inspires customers to always prioritize your brand instead of shopping around. Research shows that:

omnichannel leads to 90% higher customer retention than interaction through a single channel.

That ultimately makes your products and services visible across multiple offline and online locations, highlighting the importance of purchasing and helping you earn more income for your pharmaceutical company.

Omnichannel Amazon approach to Pharma customer engagement

People have noted how smart and innovative Amazon is in its customer engagement strategies. What shapes them so unique?

Most importantly, Amazon collects data on everyone from its audience while they use the shop on its site.
Companies like Amazon are the pioneers of digital marketing. While Amazon didn’t invent omnichannel, it quickly embraced it and became a key component of its business model. Amazon knows every customer that buys from them and uses everyone’s data to provide a personalized and up-to-date experience. The central database is at the heart of their marketing model, which ensures seamless interaction between channel and device, which is the hallmark of omnichannel. Consumers flock to Amazon because they get a consistent and reliable experience that saves time and money and provides a high level of omnichannel customer service.
They have a considerable arsenal of successful marketing tools to prove their point:

SEO

This is one of the most famous internet marketing techniques. SEO helps businesses appear as high as possible in search results for specific queries. Because so many product searchers start searching for purchases directly on Amazon’s web store (rather than Google), it has become the #1 product search engine on the internet.

Keywords

They are at the core of Amazon’s SEO tactics and make products more visible. Once all relevant keywords have been researched and assigned to a product, more search queries may show the relevant product in the search results for potential shoppers.

Questions & Answers

Amazon takes care of every question from its customers as they often ask for specific details that are not displayed on the product page. Answering questions can improve the information content of a product page, as questions often point to more significant information gaps. So, moderators can add new details to the product or service description focused on the client’s needs.

These tools help Amazon collect data, effectively improve its service, and create a “360-degree view” of you as an individual customer. It is important to note that clients expect the same experience from the whole companies they cooperate with.

amazon pharma

How does it affect Pharma’s channel strategy?

First, you get an excellent opportunity to interact with your target audience through the channel they prefer by developing a unified communication system with customers in which different channels complement each other.

  • First, an omnichannel marketing strategy allows you to increase customer engagement and conversion as you can build a customer journey to get your audience to the information they need and are interested in. Thus you will get a higher response.
  • Furthermore, with omnichannel marketing, you can reduce customer acquisition costs by developing a mix of channels to meet customer demand to win their loyalty. Of course, you will avoid wasteful spending.​
  • Finally, you can address the core challenge of any content-driven omnichannel strategy—delivering related content that customers will genuinely appreciate.

With a constant stream of data across connected channels, you can track customer preferences and behavior in a new way—overcoming the limitations of some channels and seeing the bigger picture. There are things you can only see from a bird’s eye view of the entire customer experience journey, so omnichannel does just that.

Modular Content: Pharma Digital Marketing Strategy by Viseven

Most recently, we at Viseven introduced a new approach to content creation – Modular Content. Thanks to a thoughtful modular approach, you can use it everywhere once you create and approve it, from eDetailing to the website.

We break the content into flexible, independent fragments making it easy to reuse, repurpose, and republish content without additional effort, cost, or resources. Now content creation becomes smart: either with the help of an agency or on your own according to requirements.

That makes it possible to save time and budget for development while maintaining high-quality content.

With the COPE approach, there is no unnecessary, redundant development. You can reuse and localize approved modules across all your omnichannel marketing channels. ​

Check out the extended presentation: Engage like Amazon: omnichannel HCPs engagement for pharma marketing from Viseven.

To find out more about the approach, fill out the form below to contact our team of experts.

How to Create a User-Friendly Design for a Medical Website?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression” is a buzz phrase in the business world. One of the main things to do as a smart manager is to try to draw attention to your company. The best-designed medical websites are going to help to attract clients and ensure that people know exactly what your company is all about.  

So, how do life science companies attract more visitors to their website? In this article, we will discuss some sleek tricks that have been tried and proved by successful website makers, which can give your platform the attention it merits. 

