A KOL (Key Opinion Leader) in Pharma: An Expert Who Shapes the Drug Industry Posted on November 9, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin The drug industry is highly regulated, and its products and offerings have far-reaching impacts on the public’s health and well-being. From the ideation stage to the marketing of the drugs, the pharma market employs medical experts, researchers, and thought leaders. These professionals are known as key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the pharma industry. Key opinion leaders play a critical role in the life sciences industry – pharmaceutical companies often engage them during clinical trials and drug commercialization. However, given the current regulatory approval challenges, many pharma companies seek to collaborate with KOLs medical throughout the entire drug development cycle. The role of KOL in pharma is pivotal as they provide invaluable insights that help manufacturers navigate the regulatory landscape and bring credibility during the marketing phase. Who are Key Opinion Leaders in Pharma? Key opinion leaders in pharma provide valuable feedback about new medicines. They are experienced physicians who help shape how a new medication is marketed and its features. They have become invaluable in the drug industry. Many healthcare professionals opt to become a key opinion leader (KOL) because it allows them to share and increase their knowledge about the latest innovations, better treat their patients, widen their professional circle, and receive handsome compensation. KOLs can be a valuable source of knowledge for patients and ensure that patients receive the best treatment possible. Potential and Expertise KOLs have the potential to reach peers and patients from all over the world. This global perspective helps create other KOL engagement and management activities. Working with KOLs allows you to create referral networks and connect new patients, regardless of location or affiliation. A KOL’s expertise can help in making a successful clinical treatment. In some cases, a KOL may be the one who coordinates the clinical trials and keeps everything organized, especially when there are multiple study sites involved. Having such a physician on board can help ensure that the process of clinical trial runs smoothly and successfully. The Role of KOLs in the Pharma Market Key opinion leader is regarded as the mastermind in the pharma industry. They’ve put in the time and research to be recognized by their peers as experts in their field. As a result, they have gained a reputation as a thought leader within their specific niche. Their expert opinions and actions can significantly affect the adoption of a new product/brand or the ability to influence consumer purchasing decisions. Key opinion leaders in healthcare are sort of like the avengers of the clinical research world. They can fill many different roles, and their skill sets are highly sought after by those in the know. A key opinion leader can be critically important in helping to educate physicians about a new drug. They can provide information about the working of drugs, which patient demographics can benefit the most, and what treatment regimens are most effective. KOLs can also offer their unique insights as early adopters of new therapies, which can help to identify and create brand acceptance in healthcare. Additionally, pharma brands strive to engage with KOLs with extensive expertise in their target therapeutic areas to assist them in participant recruitment for clinical trials and data analysis. These leaders help to identify the unmet needs of both physicians and patients, allowing companies to produce more effective drugs with less side effects. Besides, KOLs have influence over the medical community and therefore can help companies boost their marketing efforts. How to Identify KOLs in Pharma? Correctly evaluating a KOL’s influence and expertise is crucial to developing successful pharma initiatives that engage them. You could use key factors to gauge a KOL’s strength and involvement, including the breadth and depth of their participation, brand adoption, and behaviors. Area of expertise Before engaging with KOLs, it is imperative to learn about their area of expertise. Do they participate in panel discussions? Have they ever worked in hospices or emergency care? Do they have hands-on experience working with older adults? What kind of academic achievements are they known for? The first thing to do on your list should be to understand their clinical and research interests and contributions Knowledge about critical medicine A KOL in healthcare can be experts in complex conditions associated with increased chances of relapses. For instance, diagnosing and treating such chronic conditions as endometriosis is a time-consuming journey for patients, often involving surgery. However, thought leaders can offer valuable insights, aiding gynecologists in understanding innovative treatments and expediting the recovery process. Influence over the local and global medical community Some KOLs might offer treatment themselves or receive patient referrals from all over the world. Collaborating with these experts can be incredibly advantageous, extending the reach and impact of marketing campaigns. Openness to adopting new innovations and practices If you need to improve your drug development or clinical trial process, you might want to connect with KOLs that are early adopters of innovative approaches and treatments. This type of KOLs usually do not shy away from participating in clinical studies and are eager to get involved in early drug assessments. This way, they have a critical role in getting first approvals of medicines and expediting time-to-market. Expertise in conducting clinical trials Pharma companies may also seek KOLs that could refer patients to participate in clinical trials. Their role cannot be underestimated when there are multiple study sites in the trial process. Moreover, they can implement investigator-initiated trials to test alternative approaches to using certain medicines. KOL Identification and Mapping Before a company can start working with leadership, they must identify which experts have a sphere of influence within their area of interest. To do this, organizations track healthcare professionals who regularly speak at scientific meetings and medical congresses. They also monitor medical practitioners whose work is published in respected journals and who are frequently cited by media outlets as clinical experts. KOL identification and mapping are like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s a quantitative way to locate physician leaders who influence the medical community. It’s about finding HCP leaders with the most influence within the pharmaceutical industry. KOL mapping is vital for pharmaceutical companies because it allows them to weed out physicians who don’t meet their requirements. This categorization process is done based on factors like location, specialty domain, and influence that help these manufacturers collaborate with the most influential person in that vertical. Why are Key Opinion Leaders Important to Pharma Companies? Key opinion leaders in healthcare have a lot of experience, making them influential in their community. That means that KOLs could help create awareness for a new drug and can also be beneficial for pharmaceutical companies to generate turnover and increase sales. KOLs help organizations to make precise decisions while purchasing new medicines – like how a rock star’s opinion makes their fans buy more merch from a band they love. A KOL in the pharma industry plays an integral strategic role as they help manufacturers to have the desired impact with their target audience since they help bring credibility. They can also help companies by providing buy-in at a hospital or health network. KOL Engagement in Pharma Thought leaders engagement in pharma is beneficial for companies because it allows them to generate data, refine strategy and create persuasive medical and promotional content with the help of an expert. KOL relationships are built on trust and a mutual need for long-term cooperation. From this perspective, if a company does not take the time to ask questions internally about what an individual KOL needs, it will not have anyone to speak up for the company’s interests in the relationship. Build Trusted Relationships With Thought Leadership in Healthcare Product managers are under a lot of pressure to make decisions quickly. However, by forming relationships with respected experts in various medical divisions, they can gain invaluable ideas that will help them make better decisions and shape their businesses more effectively. Thus, KOLs offer their expertise throughout the product life cycles and development, among other things. They can share it via various communication channels like live conferences or social media. In other words, using KOL in pharma marketing can be a powerful tool to popularize their product. If you’re in the health science and medical market, you know that effective KOL management is important to your success and business. After all, engaging the right healthcare thought leaders can make or break your drug development efforts. KOL management is constantly evolving, so companies must look for new and better ways to interact with key opinion leaders. But if you can stay ahead of the curve, you’ll be in an excellent position to succeed and increase sales. Effectiveness of KOL Management When KOLs are managed well, they can hugely impact a drug product’s success – from the early stages of discovery and research to when it hits the market. You can see the benefits in more persuasive medical and marketing materials, quicker patient recruitment for trials, more vital consumer awareness, and even influencing prescribing behaviors. In other words, managed KOLs can be a real game-changer. When a pharmaceutical company and a Key Opinion Leader work together successfully, it’s a win-win situation. The company gets valuable insights from an expert, and the Key Opinion Leader gets opportunities for networking and professional development, not to mention the chance to share ideas and learn from others. Go ahead and gather conferences, webinars or create a blog article for social media to combine your brand message with thought leaders influence. Conclusion The meaning of KOL in pharma is like the megaphone of the clinical trial world. They help get the word out about trial results and outcomes, which are essential for successful market access and eventual drug product adoption. Consequently, they know the best language to communicate trial outcomes and the most effective platforms to disseminate information to healthcare professionals and patient communities. Moreover, when they serve as principals or even sub-investigators in clinical trials, they naturally boost the visibility of the trials to their peers and other decision-makers in the healthcare sector. It helps both boosting high-quality pharma brands and involve more experts to the hottest topics. Learn how to engage Key Opinion Leaders in your brand strategy and build effective communication — fill out the form below so our experts can reach out to you.
