What happens when you put together over 1,000 attendees, 100 speakers, 60 sessions, across 3 days with a goal of reuniting the global pharma marketing community? You get inspired to transform the future of healthcare marketing. Our employee-owners attended this year’s Digital Pharma East with eager minds and open notes. Their top findings? We’re delivering them directly to you, keep reading.
Privacy & Data Usage
There’s no doubt privacy, data, and security will continue to be a hot button topic in the advertising world–especially in pharma marketing. Balancing the tightrope of privacy and personalization gets increasingly difficult as the two entities are naturally opposed to one another. Privacy can hinder personalization and personalization can disrupt privacy. The key is to find the balance between the two through transparency.
For healthcare advertisers, transparency with patients and the use of their data can lead to amplified personalization that relies on the vital data they willingly choose to share. This not only builds trust between the brand and the consumer, but also increases engagement and the credibility of a brand.
Humanization
It’s not always about a cure. Sometimes, it’s about living longer and healthier lives. Consumers and patients are often skeptical of big pharma and their intentions of being a truly helpful resource versus another profit margin. Consumers need reassurance that a product is not only going to help them, but that the product is coming from a trusted and reliable source with good intentions.
Health is very personal and subjective, so what works for one person may not for someone else. Learning how to manage and navigate conversations around expectations ensures that marketers and the companies they represent are always thinking about the consumer or patient first, treating and seeing people as an individual human rather than a metric.
Omnichannel Agility
In pharma, few buzzwords are as noteworthy as “omnichannel agility,” but the meaning seems to shift depending on the need. Omnichannel aims to create a seamless experience for customers utilizing the marketing trifecta of paid, earned, and owned media with a combination of sales. Agility aims to balance the need for analytical advertising data and the want to move quickly to maximize ROI.
In theory, an agile omnichannel strategy should maximize ROI by focusing on the most effective channels, utilizing multi-channel attribution to pinpoint those touchpoints. Although attribution is an acknowledged improvement opportunity for increasing ROI, mapping and assigning value to these channels can be challenging. There is no defined industry standard, and goals may vary depending on specific disease states.
The New HCP
The new age of HCPs are increasingly working in ‘no-see’ office distinctions, with an estimated 80% currently working in no-see institutions spurred on by the need for telemedicine during the height of the pandemic. As a result, opportunities for traditional face-to-face education efforts surrounding product value that used to be the backbone of sales are quickly diminishing.
So, how do you reach your audience? Innovation, collaboration, and development. Product and Sales Teams are increasingly partnering with Marketing and other key experts to develop new techniques and strategies to address the changing healthcare environment. By meeting your HCPs where they are, regardless of if they’re in lab coats or in athleisure at home, advertisers can customize specialized messaging strategies to not only reach but resonate with HCPs.
Challenge & Opportunity
The pharma space is evolving at a record pace and with new opportunities comes new challenges. As content and marketing surrounds patients and HCPs alike, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach your audience among the constant media clutter. Nonstop, continuous content can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate, especially for HCPs who are already starved for time and patients in a rare disease state who need access to critical information.
By focusing on the human element and what drives an audience is key to getting the right and relevant message in front HCPs and patients. Understanding that their customer journey can be complex and have a plethora of varied touchpoints, advertisers can cater to their need for customization, access to information, and build trust by identifying the most effective channels of communication.
With a legacy of healthcare marketing innovation, Digital Pharma East never disappoints. Featuring panels of experts, esteemed keynote speakers exploring all things healthcare and marketing, and endless networking opportunities, the team is more inspired than ever to put their conference learnings in action and continue to be a part of the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry.
Want to learn more? Contact our experts today.