The Best Medical Website Design 2023

Becoming a Black Sheep

Although it has been said that web developers, designers, content managers, etc. are always in the shadows, in fact, these people present core messages of your company to the world. 

What makes a doctor’s website better?

Consistency is the key to the success of the entire project. Every stage of creating the best life science website design is meticulous work every developer from the web studio team is responsible for. Creating a website includes not only design development and programming, but also a detailed analysis of the project, dialogue with the customer, and the search for solutions to achieve the goals of the project. 

However, even precise adherence to all stages of development does not guarantee that your website will stand out from the others. A distinctive style can pick you out of a crowd of competitors, but designers have to give it all to ensure that it grabs users’ attention. There is no single solution to craft the best hcp pharma website; but there are different life science web design tricks and techniques that you can use to increase your chances of being noticed on the Internet. 

Keep it Simple 

Did you ever go to a website that shouted: “Made by a day-fly designer”? Likely.

We mean tons of redundant graphics, images, animations, and a rather strange choice of a color palette. Overloaded design not to be the answer if you want to provide the constant flow of visitors (and a general positive impression) to your website. Complex design is hard to read and understand. Keep gimmicks to a minimum. The best pharma website design should be clean, simple, and straightforward. Simplicity will keep visitors on your site for a long time. Web page design for life science should not be too complicated: websites that are overloaded with content will have a long load time. That will cause a bounce rate to increase. We’ve found proof with statistics that will confirm you. 

Surprise, Surprise 

When we see something unpredictable, the pleasure centers in our brain are turning on. We subconsciously choose something new and non-trivial because it captures our attention much faster than something we already know and possibly even like. This can be applied both to the design and content of the website. 

When it comes to the content of the pharmaceutical website landing page, the headlines should be catchy and arresting since they go through the graphics and take on the role of guide for the users on your designs. 

It is worth paying attention to these lines if you want to grab a visitor’s attention with your visuals. 

These may be headers with the element of surprise; otherwise, your content will blend in with the internet noise. 

Headlines containing questions are an excellent idea to strike a spark out of visitors. This is due to the fact they notice a gap in their knowledge and subconsciously strive to fill it. Another way to whet readers’ appetite is to give a small portion of the information at the beginning. This one will play into your hands because it will build up the reader’s information hunger and make them want to know more to feel better. 

Usage of superlatives (biggest, best, greatest) and negatives (worst) works flawlessly on landing pages headlines. Moreover, statistics also attract the attention of readers. 

It is hard to say if these tricks will 100% ensure a constant flow of visitors, but according to surveys, more than half 51% respondents prefer the intrigue-based approach to headlines with the usage of superlatives. 

Promote Wisely 

Is there any chance that there can be too much promotional push on the pharma website? Yep. Nothing annoys the web site visitor more than an overabundance of advertising popping up out of the woodwork. Moreover, it can sometimes deflect attention away from where the true customer engagement happens. 82% of people report that they have closed a web site because of the abundance of advertising.So how many ads/calls to action should be contained on a webpage? 

Investigate the interest of your target visitor. The first step to establishing the right balance in this equation is to start monitoring the effectiveness of the advertising campaign, as well as constantly testing it for continuous improvement. This means that you will advertise to a much more appropriate audience. Caring for visitors of your site should be your postulate, and this is what will help you find the best website design for medical and life science services. 

Leave Some Space 

Whitespaces is a tool to make a website readable, easy to perceive, and easy to like. Let us clarify that this is the untouched space between text, graphics, images, columns and other components. The best example to illustrate the unsuccessful use of Whitespaces is the websites with an abundance of ads instead of blank spaces. We say it is unsuccessful since it looks and distracts attention from the main content. Whitespaces is another trick to make a smooth transition between the content and the background of the website.

It is extremely important for designers to create a stylish look for a website and to be clear with their layouts. Whitespaces is the helper in highlighting or drawing attention to some elements of design. In other words, this is the very tool that gives simplicity and elegance to a website. 