7 Core Components of a Successful Global Marketing Strategy Posted on August 24, 2022February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin For most businesses, a global marketing strategy is an ultimate dream. Before entering the global market and becoming world-famous, each top brand name like McDonald’s, Volkswagen, or Samsung (you name it!) had a long and rough journey starting with something small in one country or city. Today, becoming a part of the worldwide market with an original brand has become less complicated thanks to search engines, digital advertising, social media, and video platforms. Despite the abundance of marketing channels and the tremendous opportunities of advanced technologies, going to global markets is still a challenge that takes consideration and resources. In this article, the Viseven team will review everything that concerns global marketing. You’ll discover the main strategy types, the key advantages of conquering international markets, and the core components for implementing international marketing techniques. What Is Global Marketing? Global marketing is a set of measures aimed at producing, introducing, advertising, and selling products and services to more customers in different countries across the globe. It is the process of adapting the company’s strategies to meet the needs of customers in the targeted countries. One of the global marketing examples is Pfizer. The leading pharmaceutical manufacturer aligns its marketing campaigns to satisfy the needs of customers with diverse cultural backgrounds. The pharma brand not only translates marketing materials into local languages but also considers cultural nuances to craft relatable and compelling advertisements. In the past, global brand strategy was an option restricted to multinational corporations only. With the rise of the Internet and e-commerce, even startups can reach their potential customers worldwide. To reach the foreign audience, all they need to do is to let them know that they are up and running. It is also essential to convince customers that a product or service is worth spending their hard-earned money on. This is when global marketing comes in. Finding the Balance Between Global and Local Marketing teams, especially in large businesses, may choose opposite tactics when it comes to globalization. Sometimes, central departments take control over every single local market. In other cases, they focus on a specific local market, fragmenting their efforts and failing to see the whole picture. Each brand that plans to go global should find the balance between accumulating a profitable business environment in the home country and concentrating marketing efforts in foreign markets. Let’s consider this question more clearly below. The Main Types of Global Marketing Strategies There are a few ways companies can enter the global market: An international marketing strategy presupposes importing and exporting a product or service around the world with the assistance of foreign suppliers while keeping the physical facilities in their homeland. The capital market of an international business is the native country. Multinational marketing implies the positioning of the company’s offices and facilities across multiple countries intending to produce, promote, and sell a product or service in place and at local prices. Regional offices in multinational companies act separately with no coordination with each other. Global marketing involves activities of multiple offices in multiple countries that act together under the guidance of the central corporate office that has a global strategy for the brand. In addition to that, there are two global marketing strategies used to spread brand messaging: Standardization Strategy Brands use the same standard message in every target market translating it into native languages. Standardization is about consistency in delivering universal experience to all the markets. Though this kind of global strategic marketing requires less control and resources, it may be difficult to use it in some markets due to high competition or local regulations. Localization Strategy Brands adjust campaigns to each target market considering the national, cultural, and individual peculiarities of customers. Though localization requires in-depth market research, this global marketing strategy allows brands to create a stronger connection with customers on a personal level which leads to a better customer experience. What Are Global Marketing Advantages? Let’s start with the most obvious thing. The first advantage of any global digital marketing strategy is a large scale of activity reflected in the continuously increasing number of customers and sales. Along with that, a global brand has: More Insights Information is the most important resource for any global brand because it drives growth and expansion. The importance of global marketing lies in getting and analyzing loads of unique data that brands can use to: Understand strengths and solve weaknesses Learn about customers and improve customer service in different regions Figure out how to enter new markets Compete with other companies more efficiently Improve products and services More Influence Promotional techniques that global brands apply across different markets change lives, dictate lifestyles, and create trends that can last for years. By creating compelling campaigns, these brands can instigate conversations, challenge norms, and foster inclusivity. This way, they not only capture market share but also leave a profound, lasting impact on the way people think, live, and interact, shaping the cultural landscape for years to come. More Innovation Globalization marketing strategy allows companies to get enough resources to move their industries forward by inventing new products and shifting customer experience to the highest level using the next-generation approaches based on technological advancement. This strategy powerfully promotes collaboration across countries and experience exchange, paving the way for transformative breakthroughs. The Core Global Marketing Strategy Components Here are a few recommendations for building a successful global marketing campaign. 1. Define and Separate Global and Local Activities A global marketing strategy should include general plans scheduled around the world and specific initiatives that happen on the local level. Some sectors would rather be guided globally, namely branding policy, overall planning, and budgeting. Other sectors are better managed on a regional level. Such activities may include local campaigns, PR events, tactical initiatives, and communication across social media channels in the region. Dividing the markets into layers can significantly improve your business perspective. It helps efficiently allocate resources both on global and local levels. Identify various areas within your marketing concern before you’re stuck with time and money issues. 2. Resonate with the Needs of Local Markets One of the biggest mistakes marketers could make within their global marketing strategy is to ignore regional diversity. Global brands must constantly monitor current trends and the personal needs of customers across local markets. Global and local teams must develop a single comprehensive approach to gain mutual benefits. The times of one-size-fits-all marketing initiatives applied internationally have gone. It’s no secret that the mentality and cultural background of people from the USA, France, and India differ greatly. Thus, you must concentrate on different customer values to meet their needs. 3. Build a Proactive Marketing Strategy Identify marketing areas beforehand. Make an upfront analysis of all business activities from the viewpoint of a certain region. Consider local characteristics and customer behaviors, including legal systems and economic situations. It’ll save you from unreasonable costs and help plan an actionable marketing strategy. 4. Energize Your Local Marketing Campaigns Local teams to build up an effective and scalable marketing plan. All departments must be well-trained and positively motivated to fulfill brand goals. Find an experienced global campaign manager who can guarantee workflow excellence and successful communication between a central office and affiliates. Planning business activities must be clear and consistent. All the staff, from global execs to regional employees, must know the work schedule, project objectives, and deadlines. Consider different time zones in the countries where your marketing team will deploy campaigns. Keep your company calendar straight to time changes. Otherwise, everyone will confuse your global marketing business plan. 5. Keep Track of All Marketing Processes Monitoring and coordinating activities in multiple markets. You need reputable brand officers to manage the performance tracking of your marketing campaigns. Make sure you remember the following: Build KPI systems based on marketing objectives. Pick the most effective KPIs for global and local teams. Collect the KPI data separately. That’s how your brand will better understand the contribution level of each team to the overall success. Make the analytical information accessible on every level and review it regularly. The marketing strategy results will help the teams move in the right direction and drive a good deal of friendly competition between them. Deliver the best practices to every single department. Keep in touch with in-market teams personally or through your officers to analyze and make current decisions and tactics optimized. 6. Examine the Overall Impact of Marketing Actions Conclude at the end of each global to local story. Estimate the insights you have gained. Reverse-engineer the most advantageous ideas to avoid pitfalls and outperform in the future. It is also recommended to rely on advanced analytics to measure return on investment (ROI), evaluate conversion rates, and monitor customer engagement. Conducting A/B testing can be also a smart move to hone your strategy. Do not underestimate the importance of customer feedback. Use surveys and social media monitoring to gain valuable insights. The use of automated solutions would help you process this feedback faster and more efficiently. Adjust your global marketing strategy based on this data to timely respond to the market and customers’ needs. It is equally important to regularly reevaluate your approach, demonstrating agility in this ever-evolving environment. 7. Elaborate Consistent In-Between Interactions Make sure local and global teams stay in touch even when the company has got through with the localization campaign. Close communication helps improve professional growth and keeps everyone informed about industry trends around the world. If your local marketing teams are far from the central office, you can connect them via digital channels. It is pivotal to encourage knowledge sharing, allowing teams to look at issues through different lenses. You should strive to promote cross-cultural competence, while ensuring constant alignment with overarching common goals. This kind of interaction not only drives professional development but also actively supports the company’s adaptability to new environments. Execute a Global Omnichannel Marketing Strategy With Viseven At Viseven, we’ve assisted dozens of global pharma brands with their marketing strategies. Are you planning to go global with your pharma company or have issues with a current global campaign? Our professional team will be glad to help you create a marketing strategy from scratch or enhance your existing plan regardless of scale and the level of digital maturity. Based on an omnichannel marketing approach, modular content approach, and advanced technical infrastructure, we can improve the level of customer experience, reduce time-to-market, and save marketing expenses by: managing global-to-local content production covering the entire content lifecycle with KPIs for every channel streamlining the content localization and adaptation processes automating the content distribution and delivery Fill in the form below, and we’ll get back to you shortly!
The Beginner’s Guide to Closed-Loop Marketing in Pharma Posted on August 8, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Do you remember when sales reps had face-to-face visits and cold phone calls with physicians and other HCPs? In the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare, detailing was a popular tool for demonstrating medical products and services. Nevertheless, it was hardly efficient because it was expensive, looked contradictory, and felt biased. After the healthcare world started shifting to digital, e-detailing as an alternative to traditional detailing diminished the power of sales reps and granted more power to marketers who received access to a multi-channel approach. Since then, pharmaceutical companies could use e-detailing and other medical content across different types of digital communication such as websites, social media, email, and beyond. However, only a few pharma companies could analyze their campaigns and understand their impact on their audiences. All because they began to implement closed-loop marketing (CLM). Let’s find out what CLM stands for in pharma, and how your business can benefit from it. What is Closed-Loop Marketing in Pharma? Closed-loop marketing is an omnichannel model that allows pharma companies to boost conversions and return on investment (ROI) by increasing the number of leads and improving personalized customer experience with real-time feedback and in-depth data analysis. How Does Closed-Loop Marketing Work? If you want your brand to grow and prosper, knowing your lead and treating them as your best friend is the key. Pharmaceutical closed-loop marketing does the job by giving answers to the essential questions: How do leads find a brand, and how do they engage with it for the first time? Why do leads convert into customers, and why aren’t they? What does make new customers trust a brand? The closed-loop marketing process is a cycle that consists of four stages: Launching a marketing campaign. Engaging with customers. Collecting data. Analyzing data. Closing the loop means repeating this cycle over and over. A pharma brand launches a new campaign, collects the relevant data, feels the gaps in its knowledge about the target audience, and starts a new campaign optimized for the needs and preferences of leads. After each cycle, the brand gets more expertise to strengthen the connection with the lead base. How to Get Started with Pharma Closed-Loop Marketing To see the big picture, pharma companies have to build an integrated system based on an accurate marketing strategy and suitable software. Create a Closed-Loop Marketing Pharma Strategy Close-loop marketing allows the marketing and sales teams to join their activities within a healthcare business and get many important insights that will improve the lead generation process in the future. For example, which channels customers prefer for communication and content browsing, what content they value, what’s the best time to engage with them, and tons of other essential data. Here are key components that are necessary for the implementation of a closed-loop strategy in the pharmaceutical industry: Build the key performance indicator (KPI) system. Choose the metrics that will help your business achieve its digital marketing goals with the highest efficiency. Conduct market segmentation. Analyze your top digital marketing channels and segment leads into multiple groups according to their behavior. Plan personalized customer journeys. Tailor individual messages to every group of leads considering their consumer needs and channel preferences and send them at the right time. Take Advantage of Pharma CLM Software When technology prevails, the technical infrastructure that incorporates all the marketing and sales processes together plays a key role. To implement a closed-loop marketing strategy, pharma companies need three primary platforms: Customer relationship management (CRM) platform arranges the gathered data, tracks real-time feedback, and segments leads and customers for marketing campaigns. Marketing automation (MA) platform optimizes the CLM process. Content creation platform develops tailored messages for multiple channels and audiences. The Benefits of Closed-Loop Marketing in Pharma Using up-to-date CLM insights within a single environment powered by next-generation technology is essential for today’s pharma companies and their marketing management. Here are a few significant benefits pharma marketing strategies can have if based on the closing-the-loop approach. Saved Resources Sending accurate information to the right people at the right time reduces the cost-per-lead rate. It lets marketing and sales teams optimize their budgets and spend energy on other activities that make their medical brand much more powerful. Increased Brand Awareness A high level of interaction and communication between the sales and marketing teams grows the level of interaction and communication between the brand and its customer base. In turn, it significantly improves the customer retention rate. Say you have physicians or any other type of HCPs as your target audience. If you perfectly understand them and plan successful customer journeys, they’ll remember you and spread the word about your brand across the healthcare industry lightning-fast. Customer Behavior Prediction When you regularly access relevant CLM data, you have enough information and experience to predict how an HCP can conduct themselves when they receive certain content or visits a particular channel. Not to mention that some of the top companies in the market might already be using artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze customer behavior patterns. Personalized Content of Higher Quality Content has never been so vital for promoting medical products and services, as well as for increasing sales. High-quality content attracts high-quality leads. And don’t forget that it’s personalized content that’s king. CLM data allows marketers to find out the content preferences of HCPs and create personal content that doesn’t annoy recipients and doesn’t feel like spam. NOTE: A modular content approach can save you up to 60% on personal content creation while improving its quality, management, and distribution across multiple audiences and means of communication. Modular content created on eWizard significantly reduces the medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) review process. End-to-End CLM Pharma Solution for Your Omnichannel Strategy The better you look after your leads, the more sales and the better ROI your business gets. Omnichannel CLM for pharmaceutical companies is like prophylaxis for patients. High-quality insights perpetually analyzed in a unified marketing system are the best tool for building long-lasting communication with the target audience. Does your brand need assistance with CLM or omnichannel? Viseven can offer you several implementation strategies to enhance the quality of your leads and increase your ROI based on advanced technology and customer experience techniques. Fill out the form below to request a consultation from Viseven’s expert!
