Over the years, businesses faced a transition from one channel to multichannel, and now omnichannel. Today, this is what everyone is striving for. Earlier in this blog, we have covered many aspects of omnichannel communication, from the difference between multichannel and omnichannel to why omnichannel is the must-step towards digital excellence for Pharma. Now, it’s time to identify the right tools and services to connect with your customers. These tools will pave your customers’ journey from the beginning to the point of complete satisfaction with your brand experience.
Why do life sciences companies strive for omnichannel?
Over the pharmaceutical business and beyond, major brands have already recognized the importance of moving to an omnichannel approach. Some are already starting to integrate it into their marketing strategy. So what is the essence? In the end, it will always boil down to the consumers and their experience. The modern customer, be it a doctor or anyone else, no longer interacts with the brand through one platform. With the comprehensive development of technology and opening of numerous digital channels, customers now have a dialogue with brands via different channels (website, emails, social, apps, remote calls, ads, etc.). One might wonder, the more channels of communication you have, the more likely your message will be picked up. However, the brand’s task is to make sure that the flow of information coming from different channels does not turn your communication strategy into a total mess.
It’s as if your customer communication strategy were an overture performed by an entire orchestra. Various communication channels would play the role of musical instruments. If each instrument plays its part coherently, you have a chance to get harmony at the output.
Omnichannel builds upon the good old multichannel approach but with one extensive modification. In multichannel, all channels are available for the customer but not connected, whereas in omnichannel, all channels are interconnected, thereby making the customer experience holistic.
The tools to strike up omnichannel marketing campaign
If you’re just about to jazz up the dialogue with your customers and implement omnichannel, you have to rely on robust tools and services whose coordinated actions can improve all aspects of your marketing efforts. Having a good set of those in your case, you will be able to manage individual campaigns, cross-channel campaigns, and personalized customer journeys based on those campaigns.
1. Marketing automation software
A marketing automation system is the bandmaster of your strategy able to analyze lead behavior and measure overall campaign performance. A well-thought solution collecting a wide range of data from multiple sources and helps you segment your audience smartly. This includes several categories of functionality: email, social media, web marketing, and analytics. A marketing automation software can add that personal touch to your campaign and make it more focused. It’s an empath with a fine appreciation of your customers’ behavior, an indispensable instrument providing the necessary basis for the development, and colorizing your omnichannel dialogue with the customer.
2. Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)
If marketing automation software is the brain, the CRM is the heart allowing you to record, in detail, each customer’s journey. A CRM helps you to view channel information in real-time and represents a center for their response. In fact, a CRM system provides individuality and very empathy so important to a modern client who is used to special treatment.
3. Content marketing platform
Comparable to string bow, content is your tool to masterly hit the string sections sensitive to your clients’ needs. It’s a powerful enabler of consistent brand messaging. Moreover, content is your brand’s voice, true identity, and mission. The omnichannel strategy operates smoothly only when the content is developed correctly. However, there’s a lot to handle regarding the development of a content that would fit any communication channel. That’s why a choice of a content authoring solution plays such an important role in omnichannel pharma marketing.
Regarding this, eWizard platform offers Modular Content as a solution. This content, existing beyond devices, channels, and campaigns, enables marketers to create content once and publish to (m)any systems. It is not just a brave new marketing trend; this promises to be the ultimate future of content.
Download our eBook to have a comprehensive picture of Modular Content and its capacities in omnichannel pharma marketing.
4. Social Media Management tools
Social media management platforms is a center for managing multiple social profiles in one place. This is the tool to ensure uninterrupted communication with the audience, consistent messaging, publication planning, and analytics tracking on different platforms. Moreover, they help you transform your content every time so that it fits into every social network.
5. SEO tools
Tune-up the sharp hearing needed to get more traffic to your site and higher ranking in search results. SEO tools will give you this and many other great features, from SEO site audit to competition analysis and ranking tracking.
Just as the heart cannot function without the brain and vice versa, all these tools will not bring the expected outcome without their integrated efforts. The whole point is not just to have them, but to harmonize their work.
SMB vs. Large Enterprise Marketing Automation Solutions
The above tools are the foundations of a successful omnichannel strategy, and only their coherent interaction will allow you to reach your customers relevantly. The problem is that not all solutions can ensure this since they can be tied to a specific channel. So it’s important to choose the software that will be fully correlated with what you will need tomorrow.
SMB solutions
The solutions for small and midsize businesses like Hubspot, Marketo, ExactTarget, Zendesk, etc. are focused on specific goals and don’t allow to expand your campaign. These systems are perfectly suitable for those who are going to use marketing automation software e.g. for social media and email campaigns. With these solutions, you can avoid mechanical processes since all campaign data is collected and organized automatically. They make it easy to segment your customers, easily track each email campaign, receive detailed statistics, and other analytical data in real-time.
However, they also several drawbacks that can become a deal-breaker when it comes to transformation and quick adaptation to new business realities. For example, it’s rather problematic to build a standard workflow in many SMBs as they do not have a date element in a standard workflow setting. If you want to select a workflow type with launching on a specific date, then the contacts that fill out the form later – will not get into the workflow. As a result, we have to create three interconnected flows for very simple email distribution. Moreover, we have to have to rely only on existing integrations and be content with the rather small database segmentation capabilities. This can negate all your marketing efforts, as the messages within your content will not be relevant to the people receiving it.
Large Enterprise Systems
Enterprise corporations choose more flexible solutions allowing them to conduct various types of campaigns.
Expressing things musically, Enterprise Marketing Management Software is your stage to integrate and automate all marketing processes in one place. These solutions consist of product suites, related to specific channels or functions and tied together. Moreover, they allow you to conduct lead and social media management, email marketing, landing page creation, customer experience management, and many other processes within one platform.
For example, a solution like Adobe Campaign can boast of its data management platform for creating unique portraits of your audience, identify each segment, and work them across channels. Thus, you should no longer be content with a rather one-sided portrait of the HCPs and their preferences, but always give them relevant information. Another example is Salesforce, which provides orchestrated efforts across every channel of your campaign. Salesforces’ Cloud Services ensure that every process within your campaign can be routed to you: leads, analytics, social posts and all examples of data. It fully corresponds to changing the business environment and what your customer might need tomorrow.
The greatest advantage of all these solutions is they are all highly personalized and thus directly affect the quality of the customer experience. They are key to get a single cross-channel view of the customer across different channels and build a true dialogue with your customer.
The final chord
At this stage, omnichannel is a rather young kind of art, and companies are still figuring out how to manage it correctly. If you will master this craft and build elaborate omnichannel architecture ones, you will be able to expand it gradually and get the expected outcomes for your brand. If you are already armed with many of the listed tools – make them strike up. Turn to our experts for insights and guidance to have a broad picture of all omnichannel subtleties.