Don’t be Plastic 

People are starving for interactivity. According to the survey conducted by Harris Poll, 36% of millennials ages 18 to 34, who use “visual expressions” such as emojis, GIFs and stickers say that those images better communicate their thoughts and feelings than words do. This is another successful trick which is widely used on the best life science websites to add some life and dynamic to your design. It is very convenient since these days GIFs are available for use on each social media platform. Besides, GIFs are a popular trend that will give extra attention to your pharma website. You may use animated logos in the website’s header, animated icons, and graphic elements to mobilize the website look. 

Be Music to the Eyes 

If we had to single out the main trick of the above, it would be a successful use of visualization. The visual concept is the first thing a site visitor pays attention to. Well-chosen colors and smooth color transitions are probably the best tricks to grab the attention of the visitor.  

Moreover, elegant contrasts in terms of color, shapes, and lines will help to stand out from the rest effortlessly. 

It is equally important to observe the visual hierarchy to avoid visual chaos and make your pharmaceutical website design visually catchy. Hierarchy describes order in which the human eye will perceive the elements on a website. Use it to emphasize what the visitor should see first and clearly manifest your ideas. 

Be Mobile-Friendly  

Nowadays, people are more than ever addicted to their mobile devices. We turn to our phones when we are bored, tired, in sickness and in health until “death do us part”. In 2018, 58% of site visits were from mobile devices. However, in 2019, the time average adult spends on smartphones increased by 9 minutes. Multichannel mobile traffic has increased by 68%. Additionally, multichannel mobile revenue has increased by 49%. That’s why we recommend developing a mobile-friendly website in the first place. By mobile-friendly website, we mean one that can recognize whenever it is viewed from a smartphone or tablet and change its layout accordingly.

If your website is not adapted for the mobile view, has inconvenient navigation or unreadable text, in the end, it will play a trick on the number of visitors to your healthcare website. A website design for life science companies should be available and easy to use across all platforms. Otherwise, you will simply lose some users even before they look at what you have to offer. 

New visitors go on a medical website to learn something new, so it is important to think of your site as a dialog between you and the customer. Content is the main ingredient of a good website, however, according to the psychology of human attention, the visitor is instantly guided by the first impression. This implies that design is the first thing a website visitor will judge it by. Moreover, this impression will largely depend on whether the visitor continues to study your website further; or closes it to being confused by the poorly selected color-scheme or extremely puzzlingnavigation. 

We hope that our tricks will strike a blow for you. If you are looking for a life science website design company that would help you with creating your website, our team of website experts is always happy to share with you our experience in creating a spectacular pharmaceutical website; and to provide even more tricks on how to turn it into an exciting story. 

A look from inside eyeforpharma 9th Annual Marketing and Customer Innovation Europe, 2019

LONDON, October 2019 – Of enough weight in pharma and life sciences world to deserve the status of Reuters event, eyeforpharma is huge. In reality, to get the full value of the gigantic exchange of insights from leading enterprises, one can only be advised to travel and attend the event in person. As part of the pharma digital innovation community, we at Viseven team have taken it as our tradition to cover at least the most breathtaking presentations here – and this year’s event is not an exception. However difficult it has been to decide what to select to fit into this brief overview.

The driving force behind it all was expressed in one powerful slide, in a presentation delivered by Maria Raad, VP Customer and Digital Strategy at Janssen (and we’ll return to her excellent speech in a few moments):

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Oh yes, there is change in the way pharma is expected to interact with the stakeholders. Much change. The entire event was, in a way, centered around how to cope with it, and what successful cases can already be shown.

Ensuring customer experience that is really valuable

Gone are the times when CX was measured in terms of how digitally advanced it was. Now, with other industries providing exceptional customer centricity, healthcare and pharma are seriously challenged with expectations. Just spectacular digital tech is no longer sufficient – patients and HCPs alike want to see the real value tech can provide.

This is where the notion of added value gains important – and Anders Dyhr Toft of Novo Nordisk talked exactly about that. Amid the global diabetes pandemic, the company introduced added value in the form of digital health solutions.