Mobile Health Applications for Patient Engagement Posted on July 26, 2022January 31, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Apart from high-quality care, personalization, and transparency, patients are eager to have more control over their time and day-to-day health activities with easy access to accurate medical information. A healthcare mobile app is a perfect tool to satisfy all these needs. mHealth apps don’t aim to replace doctors and medical devices but to revolutionize the healthcare system by improving healthcare delivery. The revolution in digital health development can potentially exceed customers’ expectations and help attain a higher level of clinical engagement. As wearable technology and mobile devices have already created a new tone of connectivity within the patients-HCPs-pharma triangle, the demand for mobile applications in pharma has become immense. In this article, you’ll find more about mobile health app development, its enormous role in HCP engagement, and the principal outcomes of including mHealth apps in your multichannel or omnichannel marketing strategy. What Is an App in Healthcare? Healthcare apps, or healthcare applications, are software designed to provide users with health-related services, such as online consultations, live chats, appointment scheduling, and more. mHealth apps help professionals deliver more personalized treatment, assist patients worldwide, and collaborate with other experts. Due to the increasing demand and technological advancements, the mHealth market is projected to surpass $269.31 billion by 2032. Healthcare Mobile Apps: A Brief Statistics Overview The number of healthcare apps downloaded worldwide is expected to reach 8.6 billion by 2025. According to Statista, more than 52,000 healthcare and medical apps are available on the Google Play Store worldwide, and over 53,000 mHealth apps are available on the Apple App Store; By 2023, nearly 30% of American adults regularly utilized a health-tracking or management app multiple times daily; The global mHealth app market will reach $68.77 billion in 2024. How mHealth Apps Are Changing Healthcare Hospital in a pocket Patients can take advantage of healthcare services while staying home. With the help of a mobile device, they can get consultations and prescriptions and even send payments. Entire workflow in a mobile device Mobile apps can help healthcare workers remember their daily tasks, browse the documentation, and optimize communication within their teams. Healthcare professionals can conduct quick online checks, access information about their patients within seconds, monitor their health, prescribe medicine, and so on. Mobile platform for pharma Pharma companies can develop a healthcare mobile app where their staff can send propositions, close deals, and do other business activities with partners and clients. Personalized care Users can receive personalized treatment plans, answers to their questions, and medical advice through healthcare apps within a few clicks. This decreases the time needed to contact a doctor and makes healthcare resources more accessible. AI-powered assistance AI-enhanced technology has completely changed the course of the pharmaceutical industry. Apps with AI technology integration offer instant assistance with various patients’ requests, providing them with around-the-clock support. Moreover, AI-driven algorithms can help healthcare organizations analyze patient data, find more effective ways to assist them, and offer better treatment. Benefits of Mobile Apps in Healthcare More powerful brands Revolution in mHealth has stepped ahead. Assistant apps are helping pharma brands boost awareness by approaching the maximum number of smartphone customers. It means pharma brands can quickly improve their marketing campaigns with intuitive navigation to company data such as contacts or other first-hand details, which are always available, accessible, and visible on apps. Improved time management Due to constant direct contact with the audience, applications in healthcare can help physicians save plenty of time and effort. It will streamline HCPs’ workflows, improve productivity, and maintain patient communication agility. Not to mention that people who need medical assistance can schedule or cancel an appointment with a nearby physician using the app. Patient loyalty Mobile medical apps significantly increase transparency with the help of constant remote monitoring, support, and online interactions. It keeps users engaged and involved in each step of their healthcare journey. Data harvesting Mobile health apps can work as a single hub for all medical information — from numerical data to their preferences, emotional reactions, and current behavior patterns. It provides professionals with a complete pack of insights valuable for further care and treatment enhancements. Real-time response Doctors can respond to people who receive medical treatment proactively using mHealth apps while providing effective treatment anytime and anywhere. Patients can request assistance whenever they need it, and an available doctor can consult them immediately. Moreover, mobile app users can avoid going to the doctor over minor problems or questions and just receive all the answers they need right in the app. Main Types of Mobile Healthcare Applications Many types of apps help patients manage and improve their health independently and assist healthcare professionals with multiple tasks. Here are some mobile health applications examples: Patients’ apps Symptom checkers; Reminders and alerts; Applications for remote monitoring; Support for patients with chronic diseases; Health plus applications; Health insurance apps; Mental health apps; Fitness apps; Diet apps. Apps for healthcare professionals Medical calculators; Prescription management; Appointment reminders; Pharma guides and surveys for eLearning. Medical salesforce apps Remote communications; eDetailing scripts and guides; Informational materials. Most In-Demand Patient Engagement Healthcare Apps Medical education Patient engagement healthcare apps support and strengthen learning processes. Instead of wasting time on long-turning educational sessions, these apps give permanent access to up-to-date medical materials, prescription guidelines, diagnostics, and more. Apps for clinical communications Apps of this type simplify interactions between healthcare providers and facilitate quick responses with virtual functionalities, such as voice calling, video conferences, messaging, and beyond. Calculators Such healthcare mobile apps for patients can calculate dosage or offer dosing suggestions based on multiple complex formulas and individual medical parameters. Disease management and diagnostics Various symptom checkers are among the most popular apps used in healthcare. Doctors and other HCPs can stay in touch with their patients to keep track of their drug adherence and lab results, check current health conditions, and coach them in their health journey. For example, doctors use the SkinVision app to identify skin cancer in its early stages. It reveals the diagnosis immediately. Drug reference Such healthcare apps for doctors provide health information about medicine, pharmacology, indications, dosages, interactions, contraindications, costs, and beyond. Patient education and engagement mHealth apps designed specifically for patients can include educational content such as treatment options, health issues, prevention methods, and more. It results in a better experience and a higher satisfaction rate. For example, TalkLife is one of the healthcare apps that help patients talk to people with the same symptoms or illnesses. They can ask for advice or exchange their experiences if they need it. Mobile telemedicine Another great feature in mHealth apps is an implemented video service technology that can provide remote patient monitoring. Doctors and other healthcare professionals can deliver real-time medical assistance to patients through remote video functions. It concerns those who cannot access their healthcare providers directly or get needed care due to remote location or physical disorders. For example, Dr. Now is one of the best healthcare apps for patients to make a video call and reach their physicians anywhere they want. Top Use Cases of Mobile Apps by Viseven Here are some of the best health apps for patients and healthcare professionals Viseven has developed: Dosage calculator for children’s caregivers. The app can calculate dosage and the frequency of pill or suspension administration. All the medical data is based on the criteria of disease as well as on the little patient’s weight; Dosage calculator for parents and HCPs. This app provides instant access to medicine instructions and allows parents or physicians to calculate the accurate dosage; Offline application. This app provides patient care recommendations for specialists in the oncology sphere (adjuvant, neoadjuvant, and surgical therapy); Versatile medical reference app for pharmacists. The app offers diagnostic possibilities and helps users identify a type of pain depending on its location, duration, or intensity. Osteohelp also allows choosing among the best treatment alternatives, investigating its pharmacological properties, route of medical administration, and beyond; Pharmacist’s guide. This app offers a wide range of up-to-date medical education materials for HCPs with various reference videos for clinical procedures; Health app for tracking health. Based on PhoneGap, this hybrid app has a built-in video module and BMI Calculator technology. The mHealth app provides users with the needed medical records regarding their disease, sets up custom pill reminders, and allows them to keep track of their current health situation; Life Plus App. This mHealth app allows program members and pharmacists to share offers with clients. It includes various options such as promotions for top products, redeems and redemptions, and eVouchers. Users receive the latest information continuously and always stay updated. Core Usability Principles for Healthcare Apps The best healthcare apps for patients and HCPs have the following features: Intuitive user experience (UI) and excellent user experience (UX); Simple installation and flawless functioning; Synchronization of data across devices; Safety and security of personal information. Innovations in digital mHealth technologies help augment clinical efficiency, provide accurate diagnoses, and help pharmaceutical brands stand out. mHealth application development includes business analysis, UI/UX design, backend, app development, and quality assurance. As for operating systems, Android and iOS are still at the top. However, Android remains the lead platform for mobile health application development. Need a mHealth app? Viseven is an app healthcare provider that can develop a hybrid, native, or web app for your pharma, healthcare, or life sciences brand, considering your marketing strategy and the needs of your target audience. Download our case study or fill out the form below for more information. We’ll get back to you shortly!
