The way your brand is presented matters. It’s crucial for pharma and life sciences to build new connective “tissues” between their brand and the audience. This new stage requires from pharma not just delivering their brand stories but making them valuable – if pharma ambassadors want to be “value providers” (not just product promoters, or data deliverers). When it comes to a more in-depth definition of this new approach, the quantity of the content matters less, while quality ultimately goes first.
The multichannel way of thinking in pharma content marketing is consistently spreading: promotional messages become channelless; they are tied, thoroughly mixed, and ready to provide relevant information to healthcare professionals (or other audience) in the moment of search. That’s the new promise of multichannel, and, consequently, the new promise of pharma content marketing: creating and distributing relevant content with consistent messages across channels to attract the target audience and earn its loyalty. In a nutshell, there are two alternatives for pharma marketing leaders how to meet an ever-increasing demand from tech-savvy consumers: to care about the content only or to care about the customer first. In our guide, we will tell you more about content marketing production, explain what any given marketing strategy of pharmaceutical companies is, and share some pharmaceutical marketing tips with you.
What is a Pharma Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy for pharmaceutical products is a detailed plan for reaching the company’s target audience and converting it into its customers. A pharma marketing strategy is about understanding who might be interested in your services and what might motivate them to choose your company as a service provider. Effective marketing strategies in the pharmaceutical industry should include the following elements:
Market analysis;
Company vision;
Assessment of the company’s target audience;
Branding & messaging;
Risk evaluation.
The chosen pharma go-to market strategy must not only help your team determine the target audience but also be aligned with the overall company’s goals and objectives. The development of strategies for pharma marketing requires a lot of time and effort, and it involves high-level planning of all the necessary steps in order to achieve the desired results. An effective digital marketing strategy for pharmaceuticals should consist of defining priorities, identifying the target audience, allocating resources, and managing the implementation of all the stages that were determined beforehand.
And don’t forget that often pharmaceutical strategy works in tandem with other processes and tactics, such as a marketing plan or a sales strategy. Even though marketers are not responsible for pharmaceutical sales strategies, they should work with sales representatives to ensure their marketing strategies are aligned with the objectives of other teams. Collaboration is key to success, and without it, both strategies won’t be as successful as they could be.
What Kind of Content Will Win in the Pharmaceutical Industry?
There are many types of pharmaceutical marketing strategies, but the one that is likely to be winning has to include the kind of content that’s both engaging and useful. That is the so-called true multichannel content, which is:
Inspirational;
Relevant;
ABM-friendly;
Measurable;
Closed Loop;
Emotional;
Adaptive at every stage of decision making.
To succeed in marketing strategies for pharma, the chosen type of content should address the concerns of a multichannel customer, and multichannel content is just the right choice in this case.
What is a Pharma Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is a roadmap, meant to guide you through all the hurdles and ordeals on the path to the implementation of a chosen pharmaceutical digital marketing strategy. In other words, pharmaceutical strategies can be served as a high-level overview, while a marketing plan is an outline of all your marketing objectives, tactics, and efforts needed to achieve your goals. Here are some of the components a marketing plan typically includes:
Content plan;
KPIs;
Situation analysis;
Timeline;
Budget;
Team roles.
Your pharmaceutical marketing plan should come next after your strategy, meaning that first you come up with the latter one, and only then you devise a marketing plan and use it to execute your ideas. The marketing plan is supposed to support your strategy and help you answer such questions as “Why? Where? When?”. Pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies and plans should come together, since implementing just one will not have such a positive effect as having both of them in use.
How to Get Started with a Top-notch Pharma Marketing Strategy?
Whatever marketing strategy was chosen, it needs to deliver the right content to the right audience. Thus, it’s worth relying on an account-based pharmaceutical marketing strategy (ABM) that allows targeting specific groups at the right time, place, and in the manner they expect pharma to reach them. How to switch your content marketing flow to the next level of quality, and make your content a trusted source? Before implementing a content strategy into a marketing campaign, do deeper research on your audience, using automated marketing tools such as content management systems, advanced web analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. A platform for content creation can take over all the stages of your content marketing campaign. Such a solution helps to keep brand identity, maintain recognition on both global and local levels, and avoid redundant costly operations.
Good pharma content should be based on strong customer insights from prior interactions (how HCPs/patients are interacting with your content; how much time they spend on each content piece; what actions are taken upon the initial interaction, etc.). By reviewing all past activities, your customers have with your pharma content, you can easily identify the types/formats of data which they better respond to, or what content was turned down. This is how an account-based content strategy works: it helps to create targeted messages that will impress and engage customers.