These allow to expand focus beyond the prescription decision-making process by taking into account the real customer journey. The app-centric thinking has shifted to customer-centric. The importance of thinking in these terms was also highlighted by Philippe Barrilon, Takeda, in his presentation on CX measurement. In a stunning real-world insights collection, he presented the fact that once the HCP’s satisfaction with the journey becomes definitive, there’s a 2.7x increase in the likelihood to prescribe. The smart manager needs to consider the actual touchpoints along that journey and think of personalization – something that Christian Scheuer of LEO Pharma also stressed.

“Align the existing touchpoints before innovating” was one of the ideas in the presentation. In practice, this was achieved by providing reps with BI dashboards that show every touchpoint for any specific HCP – thus providing the flexibility and personalization to adapt to the real, non-linear journey.

The power of collaborations, once again

Collaborations in wide, cross-functional teams – as well as pharma-stakeholder collaborations – are a recognized necessity if only we want to bring the industry to true customer centricity. One notable aspect of this approach was solution co-creation with the customers. For example, the strategy devised by Novo Nordisk (which we have already mentioned) also involved services co-creation, and Louise Lauridsen, Digital Channel Manager, Europe at Bristol-Myers Squibb also presented a collaborative approach. Starting from the dismal figure of 11 minutes that is the average rep call duration in Spain, she emphasized the need to tailor the materials to the audience. As one of the stages in the cycle, they include workshop with the customers.

This same presentation also featured the practice of a large cross-functional team focused on providing the truly patient-centric solutions. The topic was touched in a panel talk on cross-department collaboration (marketing, digital, sales, medical and IT), with Paul Simms, Bharat Tewarie, Anders Dyhr Toft and Dana Viger participating.

It’s already here: AI bearing fruit

We promised at the beginning we’ll go back to what Maria Raad had to say. There were 4 trends distinguished in the presentation (Big data, empowered patients, better disease interception and more personal engagement). Behind all four, AI featured prominently:

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Among all the applications of artificial intelligence that are already the working reality today, there’s one on which Roger Domecq, Head of CRM and Sales Transformation at Novartis Spain, delivered a practical case: AI in CRM. The solution works by analyzing previously assembled data and generating suggestions for reps to arrange for their next activities facing the customer.

Another success case of using AI was presented by Darren Frey, Senior Data Scientist at Sanofi in the context of predictive analytics. The method demonstrated involved precise short-term forecasting based on social media and sales data and processed by AI. The approach allows at least a 30% increase in accuracy (i.e. from 30 to 60%).

How not to get lost in data and processes?

An important part of digital transformation is making sure the organization does not get overwhelmed by the expanded horizons. A panel talk with experts from Pfizer, Novartis, Lundbeck and Sanofi was dedicated to customer insights and selecting the right customer insights for analysis.

The Janssen presentation, mentioned above, included a call to link data to value provided to the customer.

The splendid speech by Sarah Rickwood, Vice President, European Thought Leadership, IQVIA, was dedicated to launching excellence. Analyzing the evolution of launches starting from as early as 1995, they defined 6 stages on the way to the present-day complicated environment. This was combined with an overview of the past, present and future landscape and what implications it has for a successful launch.

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As an efficient approach to efficient launch excellence, Sarah Rickwood suggested the FAAR model, with the formula “Be Focused, Actionable, Aligned and Realistic”.

Francois Motyl, Global Digital Governance Lead at Novartis, presented an approach to end-to-end governance of customer experience.

Omnichannel transformed

The need to provide a truly omnichannel customer experience is clear when you consider that no one channel can substitute or supersede the others. In HCP engagement, even with the plethora of channels that pharma is now trying out, HCPs still use a vast array of other information sources. We have mentioned how Louise Lauridsen of BMS referred to the shrinking rep call times, but her presentation also included an assessment of sources of information, where reps are in Tier 2, at 39% rates. This is indicative of their role as just one channel in the large landscape.

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This landscape is expanding. Cyril Mandry, Senior Marketing Director, MSD spoke of social media as a powerful means of communication. 60 to 80% of the audience are on SM, and 93% buying decisions are influenced by it, so pharma has at least 4 opportunities here: marketing, social selling, employment activities, and developing reputation. A memorable quote inspired by the SM setting was simply this:

Engagement is earned, not bought.