Guide to Strategic HCP Segmentation Posted on July 20, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Imagine you wake up an omnichannel marketer and ask: What does omnichannel strategy implementation start with? We bet you’ll say segmentation among the mumbled words. Any decent omnichannel strategy requires proper target audience segmentation; pharmaceutical marketing is no exception. And here’s the thing. Pharmaceutical marketing is a specific area where an omnichannel marketer cannot simply use best practices from other industries and hope they’ll work out. In this article, you’ll discover what’s unique about healthcare professional market segmentation. We’ll stress the main advantages, review the key criteria, and analyze current and future segmentation practices. Before getting started, let’s figure out: What Is HCP in Marketing? HCP’s meaning in pharma has different interpretations. HCPs stand for healthcare professionals, providers, or practitioners. HCPs can be individuals like physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, or institutions like hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes. Healthcare professionals have diverse roles in the industry and engage with patients in various ways. It’s crucial to understand that not all HCPs can be your target audience, however, all HCPs are important when it comes to pharma marketing. What Is HCP Segmentation? (And What Is Not) HCPs segmentation refers to any practice of dividing a target audience into segments according to a set of relevant principles. On an intuitive level, all of us in marketing have that notion: you have a target audience that is a mixed crowd, but you want to be relevant and innovative to as many of them as you can. In other words, instead of offering everyone at a party a glass of wine and a steak, you want to cater to those who won’t go for that first option. In terms of a healthcare professional audience, physicians are different too. No one can reasonably expect that an eDetailing slide or other traditional content focused on patient challenges or costs will compel everyone to consider prescribing. If we take that analogy further, it may seem that the more segments there are, the better. In reality, though, it is not the case. First of all, there is content — if you have too many segments (carefully sliced up by your analysts based on a 12-dimensional matrix), each containing a handful of HCPs, there will be more of these categories than agencies available to craft all that content. Secondly, humans are highly complex. The account you find in one segment today may appear in a different one tomorrow. When done correctly, omnichannel approach is a powerful tool that can furnish monstrous amounts of customer data. Thus, it is crucial to remember what omnichannel audience segmentation is and is not: It is NOT segmenting based on anything you can think of, down to loads of tiny segments just because you can It IS segmenting based on the criteria relevant to your business, brand, and situation Main Benefits of Pharma HCP Segmentation The benefits of well-segmented campaigns are immense. Your tactics are more powerful, and they yield better results. With proper segmentation, you can identify more precise pharma HCP engagement moves. Based on actual needs, these moves are likely to involve HCPs. That impacts conversion even in a non-personal digital promotion channel like online ads. The conversion rate for targeted ads rises from 2.8% to 6.8% — more than twofold. The affinity between brand and customer increases, and it impacts loyalty. Essentially, it’s a principle similar to providing the beyond-the-pill value in pharmaceutical promotion. If life science professional feels there’s so much more to interacting with the brand than just listening to standard central messages, they’re more likely to perceive this value favorably and become loyal brand advocates. Quality leads. One of the best things about doing segmentation right is that once you have identified a segment, the audience within that segment that was under your radar suddenly becomes more accessible. You already have the content and methods to provide them the value they seek. Brand image and perception in the community. Customers form communities, and the power of reviews is enormous. That’s also true of the medical community, with key opinion leaders of different caliber swaying the fates of pharmaceutical products in entire regions. Segmenting your omnichannel campaigns will provide the life sciences professionals with targeted messaging and the reasons they personally need to refer to your brand as a trusted and valued one. Greater content personalization. Segmentation in Pharma allows companies to find the right audience and narrow it down only to those whose needs these businesses can meet. This strategy ensures that every service, piece of content, and even the smallest message or web banner is relatable to the consumers who encounter it. 80% of marketers consider personalization one of the biggest challenges, especially when integrating an omnichannel strategy, which makes segmentation one of the key ways to address this problem. Common Criteria for Pharmaceutical Market Segmentation A segmentation model or pattern is the combination of criteria you choose to segment a life sciences provider target. In some cases, it may be location, specialty, and the number of patients. In other cases, it may be the psychological type (see below), specialty, preferred channel, and beyond. Of course, these examples are too abstract because a more realistic combination is always focused on the brand, campaign, and many other specific factors. Here Are the Elements of Market Segmentation: Demographic data Age and gender Location For B2C: Income Ethnicity Family status For B2B: Industry Company size Position Translating this into the HCP-pharma market, we get: Age and gender Location Family status Specialty Employment at HCO Amount of patients Position in the community Behavioral data Purchasing habits Preferred channel of interaction History of interactions with the brand (frequency, proactivity, and beyond) In healthcare provider segmentation: Prescribing habits (open to innovation/experiment, traditionalist, and beyond) Preferred channel of interaction (rep calls, email, messengers, electronic health record) History of previous interactions (email open-rate, and beyond) Psychological data Personality (introvert/extravert, etc.) Values and priorities Interests For pharma marketing and HCPs, a similar list would apply as well. Geographical data What Is Special About Pharmaceutical Market Segmentation? For the most part, the segmentation components above have been developed in online campaigns, where the marketer is distant from the customer. But the pharma market lives in a different, much more individual reality with CRM and rep calls serving as a good launchpad. Pharmaceutical segmentation makes it possible for companies to find out what they should focus their marketing efforts on. It’s not just about understanding the problem and its solution, but also identifying who might need it and when. HCPs are busy, and usually, you have a window of just a few minutes per day to reach the right audience and make them interested in what you offer. The magic of pharma market segmentation lies in its ability to pinpoint the exact HCPs who would like to hear from you. Say you adopt more channels, each with its own metrics, and then start building a complete picture. How do you combine the two parts in your marketing strategy? It’s where it pays off to look closely at what the industry already has. Problem of Existing HCP Pharmaceutical Practices With the insight-collecting possibilities provided by CRM/CLM and the reps going from doctor to doctor, the market segmentation of the pharmaceutical industry would be more sophisticated for the F2F channel. However, it only seems that. In reality, most companies stick with a simplified segmentation pattern based on their immediate commercial goals. While reps may be instructed (ultimately by the global office) to collect data in the CRM, the actual decision-making for the cycle still often relies on two criteria: Loyalty Prescription potential The problem is that this is brand-centric, not a customer-centric model. Everything revolves around two questions: What can this account contribute to brand promotion, and is it worth it to sway their opinion? Of course, no marketer can escape these two factors, but this only tells how hard to try to engage, not how to engage. In this situation, the representatives possess insights into each healthcare professional, their preferences and psychological traits. However, representatives don’t decide what content to generate, at least directly. And it’s not too helpful with other channels than sales rep calls. By now, a big number of organizations use entire sets of digital channels with email segmentation often existing in a specific universe. Meanwhile, a smarter take on rep-collected metrics involves psychology. Psychographic Market Segmentation Nothing can be more beneficial in crafting high-ROI targeted campaigns than knowledge about the target audience’s psychology. In B2C and FMCG where omnichannel practices first emerged, things are less complicated than in pharma HCP marketing. Regulations don’t overshadow customers’ choices while making prescriptions requires a hefty dose of scientific evidence. However, as noted above, experienced and high-performing reps still use psychology in communications during their calls, if only to establish that famed personal connection with the provider. When you want to expand to multichannel and then omnichannel approach, the last thing you want to lose is that connection. Besides, being aware of what moves this or that segment of physicians to favor the product over others helps create innovative content that performs. That’s why companies are starting to include psychological data into their segmentation models, providing a further dimension. Some CRM systems have fields configured for this data. Currently, not many marketers use them in commercial operations planning, though. The trick here is to define what psychological traits will be helpful outside the CRM and in the global world of omnichannel HCP engagement. That which lies on the surface — introversion/extraversion, Myers-Briggs types, empathy scales — is not very helpful per se. That is until you find combinations that serve to determine common psychological types. For example, you may notice that the more pragmatic, cost-aware physicians are also patient-centric in their values. They’re generally more open to communications with pharmaceuticals regardless of their introversion/extraversion score. Such psychological typing helps develop and generate fragments for rep-triggered email campaigns that reps could combine before sending to HCPs. The same logic can be extended to HCP targeting strategies that include other digital channels. These channels influence healthcare professionals’ choices (and the choice of key messages) and behavior when building omnichannel customer journeys. Emerging Data Layers and Discrepancies As pharmaceuticals are embracing ever more channels, management boards come across targeting principles and models that are traditional to those channels. Take email (mass mailing, not the rep-triggered email). This channel comes with a targeting pattern that includes browser/device use and even habits when the customers open the emails (impacting sending time). The web has targeting practices too involving geolocation and other things tracked with click maps and SEO-related research. Do these models have life in pharmaceuticals? No doubt. Do they have value outside the channels they were developed for? Sometimes. What is the issue to solve? Few people take time to put these multiple models together and filter out what criteria are relevant everywhere, regardless of the channel. Instead of a brand-centric segmentation pattern we covered earlier, multichannel brings about a channel-centric one. This needs to be broken, and this break is part of the transition to the omnichannel experience. Integrating data from different channel-specific platforms is the tech side of the question and is already being implemented at many companies across the market. The next stage is a shift towards a truly customer-centric mindset. New HCP Targeting Practices in Omnichannel Marketing What is the future of HCP targeting and segmentation? What practices are sustainable in an omnichannel model? Various organizations are working on their models, tactics, and methods, but here are some common findings that our expertise at Viseven confirms. Implementation Process Thankfully, there is no need to start from scratch. A good practice is to build upon what your business has aggregated throughout the years: the customer base, CRM data, pharma HCP insights identified by reps, email metrics, and questionnaires. As you add more channels, find out whether the targeting segmentation that seems evident contributes to the overall ROI of the omnichannel campaign, not its channel-bound part. Another essential thing to remember is that segmentation is an ongoing process rather than a once-and-for-all initial step. Omnichannel approach starts with a segmentation process not chronologically but logically. You harvest additional data in the course of an omnichannel campaign. In a recent study, we described a case when the HCPs’ reaction to an automated email resulted in them either moving to the next step, the management changing the key message, or changing the channel to a messenger. It is natural to use the data on a message or channel preferences obtained in this way to segment the audience further along the way, refining the approach. Common Mistake We have briefly alluded to it when talking about the approximation analogy. It’s crucial not to make segmentation a goal in itself — refining here is not about creating an array of categories that multiply to produce a host of additional small segments of a target. It’s the message that matters. One should start thinking about the message (or messages) they want to convey. It’s in connection with the messages you want to get through that you can define what insights are relevant for segmentation solutions. Integrate at Every Step Finally, the most important point is that there should be one governing segmentation pattern above any channel, even above the CRM. That’s what makes the omnichannel approach different from extended multichannel solutions. It’s all about HCPs with their needs and the value your brand brings, not the possibilities of a single channel, however efficient. It requires a common data pool across channels and integration of the corresponding platforms that underlies it. With a robust, integrated omnichannel architecture, you can not only put together the data from CRM, email, web, or social, but make decisions based on the extended picture of customers you have. Currently, only 15% of pharmaceutical companies believe their approach to HCP engagement is omnichannel. This figure is expected to change in the coming years. However, many pharmaceutical organizations continue to grapple with numerous challenges that make their transition to omnichannel marketing impossible, including budget constraints and limited resources. With experience in setting up omnichannel architectures and campaigns based on the customer’s existing infrastructure and behavior, our experts know how to make your current technical and data capacities work to their maximum. Our team will create a new successful omnichannel mindset which you can then extend and scale. If you want to get more practical and actionable information, professional advice, and technical expertise on building a segmentable and segmented omnichannel strategy, contact our experts or fill the form below.