Explore Content Marketing Production: Veeva & Viseven Integration
Over the years, Veeva has been supporting global life sciences and pharmaceutical enterprises helping to bring their products to market faster and in compliance with all regulatory requirements. A powerful integration of Viseven’s deep expertise in omnichannel content creation and the full pack of Veeva products and services guarantees streamlined workflows and advanced digital content development and distribution – that, in turn, ensures the highest level of brand awareness. You can easily create the best-in-class interactive content from scratch, localize or approve your content in a few clicks – and distribute it across channels assuring a genuine omnichannel customer experience.
A strong tool for multichannel content management is a must-have for every pharma professional. There’re countless capabilities incorporated into the eWizard platform to boost your content creation productivity. Thanks to the customizable integration of eWizard with Veeva Vault PromoMats, users gain a vast array of opportunities to skyrocket their content management to a whole new level: access global repository, find or leverage approved digital assets, publish them across multiple channels, and speed up time to market.
When you have your eDetailing created in eWizard, you can open it in your Veeva Vault account, and get a deeper view on the exported PDF or any initial materials as well as find all the details of related modules.
A New Concept of Pharma Content Management
Truly multichannel content is channel-independent, limitless and timeless
Viseven team has recently introduced its new concept of such a type of content creation to the digital pharma universe. A clear message is created once, and then distributed via channels to which that message perfectly fits. Don’t get it wrong, the channel matters; however, it cannot have the same power as the content behind the channel – that matters much more. The channel should become rather a means, not an end. To stay on the new level of content creation, pharma has to think of the message first.
Based on these principles, here are some marketing strategy tips on possible steps to be taken:
Forget about the one-size-fits-all market approaches
The point here is to look through customer’s point of view, to feel their emotions. Let’s say, at what time, through what channel, and what content type they prefer to consume.
Focus on interactive content
Find a shortcut from static PDF presentation to create multichannel content for an excellent eDetailing; it would be perceived as an engaging story with a wide array of interactive visual aids. Such presentations are working in the most engaging way, especially when it comes to HCPs-pharma reps’ interactions.
If you already have a PDF file, you can convert it into an interactive, Veeva compatible format as well as add navigation or any interactivity to your eDetailing if needed, and automatically publish it to the Veeva environment in a single click.
Analyze, Localize, and Measure
A quality measurement system is a stepping-stone for future success. Measure the time spent on the page, the number of downloads, shares on social networks, etc. – to calculate your return on investment. In such a turbulent pharma environment, it will be a tough task to sustain success in the long run if your assets are not updated regularly and adapted to local needs.
The Importance of Storytelling as a Pharma Content Marketing Tool
Storytelling in healthcare and pharma matters no less than in any other industry. Let’s make it clear, a good, uplifting story helps to tailor your content to customers’ needs. Initially, it comes from analyzing the pieces of content that are stronger than others; in other words, the ones that better resonate with physicians’ needs. Healthcare and pharma enterprises should tap into these particular emotions with whatever content type is chosen (engaging IVAs, videos, blogs, triggered email campaigns, messengers, etc.), and make effective use of them in the marketing. Your content should be able to affect, motivate, encourage, and inspire physicians to take the needed actions around your brand. No matter how well-structured your content is – it won’t work if it doesn’t stir emotions. This way the loyalty to your pharma brand won’t be lost.
4 basic practices that are of crucial importance to pharma professionals:
Have all your assets constantly updated;
Personalize each interaction;
Use remote detailing for greater engagement;
Deliver your content across all the digital channels instantly.
Where data is, matters
Let’s face it: the HCP audience has different needs at different stages. The initial stage (this is the so-called awareness stage) is where physicians gather data for early diagnostics. Then goes the consideration phase – HCPs focus on a myriad of pharma products; choose the brand that resonates with their needs. The last phase is the evaluation phase when the product is chosen, and it’s time to justify the ROI, gather analysis or get a more in-depth understanding of the brand.
The peculiarities of these stages should be mapped to your marketing strategy. However, a multichannel marketing for pharmaceutical companies is often as good as the technology that powers it. To keep up with channel diversity, tech-savvy physicians, or Big Data splash you need to have an automated instrument at hand that is enriched with actionable insights.
Get rid of content silos
To jumpstart the launch of your multichannel campaign, consider using a content management system that will make your content creation flow fast and easy, and align your internal teams around a single, centralized data repository. The Viseven team has proven experience in transforming messages into channelless, flexible modules. This smart approach allows you to create content once – and reuse/republish it everywhere, from email to CLM presentation to the system of your choice.
Our unique solution eWizard is integrated with Veeva Vault PromoMats, Adobe Experience Manager and IQVIA for easy access or distribution of content and modules. This is how pharma can meet any specific need and keep high-quality content lifecycle that’s digestible for HCPs’ audience to consume. Here, at Viseven, our pharma professionals can provide you with full support in executing a truly winning content marketing campaign. Fill out the form below and start creating winning multichannel strategies that will surpass your expectations!