This, according to the presenter, implies the need for a long-term content plan. Another channel introduced with customer journey in mind was chatbots (discussed by Hannah Thompson and Kym Jacks-Bryant of Norgine).

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Naturally, this huge landscape is to be consistent and the channels should be aligned with one another – this is why “multichannel” is now becoming “omnichannel”, the difference being that integrated experience provided by the latter. This requires a smart content strategy powered by good command of tech.

Stacey Berold-Kutscher of Ferring presented an original approach to engaging HCPs via popular digital networks. Reducing the team on the company side to just 3 members – Pharma Brand Lead, Digital Brand Lead and Medical Advisor – leading a blog and involving patients and KOLs, as well as providing downloadable content, they achieved considerable results.

Managing the omnichannel strategy that comprises multiple touchpoints, all of them personalized and providing added value also requires a fair share of proficiency working with content. The conventional way of creating content with an agency here and there is becoming dangerous. Where is the guarantee that the content created in silos will stay not just compliant, but also relevant to its place in the funnel?

Rethinking the way content is created and managed across channels is imminent. We at Viseven Group are aware of this fact and present the modular COPE – Create Once, Publish Everywhere approach. Here, content exists in the form of flexible modules that represent a core idea with supporting information – the value item, as well as metadata. Importantly, modules exist without channel-specific limitations, so that one module can be theoretically used in a website, email, app, eDetailing presentation, landing page, etc.

With the help of business rules, modules can be assembled into channel-specific templates, and thus provide the necessary level of personalization. The possible combinations yield a spectacular number of available content items to be constructed – and used at lighting speed whenever and wherever required by the audience needs.

To know more about what modular omnichannel content practices Viseven can recommend and implement, don’t hesitate to contact our expert in the field.

P.S. If you are interested in what’s going on in omnichannel life sciences communications, you can subscribe to our blog to receive fresh updates on the state of the industry.

Adobe Experience Manager integration with eWizard Platform for new-gen pharma content management

In another move to create a world of truly interconnected digital ecosystems for life sciences, Viseven Group is happy to introduce the integration of eWizard Platform with Adobe Experience Manager! This powerful solution, already claimed to be in use by 7643 companies, presents new opportunities to cater to pharma marketing’s long standing needs.

Here, we will dive into the whats and hows of these changes. We will look at how you can connect your existing systems, including Veeva, with AEM using eWizard, craft and reuse websites that fit AEM, while tracking their performance in Veeva/Salesforce, as well as how content approval processes and data integrity can be improved.

Data Integrity and the need for integrated pharma content solutions

The current business landscape is infused and intersected with data… Wait, it consists of data. With the most recent concerns about its quality, no wonder that the entire pharma industry is searching for ways to get things as neat as possible. Over the course of the last several years, FDA has had to issue quite a number of 483 warning letters concerning data integrity deficits in life sciences industry. For the most part, these have to do with regulations, electronic signatures, etc.

Now, pharma marketing is, in turn, affected. After all, brand reputation is part of the goal in the movement for data integrity, not just the regulatory confidence.

If we look close enough at the so-called ALCOA principles of data quality, we can see why:

Attributable – If you see materials in your DAM that you could and would possible reuse, it will surely help to see who uploaded them, when and why – and maybe how they performed.

Legible – it goes without saying that no marketer will ever reuse content that fails to interest them; unintelligibility is a putoff.

Contemporaneous – “just a file” is not an asset, but simply an object. How long since it was last used? Besides that, documenting the performance of content in real-time is something that begged for automation – and now has been automated.

Original – no one would like to get globally approved templates for, say, an ad, website or email in a version that has already been localized several times, with Gujarati text over a picture clearly destined for Russian market.

Accurate – all about context and metadata, which implies proper tagging and linking of all digital assets per key message, market, campaign, etc.

Digital Asset Management and Content Approval Software – life sciences perspective

Of all industries, pharma arguably has the most complicated and branching content lifecycle. The layers of responsibility imposed on various stages, starting from agency and up to MLR, make the workflows mudded at times, especially so if different systems and transfer formats (PDF, documents, PPT, etc.) are used.