Healthcare Content Marketing Essentials: Channels and Strategies Posted on July 12, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Content is king. You’ve probably heard these three words many times. But only a few know that it’s the title of Bill Gates’ essay published on the Microsoft website in 1996. Here’s a little excerpt from it: The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies plan to create content for the Internet. Now, it’s finally true for healthcare and life sciences. In digital marketing, medical content is experiencing groundbreaking changes. Having gotten through the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized the pivotal role of technology in human interaction and business engagement. The Clinician of the Future 2023 report made by Ipsos reflects these significant changes: 73% of respondents see it as favorable for doctors to possess digital expertise, while 71% hold the same view for nurses; 48% consider it desirable for physicians to incorporate AI into clinical decision-making; 55% of clinicians view telehealth as favorable for serving as the primary method for routine checkups in the next 2-3 years, whereas 28% regard it unfavorably. More patients consider themselves customers. More healthcare professionals (HCPs) naturally require the same customer-focused attitude, where face-to-face visits are only the tip of the iceberg. It means that one of the healthcare marketers’ top priorities is to reconsider how they create and provide their medical content. Content management in Pharma has become more than just looking for the target audience and publishing suitable content; it now encompasses a holistic approach that integrates collaboration, data security, compliance, and many other elements. If you regularly google the equivalent topics to become a medical content ninja, you’re in the right place. Regardless of your target audience — patients, doctors, pharmacists, or any other group of HCPs — this tutorial will help you: discover the channels that are most necessary in medical content marketing; learn the tips to get started with these channels; grasp the practices to optimize your content strategy in healthcare and make it successful. Prepare a cup of your favorite beverage, and let’s begin! Most Vital Channels for Medical Content Creation A customer-first paradigm has widened the boundaries of medical content, its creation, and its marketing. With that in mind, we highlighted the most vital channels for medical content marketers so far: Medical Websites; Medical Blogs; Landing Pages; mHealth Apps; SMS; Messaging Apps; Social Media; Email; Video. Let’s analyze every channel and see how you can use them within your content strategy. Optimize your medical website content A website is a primary channel for any non-commercial institution or business in healthcare and life sciences. Most of the website traffic comes from search engines. That’s why when you create medical website content, you should optimize it according to the search engine optimization (SEO) practice called on-page SEO or on-site SEO. Also, any specialist who creates medical content for websites should comply with three factors that affect the website quality: User experience (UX) is a set of practices applied to make websites more convenient to visit. In other words, UX is how people feel when engaging with a website and its content. Medical websites with better UX get more conversions; User interface (UI) is the way people interact with a website. The typical UI elements of a medical website are menus, fields, tabs, buttons, and beyond. This specific type of medical website content requires in-depth analysis and research before creating. The level of UX mostly depends on UI; Customer experience (CX) is an overall impression of customers over a business. In other words, CX is how a medical brand engages with its clients. Here’s where website content plays a crucial role, along with customer support. A medical website should have enough content resources to generate traffic and constantly increase it. There are three main types of medical website content resources you can use for that: Webinars. Generate leads by inviting professionals and non-experts to online events to discuss various topics and trends; Events. Tell how your team participates in offline healthcare events such as conferences and presentations; Blog. Post about your business and niche using multiple kinds of healthcare content. Become an authority with an SEO-friendly blog Blogging is the best way to grow a medical website organically. If you regularly fill a medical blog with organic healthcare content, you’ll get the most influential source for increasing your website audience. At a proper pace, website traffic will increase, leading to more readers and conversions. More conversions result in higher profit. Here’s how to produce relevant, captivating, and high-quality healthcare content for this channel: Master SEO techniques. Learn how search engines work to improve the content writing process and boost the positions of your medical content on search engine page results (SERPs). Start with search engine optimization basics such as crawling, indexing, ranking, keyword research, competitor analysis, and link building; Write on multiple topics. Divide your content into a few categories to make it varied and engaging. These categories can include short articles about news and updates in your company (its services and products), research-based long reads, infographics about industry trends, and beyond; Provide unique insights. Publish information that no one posted before to become an industry influencer. Google loves it when content writing on health has real value. It can be case studies about clinical research, articles that contain statistics, interviews with clients (or patients), and beyond; Post regularly. Create content plans and schedule articles every month. The more you post, the more traffic you can generate; Share content via social media and email. That’s how you’ll facilitate the growth of each channel; Be patient. Keep posting no matter what. Blogging brings benefits in the long run. Create landing pages to convert your leads A medical landing page is a single-page website where your leads land after you engage them with your medical content on any other marketing channel. The goal of a medical landing page is to convert a lead into a customer. A medical landing page content depends on its marketing objective. Must-have content elements for a medical landing page: A catchy headline that shows the value; A simple copy that evokes interest; An image that reflects the landing page goal; The lead form for filling the lead’s personal information; A call-to-action button for collecting the lead’s personal information. Develop a mobile app to increase the target audience As of 2024, the global smartphone user base is expected to reach 7.1 billion. In the United States alone, more than 90% of the population owns a smartphone. mHealth apps span various categories among the top five funded digital health sectors in 2023, with consumer demand steadily increasing. The mHealth market size is forecasted to reach $861.40 billion by 2030. Medical content development in mobile apps can increase the target audience of any institution or business that belongs to healthcare: Health apps can be helpful to users who want to improve their health conditions; Healthcare marketing apps can help marketers optimize their daily activities, such as task organization, team communication, customer engagement, results tracking, and beyond; Doctor apps can streamline the medical affairs of healthcare professionals of any kind. In such an app, doctors can store documentation, track patient visits, provide instructions, etc.; Patient apps can assist users in a clinic or hospital with health monitoring, medication reminders, and other features. Note: Viseven can develop a mobile health app of any type according to your requirements and needs. Use SMS as notifications Short Message Service or SMS is a traditional medical content channel used by HCPs to send: Critical information like health alerts or test results; Educational information like diet or pregnancy tips; Reminders about appointments or prescription refills; Feedback collection requests. SMS sending recommendations: Choose the best sending time; Send only the information that has value. Boost customer experience with messaging apps As a decent alternative to SMS, messengers or messaging apps are an effective medical content channel to generate high-quality leads and make customer communication more personal. Here are a few tips to help your company connect with customers in conversation: Develop live chat with a chatbot for your medical website. Boost customer experience and optimize the communication for visitors searching for simple answers for basic information; Enable live chat widgets on your medical website. Allow customers to chat via the platforms they like. For instance, you can add Messenger and WhatsApp chat widgets to your medical website; Test messaging ads. Launch targeted advertising campaigns as an alternative to social media ads. Targeting online ads via messengers can be a profitable opportunity to boost marketing results. For example, Messenger ads can have 61% higher message-per-reach than photo ads on Facebook. When creating content for your messaging ads: Keep a copy short; Use visuals that attract attention. When answering your customers in messaging apps, don’t forget to: Respond quickly to gain their trust; Keep the conversation personal and friendly. Boost social media to build stronger connections Social media is an extraordinary tool that allows medical marketers to re-establish relationships with their audiences using a variety of content formats on multiple platforms. Three factors determine any medical social media strategy: Social media platforms. Before creating medical content for social media, figure out which platforms are the most important for your clients (or patients); Content formats. You’ll need to find the formats to bring more likes and impressions to your accounts. It can be anything from a text publication with a visual to an audio podcast; The type of content. In addition to creating organic posts for free, you can use an advertising platform like Google Ads or Facebook Ads Manager to target different audiences with online ads based on particular advertising objectives. If you want to succeed in creating social media content for healthcare, always listen to the feedback you get in the form of comments and messages, use a positive tone of voice, and be simple and precise. Here are a few important content touchpoints: Inform. Tell the news, schedule events, and do everything for everyone to stay up to date; Educate. Provide professional tips on the topics related to your healthcare niche; Inspire. Share reviews of satisfied clients (or patients), write human behind-the-scenes stories about your business and beyond; Support. Answer people who contact your profiles directly. Have a plan for medical content sent via email Email has always been a tried-and-tested channel in the medical world. However, the laws that worked a few years back have no power anymore. Even die-hard marketing professionals should accept that the email creation process in healthcare has become more consumer-centric. If you’re a rookie in sending such emails, here are a few basic practices to get started: Learn email marketing metrics. They’ll help you measure the success of your email campaigns. The primary metrics are open rate, click rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, spam score, return on investment (ROI), customer lifetime value (CLV), and cost per acquisition (CPA); Choose an email marketing platform. That’s the place where you’ll create and optimize your email campaigns; Segment your audience. It’s the first practice you should exercise once you choose your platform and set your goals. Email segmentation is necessary to send more relevant information and more specific offers; Experiment all the time. This practice is called A/B testing. Test different audiences and content to improve your results. A newsletter is the backbone of the medical content you send via email. Before sending your newsletter, you must have a comprehensive content plan that should conform to three things: Content. Plan the content to send valuable and attractive offers. The main thing here is to learn how to balance information and benefits in your content marketing for healthcare; Time. Choose the best days of the week and time of the day to send your medical content. If you don’t know when to do it, A/B test it; Frequency. Experiment with your emails to know the number of sending days. When creating your medical email, take into account the following: Subject line. Keep it relevant, engaging, straightforward, and short; Preheader. Find the golden middle between its length and the information you need to send; Body text. Pick ready-made email templates from your platform. To get better results, test different templates to find the best option. Shoot videos with best solutions for content (for medical video) Video marketing is one of the most powerful methods to promote healthcare products and services. It’s a perfect alternative to television which has been a traditional patient engagement channel for years. According to HubSpot: 86% of businesses use videos as a marketing tool; 92% of marketers claim videos are an essential part of their strategy. Unless you want to launch advertising campaigns, video is a must-use healthcare marketing practice because it doesn’t require a budget. All you need is a smartphone with a last-generation camera and imagination. It’s okay to focus on several platforms, considering the information above. It depends on your goals, the time you’re ready to spend, and your brand voice. Here’s how content practices on the major platforms differ from each other: YouTube — longer content that reveals the subject with lots of facts and details; Instagram — Stories adorned with text and stickers or tiktokish Reels; TikTok — concise, amusing videos. Here are a few golden rules you need to know before getting started: Viewers got used to watching tons of content every day. Lure their attention within three seconds; Viewers love storytelling. Create stories, not promotions; Test live streaming as an alternative to short and longer videos; Watch the content of your competitors and other creators to get more expertise. Watch a lot. How to Optimize a Medical Content Strategy Medical content can have an immense impact when created and targeted right. But here’s the question. What is medical content writing, designing, and targeting in its essence? It’s a lot of conscious efforts and hard work because marketers must simultaneously engage with multiple channels and hundreds and even thousands of customers. However, two advanced techniques can significantly simplify everything. Build an omnichannel environment Omnichannel marketing is a set of activities that provide customers with a personalized experience by integrating all online and non-digital channels into a single environment. It allows companies to use medical content and fulfill their objectives more effectively thanks to the ability to: Find out what content channels customers use and plan their journey in advance; Segment customers into multiple target groups; Tailor personalized information to customers at the right time and with no spam; Build consistent communication and strong connections with customers Automate omnichannel activities with the help of a single marketing platform. Master modular content creation The modular approach is a marketing practice that streamlines omnichannel pharmaceutical content creation by breaking down content into the tiniest possible semantic pieces called modules. A content creator can reuse, interchange, and customize modules across multiple channels and target audiences, which allows: Reduce content production period; Cut production costs and allocate smaller pharma content marketing budgets; Come up with large-scale personalized segmentation strategies; Accelerate the Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) review process for pharma content; Dedicate more time to other advertising affairs. Monitor the performance of your content Track how well your medical content performs. How can a marketer always ensure your audience genuinely enjoys your content? First, define the metrics you will track, such as conversions or tracking. Then, choose the tools suitable for the type of content you work with. You can also use various other methods to gather information about the performance of your content, such as polls, surveys, reviews, and more. Keep up with industry trends Every month, at least one trend arrives that everyone will be talking about. So, make the most of current trends to attract more customers and engage with your audience. From personalized medicine to artificial intelligence, a myriad of topics creates tons of discussions all over the internet, and it’s worth adding them to your content marketing ideas for healthcare. Reach out to the community According to The State of Influencer Marketing 2024, 85% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Collaborate with experts in the field as much as possible. From writing blog posts in tandem to conducting interviews, collaborating with influencers and experts can significantly boost engagement and enhance your content’s credibility. By partnering with healthcare bloggers and professionals, you can also increase reach thanks to content creators’ large number of followers. End-to-End Pharma Content Management Solution If you want to use omnichannel and modular approaches to accomplish your goals with medical content. In that case, Viseven can develop a custom end-to-end healthcare content management system based on your strategy. Send us an email or a message via a contact form to get a full consultation, and we’ll get back to you shortly. Also, you’re welcome to test eWizard — our content experience platform where you can create modular medical content for multiple channels. Want to learn more about medical content and pharmaceutical content management? Fill out the form below to get a consultation!
7 Ways to Boost Medical Reps Productivity & Maximize Sales Force Effectiveness Posted on June 14, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Once there’s an inquiry about improving pharmaceutical sales representatives’ performance, there’s a need to ask a simple question: “What does it mean to be a pharmaceutical representative? What is exactly a pharma rep’s responsibility zone?”. Looking for the answer, you may find that the key role of a pharma representative is to deliver the pharma company’s ideas and messages to the health care reps in a most efficient, understandable, and intelligible way. So, the best way to help pharma reps improve their service is to provide all necessary information, equipment, and opportunities to improve strategies relating to health care professionals. Let’s explore relevant ways to boost pharma sales performance. Who Is a Pharma Representative and How to Become a Pharmaceutical Rep? The pharmaceutical sector stands as one of the most significant assets in many regions worldwide, rendering it among the most promising industries to pursue a career in. And while there are many great opportunities for scientists and doctors, one role truly stands out: a pharmaceutical representative. A pharmaceutical representative, or ‘pharma rep,’ markets pharmaceutical products to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and educates them about new medicines. Typically employed by drug companies and manufacturers, their main goal is to build long-term relationships with HCPs, serving as a key source of information about new medications available in the market. Obtaining a degree related to this job is a crucial initial step toward becoming a professional pharmaceutical representative. The degree can be in any pharmaceutical-related field, such as chemistry or biology. However, earning a degree is just the beginning; there are several additional steps necessary to pursue a career as a pharmaceutical representative: Getting a certification. Many certifications provide learners with the knowledge and skills of a professional pharmaceutical representative, including information about laws, regulations, and standards. Certification is usually not required to get employed, but it will help your resume outshine your competition; Expanding a network. Attending events in the pharmaceutical industry, connecting with experts on social media, and making your account public are good ways to become acquainted with other professionals in the field and discover potential job opportunities; Acquiring the necessary skills. A professional pharmaceutical representative understands how to present to the public and swiftly build relationships effectively. This doesn’t necessarily require being extremely extroverted, but it does entail being adept at engaging with different types of audiences. The role of a pharmaceutical representative is an ideal career path for individuals intrigued by sales and eager to have a job in the pharmaceutical domain. By honing such skills as salesmanship and effective communication and gaining as much field experience as possible, individuals who aspire to excel as pharmaceutical representatives can quickly become the experts in the field. How to Increase Sales in a Pharma Company in 7 Steps? Now, it is time to delve into specific strategies to take Medical Reps’ effectiveness to another level. Start With a Customer-Focused Pharmaceutical Sales Strategy The professional market situation is the driving force behind business as well as industry communication. So, in order to not spend countless hours trying to reach the doctor, pharmaceutical sales rep needs to shift focus toward the consumer model. That said, sales reps utilizing the latest methods of extended interactions between customers in order to see success come their way tend to be on par with their strategy to reach HC providers. One should not underestimate the power of free individualized interaction between pharmaceutical companies, providers and patients. So, there is a need for companies to make structural changes and research new driven approaches to the customers. Integration of technology resources and insights can be of great help in many ways for a sales representative to turn to the patient-oriented system, to reach the target audience at any time, and deliver required information. In addition, it influences the knowledge building process. Not to mention the prolonged, continuing relationships with customers. Equip Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives The level of tech equipment shows the level of preparedness for companies in the industry. When the medical rep is standing at the doctors’ door, ready to knock and start the communication process, they should feel prepared in the way of presenting information and receiving feedback from providers. There’s no need to overload salespeople with tech stuff for every possible moment of life. However, providing a useful CRM solution and presentation platform is an absolute must-have. CRM allows gathering HCP’s data more effectively, whether it is contact information, job description or specific feedback on a product currently on the market. The high-quality CRM solution should be able to provide med reps with a number of relevant communication opportunities, from making calls via VoIP to scheduling emails and messages. All of it makes the communication between med reps and HCPs more effective and efficient at any time and place of choosing. The smart presentation platform is also a necessary part of the communication technology stack for medical sales representatives. The eWizard platform is the best solution that allows both to manage presentations and show them remotely. Prep Pharmaceutical Representatives Your content database contains many different materials for doctors: interactive presentations, learning platforms, web conferences, training, and many more. It works great for HCP involvement and education, so it should also be available for medical pharma reps. You can provide reps with these materials daily as an educational measure to increase their knowledge by making surveys, videos, presentations, and more. As well as the company’s materials education, you should provide them with the latest information about the pharmaceutical industry and sale tactics. It is urgently important for the medical rep who has not more than 3 minutes with the health care provider but must bring some results afterward. The main idea of improving your representative’s involvement level is never to let them say: “let me check this for you. I’ll get back”. Motivate Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Like any other sales representative, medical representativess highly depend on motivation and feedback. A representative’s work consists of many hours spent gathering information and trying to deliver it in the short term to someone who barely wants to listen. A typical sales representative nightmare looks like this: a lot of time and attention spent on something without getting any positive result. Unfortunately, this is not unusual and may lead to employee burnout, which is unacceptable for everyone. Remember that your med reps’ team is a tool for delivering your message to the audience of the pharma industry. You may want to keep this team as healthier as possible: create a motivational ladder, give promotions, share your business plans, and look for a way to inspire every member. An inspired and motivated employee will look for solutions on his own. Raise Awareness Among Pharmaceutical Sales Reps As everyone has access to the internet — and, accordingly, the ability to self-develop — nowadays, HCPs are no exception when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, it’s critically important to gather intelligent data about HCP’s digital activities, responses, and feedback and provide your sales team with it. It works great even for strategic purposes — tracking med reps’ efforts in the chosen region (for example, by geographical criteria) might be made in a few clicks by just opening the correct sales data. Each team, department, and person in the company should clearly understand their responsibilities, tasks, and how they are expected to perform them. Driving more alignment, agility, and productivity into the team conducts ongoing changes and meets the pharma market’s conditions. Let Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Be Brave Another serious motivational factor is the ability to hear ‘no’ and keep going to the next HCP’s door. Accepting failure is extremely important for every medical representative; no matter how experienced they are, they will always have a deal with the client’s denial. Missing a good potential sale leads to frustration which accumulates and, in turn, leads to burnout — this is a traditional way for any pharmaceutical sales rep to quit their job. So, make your team learn from their failures and how to overcome them. The truth is the more you fail and learn from it, the better salesperson you become. Spend time to each your sales representatives to find a lesson in every rejection, so their delivery flow can be flexible and personalized for any difficult circumstances their customers have. Keep in mind that flexibility goes a long way, too many penalties for not making a plan, your employee will mostly think about how not to be fined instead of looking for effectiveness. Keep The Sales Representatives Motivated Great piece of motivation is always inspiring for every person. Try to motivate them in all possible way. There is no better thing, that the belief of team leader in colleagues. A good manager should be able to motivate people to work and be sure of future results. Colleagues are peers and the whole company – a community, a family. Turn everyday work in enjoying process. Indeed, if to inspire employees to see real future goals and results, they will, undoubtedly, work harder, paying attention to every detail. Takeaways As you can see, there are many ways to influence your medical representative’s sales process, make it more profitable and increase pharmaceutical sales force effectiveness. In a nutshell, the best you can do for your team is to try to walk in their shoes and see this sales process from their perspective. This way, you can learn more about what they need, discover more about the inner world of pharmaceutical marketing and get new ideas to increase pharmacy sales. Does it sound good enough to try? Please fill out the form below to contact us and learn about our approaches that will help you be a champion in healthcare engagement and bring your pharma sales force effectiveness to a new orbit.