In general, we can usually distinguish between three such layers. Asset Management per se, done by agencies, can be put to order as a short-term objective. Typically what’s needed here is a single workspace with sufficient integrations, a pack of content authoring functionalities and a way to report on the outcomes.

Next is the marketing review and approval workflow, which requires not only a unified platform to work on the content (e.g. comment on the assets), but also some formal mechanism of approval endorsed by tech.

Finally, the compliance layer – medical, legal, regulatory – also requires a single “source of truth”, but with even more meta tagging, taxonomy and context, as well as more formal approval chain.

The needs that are more or less in common across all these levels are as follows:

  • clear approval nomenclature (think Zinc, which is already in use by many an entrerprise)
  • possibility to share content across affiliates and agencies to ensure compliance and cost-efficiency (content reuse is the best way to achieve this)
  • metadata and tagging for the available assets
  • permission control and customizable user roles
  • possibility to somehow plug all of this together with CRM to track the approved key message performance
  • bonus point – ability to think in terms of key messages and not content items separately. This is the new approach to multichannel that Viseven has been especially pioneering recently with the modular Connected Content.

Sewing together Veeva Vault PromoMats and AEM integration with eWizard

At the moment, these different needs are solved by means of multiple systems in place, each serving its own stretch of the content lifecycle. For example, Veeva Vault PromoMats serves for storage, meta connectivity, and review. Content authoring and distribution is done via channel-specific solutions: email platforms, development environments, CRM/CLM, and so forth.

The first step in achieving digital excellence is, of course, instilling digital culture and getting proficient in each of these systems. The logical next stage is creating clear workflows that transcend the systems and unify the processes. With the advent of Adobe Experience Manager, be it primarily as a powerful means of managing websites, we see this tendency in its mature stage, with attention to workflows built into the very concept.

In turn, eWizard Platform, too, transcends its original role of multichannel content authoring solution and can now connect Veeva systems and AEM into a single whole, building bridges wherever necessary for the corporate needs.

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The platform allows to take approved/validated digital assets from Veeva Vault (seamless integration, nothing except credentials at one point is needed), arrange them in a channel-specific template (eDetailer, email template, in case with AEM, as website), and then publish it to the target system. Everything that can be automated is automated, leaving no manual work to the user.

At the same time, the performance of the website published in Adobe can be tracked further, with the data available in Veeva via CDN.

Alongside this improvement, eWizard offers to use the new Modular Content approach, where content exists beyond channels in the form of flexible modules that can fit different types of channel-specific templates. A single module with key message can be inserted into a template for website or email, or eDetailer presentation, with further adaptation if necessary – all inside eWizard.

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As a result, the workflow that embraces Veeva systems and AEM via eWizard, “straightens” the multiple lines into a single, all-encompassing picture:
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Adobe Experience Manager examples in practice

Suppose you have an environment in Adobe Experience Manager where you want to place your company’s new website.

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At the same time, you want to be able to use assets from Veeva Vault to create a channel-specific content item (website) to be published in AEM. As a user of eWizard, you know where to look for the templates:

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You can edit your microsite as necessary, using the modules available. Since eWIzard has an extensibe capacity for metatagging, only the modules approved for use with the content under construction appear, as per business rules.

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Maybe you are required to update the patient profile on the website, and you already have the recommended assets in Vault. eWizard allows to use these assets without leaving the system, loading them from Veeva directly:

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After that, you can export the modified version of the website back into Vault as a PDF for validation and review, if your company’s workflows require it.

After validation, you can use the same built-in automated publishing functionality to get your brand new website across to AEM.

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In this way, you combine the benefits of both systems and enhance them further with the innovative possibilities offered by eWizard, making content workflows easier, faster and more efficient.

You can then track the performance of your content in Veeva:

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It is time to integrate all the efforts and chances of your marketing campaign to create focused interactions and build funnels and customer experiences that win the day! Try and see how it feels to have complete control over your digital assets – and you will be surprised at how, one day in 2019, so many things were resolved at once, leading to smart pharma marketing at the service of your brand.

Our dedicated experts are several clicks away, ready to help you learn more about the new possibilities you have.