How to Solve MLR Hurdles with a Modular Approach Posted on May 4, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin As the unstoppable technological progress flow changes the focus of our daily lives, it also introduces a fresh approach to the field of digital interactions. It becomes quite a challenge for life sciences organizations to keep up with modern marketing trends, especially concerning the highly regulated and compliant pharma and life sciences industries. If you are familiar with anything that is described as MLR review, you probably already know what it means. This acronym represents “medical legal and regulators review” — a process used in which life sciences companies ensure the compliance of their marketing and promotion materials with internal and external regulations and guidelines. Your business can use another name such as MMLR review or MRC review. What is Modular Content? A typical pharmaceutical company spends a massive amount of time and money creating an efficient marketing workflow that needs to go through the medical and legal regulatory review process to get approval later. This approval is the bottleneck moment in the marketing production process. If the medical, legal, and regulatory representative finds the marketing materials accurate, you’re a winner. In any other case, they send your great content back, and you spend more time and money editing the information provided. Essentially, the back and forth complex aspects of this feedback are the worst scenario for marketing content management with strict deadlines and a personal nightmare for content creative teams. This is where the modular content idea comes into play for pharma and life sciences companies and medical legal review MLR for short. The name should speak for itself: basically, a modular content strategy is built around a block of content that describes different data. Although it sounds simple in terms of marketing operations, this solution allows easy access for the medical legal regulatory review. It directly impacts the compliance and review processes. The modular content approach helps management spend less time and effort on content creation, not to mention the savings for the organization. In this article, we will discover what modular content is and how it helps to solve typical MLR hurdles for marketing content management. If you know anything described as an MLR review, you probably already know it. This acronym represents “medical legal regulatory review” — the MLR process in which life sciences companies ensure the compliance of their marketing and promotion materials with internal and external regulations and brand guidelines. MLR reviews are sometimes called MMLR review or MRC review – your business may use either one to describe regulatory compliance. The solution to the MLR review process Content creation takes a lot of time and money, and marketing teams spend a lot of resources trying to find an idea and make it attractive as well as sales-worthy for healthcare providers and the life sciences industry as a whole. When this highly creative and useful content gets cut or even declined by the MLR reviewers, it becomes a major pain for the entire marketing department or even the company. This pain is associated with hindering many processes in the organization, impacting the marketing production process, missing deadlines, work-overs, limiting efficient marketing workflow, and more budget spending. MLR review solutions can be unpredictable, so the modular content was created as a fresh approach to overcome typical MLR process hurdles. This approach makes the life of both MLR review team and content management creative teams – easier. A module is a stand-alone piece of digital content that consists of the main claim and supporting text or media. The easy-to-use blocks separate the content inside the module. These blocks can be predefined and organized according to the main content requirements and used in various forms, from SMM content and emails to interactive presentations like an eDetailer. Among the many advantages of the modules is the possibility of quick MLR reviews approval. Life Sciences Companies’ Problems Solved Time A large amount of original and creative marketing content management takes time to be created and thus approved. It can take up to a few weeks for MLR reviews and its representatives to check the compliance and approve every page or piece of your training materials or guidebooks. Suppose, for some reason, the medical legal and regulatory approvers declined a significant amount of content. In that case, you need to launch the production cycle once again: content needs to be reworked following the medical legal regulatory review solution and applied to the MLR review for approval once again. If everything is fine this time, you get your smooth process ready to go. Otherwise…welcome to yet another round. So, a module is a great solution to eliminate the many complex aspects — it needs to be approved to fit compliance and regulations only once. When it comes to creation, it won’t take time to use prepared assets and templates. Your organization needs to align it with the regulatory policy and send it for review. Once approved, such a module is automatically highlighted for medical legal regulatory compliance representatives, reducing the risk of MLR decline and starting rapid process innovation for life sciences and healthcare professionals. Workload fatigue Workload fatigue is simply a human factor in content management. When you begin to research and write a large amount of information, your eyes may get clouded with words and digits, and anyone in the organization can make an unconscious mistake. This is an unfortunate part of the process for both MLR and content makers: when the marketing team spends weeks creating something useful and original, an exhausted copywriter or designer makes one mistake that entirely spoils and wastes these work hours. Another example: a stressed and overloaded with tons of work regulatory compliance representative declines some presentations because of some small things they found incorrect. Both cases aren’t pretty for management in the face of processes like missing deadlines and budgets. The good thing is that module is built on expertise and templates. Template structure makes it easy to create and edit. Also, it uses only pre-approved information for medical regulators, so there’s no need for additional research or a second check once the module is approved. Such simplicity reduces the possibility of decline because of incorrect information or human error; accordingly, it makes the regulatory compliance i.e., MLR process, faster. Global to local scaling The pharmaceutical business is something that can be scaled up and down. Whether your company works globally or locally, each market has its own medical legal regulatory specifics in different territories. So, every time the management needs to reposition your product in a different country or state, you must change your marketing strategy to follow the local specifics and compliance requirements. It can become a real struggle for the management and content team to re-target the materials for a new market and apply them to MLR review as the content needs to be compliant. Again, the structure of modular content is flexible when it comes to changes. The blocks, templates, and informational fields drive rapid process innovation and can be easily replaced with the required ones while still be in compliance with MLR standards because of the pre-approved and localized content. Different HCP fields It may happen to promote one product in different HCP fields. For example, if you are going to promote the same treatment for different medical fields like endocrinology and gastroenterology, the MLR process will be applied for both directions separately. It requires additional expenses for the management on content creation and doubles the risk of being rejected by MLR in pharma, as each medical field has its requirements. At this point, the module also can be adapted accordingly to the specific case. To avoid many regulatory affairs, you can create a separate module template personalized for different cases and pre-approve it accordingly. Outcome As you can see, the modular content is quite a solid solution to the most common problems related to the MLR review process. The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, and thus, the medical legal regulatory process is very demanding for a business presentation, marketing, and promotional materials. Such circumstances make it difficult to develop high-quality content, adapt it to different MLR requirements, and avoid losing time and money. This is where modular content changes the situation. It is flexible, smart, and easy to develop for every case. The simplicity and interchangeability of data inside the module is the core idea that makes modular content a good communication tool that makes the medical legal regulatory review process easy and predictable. Pre-approve content modules for further reuse. Make the MLR approval process predictable — fill out the form below to get personal expertise!
Pharma Content Localization: Best Tactics Posted on April 22, 2022March 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Global pharma companies seem to be in a position of advantage when it comes to entering emerging markets (now also dubbed “pharmerging countries”). Why, with bigger R&D possibilities, more advanced digital maturity stages and communication strategies, it seems fulfilling the mission of drug accessibility is as easy as pushing a button at the corporate HQ. At the same time, there are nuances to observe besides translating global content into target language – and at many organizations, the current processes of localizing content simply don’t allow to plug in the additional expertise. This leads to inefficiencies along the way, from internal constraints at local level to inexplicably lower-than-projected ROI. Here, we analyze the benefits of a well-thought content localization strategy – and localization management tools that can help. Global companies, local markets Spending on medicines is growing unequally across the world. According to prognoses, the US share will increase from $485 bln in 2018 to $625 bln by 2023, while the pharmerging countries are expected to spend up to $385 bln, rising from the 2018 baseline of 286 – growing by almost 1/3. Now, these are pre-COVID estimates, but the pandemic has not removed the underlying factors (such as aging populations and consumer awareness) to a considerable extent everywhere. Some more recent research has found the emerging markets will yield CAGR of 10.4% in the half-decade from 2021-26. At the same time, while COVID has not disrupted this growth, it has changed things a lot when it comes to actually penetrating these markets. Traditionally, the use of conventional (but costly) channels of communication like medical reps, has been low in many regions, or field force were insufficiently furnished with visual and other promotional aids. The push toward digital that occurred in Q2-Q3 2020 has given the potential to level the capacities here. Granted, global companies still have the advantage of more mature omnichannel engagement strategies – but simply importing them along with content would be a major mistake. Regional specifics are crucial to make these subtle customer journeys work properly. Meanwhile, the established local markets are growing, too (somewhere in the middle by CAGR), but also much more saturated both with products and communication. Treating these like secondary to global markets by underlocalizing the communications is becoming unacceptable. What is this ‘underlocalizing’, then? Localizing content vs. Localizing strategies While agencies collaborating with pharma have long emphasized that localization does not equal translation, adding the extra parts (like content transcreation, more sophisticated local campaigns) has been reserved to the more conscientious marketers within pharmas themselves. In many cases, operationally, “localization” was a term only applied to content – and content translation, while local affiliates were either copying the global directives, or ignoring the best practices from HQ to go on doing things in the way it had always worked on the spot. Ideally, though, there is a difference between localizing content – and localizing entire strategies. In a particular country, content types and even entire channels preferred may differ from what is expected at HQ, socially acceptable touchpoint frequency may vary from culture to culture, etc. What’s more, even when there is understanding of these two “localizations”, the strategic one invariably influences the content localized. Failing to establish a firm link between them results in squandering opportunities. This is the case of a company localizing wrong content, or a really energetic local manager with a genius strategy being bound to use only partly suitable (but shiny) materials. Establishing this link requires understanding of what content there is already plus the local specifics. In some cases, this leads decision makers to establish local content hubs (or appoint special local liaisons at their Content Factories). Localization besides translation No matter how proficient a translator is, there are things they simply cannot do with words to provide the native look and feel. Someone will have to dive into design and code to fully adapt these. So, what exactly is it that requires content to be transcreated, and not just translated? Visuals. This umbrella term encompasses a lot of factors: what is the visual to text ratio that the customers are comfortable with? What are the preferred data visualization types? For example, while most countries accept the traditional pie charts, graphs, bar charts, etc., the more recent infographic designs are not universally considered aesthetic. Also, do the visuals correspond to the local realities? This has been a pitfall for some AVOD advertisers in Latin America, where 70% users feel underrepresented in the content. Psychology. This includes things like casual attention span (the amount of time a person is willing to dedicate to information before deciding whether to get invested in it). Further down the list are common attention or reaction triggers, as well as perceptions of tone of voice. Some cases are really like an extension of the linguistic T/V phenomenon (like tú vs. Usted in Spanish). This atmosphere of (in)formality exists even beyond words, when HCPs sometimes consider the tone of voice unacceptable or slightly off. Objective regional specifics. Epidemiology of the target condition(s), dominant patient profiles, official guidelines and which are recognized more, affordability, insurance policies – all of these impact the phrasing and choice of key messages. If some material layout proudly presents a box with text saying, “recommended by [association]”, and you have to remove it, what will go there? Coding it all. Supposing you have found the necessary expertise to truly localize the content in all details, who is going to work with all the code? This is the place where the “give-it-to-an-agency-once” model may prove inefficient, because the coders and project managers will perform better when immersed in the context. Additionally, for some content types, it is better to code (and test) with the dominant target platform and device in mind. Making content localization more efficient All of this influences the efficiency of any localization strategy. Needless to say, no matter how developed a strategy can be in the marketer’s mind, the end implementation ultimately can be thwarted by something as simple as ineffective workflows and blown budgets. But how exactly to fix the issue? In practice, whenever Viseven experts are approaching the global content localization solution issue (be it within a Digital Content Factory project or an omnichannel campaign scaled to multiple countries), there are two efficiency factors: internal and external. In the basic ROI equation, you can increase the return by either reducing the initial investment or making sure the net return figure is higher. The “internal” factor is the bottom of the equation, the initial allocation of costs, time, effort (we’re being multidimensional here). You can reduce this by eliminating the “waste” byproducts and processes in something like a Lean approach. This means providing more convenient virtual workplace, establishing better workflows, and so on. On the other hand, the “external” factor in localization efficiency addresses the net return – that is, how much this localized strategy or content yields in the field. To raise this figure, one needs to go beyond localizing content to localizing strategy and tactics (that is why we talked about it earlier), as well as account for local realities. So what would the recommended to-do list look like? Actionable steps Provide convenient UX for translators. Even in cases where localization does equal translating things, there are plenty of nuances that only translators know about. For example, it is often necessary to see where a string of text fits into the visual layout provided by the creative. On the other hand, simply commenting on a PDF file is also inconvenient, especially if the PDF is of a pharmaceutical eDetailing presentation loaded with small print and subscript/superscript figures. When a translator is working, their speed is limited by small distractions like having to format the text or checking the contextual placement. Even when each individual moment of such actions only takes up 2-3 seconds, they add up to much more in the process. This is why we enabled several localization modes in our eWizard content authoring platform to provide a convenient interface. Provide a content authoring platform to implement visual changes. For changes besides translation, the visual design component is important. Even when it’s simply the question of removing a text box or changing the amount of text, such alterations impact the layout. When such changes accumulate (and they do once you want to localize in earnest), giving each and every one of such edits to a developer team as a separate request is no longer feasible. Implementing a low code/no-code content editing platform allows to be flexible on this sort of issues and minimize the investment in paid time and effort. Provide possibility for fast pre-MLR review by local experts (and streamline collaboration between them and project management). There are things that MLR review turns into edits, but which could possibly be nipped in the bud if only someone had a look before submitting the material. Informally, many specialists already do address their colleagues in the know before passing assets to MLR: “hey there, what do you think of it.” This spares time, as the correction loop before MLR is often shorter than after it. Making this practice the norm, and facilitating it with proper tools can help reduce localization time and effort. We even integrated a functionality for pre-MLR review into eWizard platform with interactive preview and commenting mode, notifications, and so on. Provide a platform for content reuse (not to code or recode from scratch) + single standard and access to well-arranged DAM. This is a practice that allows to address both internal and external efficiency factors. Content reuse approaches (from block-based to modular) allow not only to save costs and time on development itself, but also to cover a larger amount of smaller segments with personalized messaging. Instead of a presentation or two plus an email or two, you can enter a local market with a truly personalized campaign (or at least a personalizable one), where you recombine pre-approved modules to deliver messages the way it’s already being envisioned in global offices across companies. Organizationally, to enable this, you need a platform to work with modules, a DAM system that supports them (Veeva Vault PromoMats), integration between the two, and expertise in onboarding the local markets to work in this paradigm. Conclusions At the first glance, ensuring proper localization at all stages may seem a daunting task – but ensuring efficiency with several pinpointed tactics will result in less troubles than continuing to work in the conventional ways. To make this transformation as easy as possible, we at Viseven have supplied the necessary functionalities inside eWizard content authoring platform. This allows us to provide localization services for our customers much more efficiently than before – and also helps many companies to streamline localization themselves. Learn more about how this works and book a free demo, where you can also ask our expert about other available options to facilitate localization. Fill out the form below to request a consultation from Viseven’s expert!
Digital Transformation in Pharma: Barriers and Impact Posted on February 22, 2022February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Over time, pharma gets under fire due to its excessive talks about ‘digital transformation.’ It needs to be clarified what these words refer to and whether these grandiloquent statements work for actual doctors and patients. How many healthcare professionals and patients have yet to see the impact of digital technologies in the healthcare industry? Has it already improved pharma’s daily operations? Let’s figure out where the pharma sector is on the road to the digital age, how this process is changing how they do business, and how it affects the HCPs and patient engagement. What is Digital Transformation for Pharma companies? “Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the minds of every CEO I talk to.” Marc Benioff, Chairman, and Co-CEO, Salesforce. Digital Technology in the pharmaceutical industry pushes us to change, poses challenges we don’t want to take, and makes us move forward. These changes may be dramatic. But when life wants us to grow, it makes us change to remain competitive. The problem is that digital technologies are changing faster than we are, leaving us with no choice but to keep pace. When we speak of digital transformation reshaping, we mean the natural evolution of existing processes with new technologies, introducing patterns and strategies that enhance customer experience, and building a genuine dialogue with the customer. In the pharmaceutical sector, this process was launched three years ago, when the pandemic, without much readiness, forced life sciences to increase their digital innovation culture drastically or, in particular cases, grow it from scratch. Looking back, we may go through all cliches of that period, but the digital shift declared a standard of communication with customers. Digital Transformation Barriers: where are we? Where are we now on the road to digital success? Despite being spurred by the pandemic, the digitalization process runs slowly. In terms of pharma digitalization, there are still many regions on the map where companies’ digital development level is consistently low. This map shows how pharmaceutical companies assess their readiness to become digital organizations. According to this map, the digitalization process among countries remains uneven. This is primarily associated with the poor scalability of implemented solutions among the regions and resilience to changes. Now, 1/3 of pharmaceutical companies believe they need to be better resourced for digital engagement. The other 40% report a need for more talent and the right technology for transformation. It’s important to understand that each industry has its own specifics and digitalization in pharma won’t be as smooth as anywhere else. However, this process highlights the areas where the mindset change should happen and what soft spots digital business processes transformation is designed to cover. How does Digital Transformation reshape the Pharma industry? Digital innovation in the pharma sector can help companies perform better by increasing productivity and reducing costs through collaboration, digital technology centralization to optimize delivery, and empowering a company or department. supply chain A global pharmaceutical company is experimenting with VR in its manufacturing operations. Managers can cut training time in half by creating virtual training programs that render production environments and speed up the path to excellence. streamline processes and marketing efforts Another biopharmaceutical company reduced its marketing spending by 20% by building a global system. The move followed a duplication analysis, in which the company found that up to 60% of localized asset-creation activities were duplicative. The company now has a centralized content center to deliver standardized marketing materials in flexible formats to more than 40 local markets. acquiring talent more efficiently The medical company double-checked the licenses of applicants for a nursing license during the interview. This included visiting the verification website, taking a snapshot of the applicant’s license, and storing the information in the applicant’s file. The HR bot was able to automate 80% of the process. Robotic process automation resulted in a 65% reduction in labor costs and a reduced risk of errors. This freed up the equivalent of one full-time job, allowing employees to focus on more critical activities. Disruptive Technologies and Market Dynamics Digital technologies can help companies deliver a competitive, digitally enabled, engaging, impactful experience to customers, the workforce, and ecosystem external partners. Key disruptive technologies include using digital tools to engage patients and other stakeholders remotely, involving social and other community networks, and personalizing experiences with user data to deliver excellent value. Creating a platform for customer experience.The Patient Service and Care Management Platform delivers consistent patient experiences across all channels and enables treatment adherence and care coordination with an entire network of healthcare providers for each patient. Through connected apps and devices, it supports digital therapy, helps improve patient outcomes, and helps health professionals coordinate patient care management. The platform analyzes internal and external data to gain insight into patient care and interactions and can integrate with the platform to analyze real-world data. Connecting patients, biopharma, caregivers, health care providers, and other stakeholders. The platform helps biopharma companies build partnerships with advocacy groups and providers to enhance patients’ experience with complex, chronic, and terminal diseases. It supports a next-generation digital healthcare network focused on patient support and digital engagement. Patients who consent to share their data receive information and updates from the sponsoring organization (typically biopharma companies and patient advocacy groups) to help navigate their disease. Optimizing the content provided to health care practitioners. A large global biopharmaceutical company has created a self-service portal for more than 30,000 practitioners across Europe to access digital marketing and sales materials in various media. The content shared with each practitioner differs based on previous browsing habits, allowing for custom targeting and enhancing the effectiveness of the marketing approach. Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma Transformation Over the past few years, the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma industry and Life Sciences has become a trending topic. Many pharmaceutical companies are progressively implementing more efficient automated processes that include data-driven decisions and use predictive advanced analytics tools. The next step of this advanced data analytics approach will consist of artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Some of the ways AI is being applied in the pharmaceutical sector today include the following: Manufacturing process improvement Drug development Processing biomedical and clinical data Rare diseases and personalized medicine Identifying clinical trial candidates Predictive forecasting Drug adherence and dosage From early-stage drug discovery to prescribing options, the use of Artificial Intelligence is growing steadily within the pharma industry, with an estimated market volume reaching $10 billions by 2024 (including diagnostics, AI-based medical imaging, personal AI assistants, genomics, and drug discovery). Can we hold the digital transformations back? Remember your life before the pandemic; now, it seems like a dream to you, right? Like no other, these two years greatly impacted our lives, habits, and priorities. In 2019, marketers expected a quick end to the pandemic and a return to routine communication with customers. After three years, again like a dream, the pandemic is slowly receding (at minor restrictions). It begs the question: do we need to digitalize further? And will this process be slowed down now? No. Because the digital shift catalyzed some fundamental changes. Pharma marketing has always been a complicated environment characterized by complex relationships with its target audience. However, the shift towards digital innovation in pharma has exposed many problems that previously needed to be tracked. Searching through the old reports is like getting into a time machine that can take us back to changes that have taken place. The retrospective looks as follows: In 2019, 77% of pharma companies reported issues with content localization/translation. Only 28% could repurpose their content with a little manual effort. Back then, 62% say their organization has yet to make plans for using AI-driven content technologies. The most significant impact of digital technology in the pharmaceutical industry was on HCP engagement. Before COVID-19, 64% of meetings with pharma sales reps were held in person. During the pandemic, this shifted to 65% of meetings being held virtually. The old patters revolve primarily around internal content production issues in the pharmaceutical industry and don’t consider the main factor – HCP’s experiences. Today, searching for personalized experiences for the customer is the cornerstone of all companies that want to withstand competition in the market and have a serious competitive advantage. In the end, we should remember that technology exists to make our life easier. In life sciences, the ultimate goal of Digital Transformation is to introduce new technologies that will allow space and time for more strategic decisions on customers. These technologies should solve the long-standing issues of MLR optimization, content and taxonomy management, and multivendor environment support. Transformation in the Pharmaceutical sector: what it refers to Pharma often speaks clichés, but most critics are associated with a lack of clarification of what it refers to. The pandemic exposed many problems in pharma that, in the new era of communication, cannot remain unresolved. We’ve tried to highlight them all for you to see that Digital Transformation usually touches people, processes, tools, and content, areas where innovations are needed to simplify the internal processes that often hinder the natural evolution of companies toward strategic marketing. Why do we need it? In communicating with our customers, we should remember that the biggest shift occurred in patients’ mindsets. Not speaking their language, we can compare our audience to distant stars we try to reach in the dark. The main driver of prescriptions in the pharma industry is loyalty. The main factor that affects loyalty is the message your brand translates. Feel free to learn about it by checking our pharma digital transformation case study. Companies that help with pharma digital transformation Such professional services companies as Mckinsey, Vaimo, and Viseven are driving Digital Transformation by offering an end-to-end content operating model that is aligned with strategy, and ready for scale and innovation adoption. Viseven combines technology and marketing expertise mastering the entire chain of enablers to deliver a best-in-class digital experience. Contact us to learn more about how we enable digital transformation for pharma businesses of all sizes and maturity levels.
