Pharma marketing is a crowded business… With hordes of hungry reps offering a bewildering variety of products to docs who are ever-harder to reach, pharmaceutical marketing strategies quickly bear fruit or perish. To be successful, pharmaceutical companies must walk a fine line in selling existing and new medications without alienating the sometimes-touchy prescription-writers upon whom they rely, and everyone is mindful of the tight regulatory restrictions on marketing. Nowadays, having the “best science” isn’t enough– Marketers must have the best relationships in order to distinguish their products.
How does technology help marketers?
As technology marches onward, pharmaceutical marketing strategies have likewise evolved. New technology tools increase the ability of drug developers and reps to explain products through animations and multimedia presentations; marketers can now provide more information in less time. Podcasts, blogs and online training materials offer a vast improvement over legacy paper-based informational systems. Still, in an era when doctors increasingly use edetailing and laypeople seek information online, fewer people rely on face-to-face interaction to learn about medications and treatments.
Winning pharmaceutical marketing strategies use technology to lessen interpersonal distance, not increase it
Marketers are beginning to explore opportunities to both gain valuable market insight and reach out to physicians through social media networking and online promotion, including video e-detailing, data mining for market intelligence and thought-leadership, and even physician-support services including information updates, so long as these activities comply with the current drug-marketing restrictions. Successful pharmaceutical marketing strategies find ways to leverage technology to become closer to doctors and other buyers, while at the same time capitalizing on technology’s power to explain complex concepts in simple ways, and thus build closer relationships with prospective buyers.
Technology can help build credibility in pharmaceutical marketing
Pharmaceutical marketing strategies have often focused on a two-dimensional approach: Repetition of the message, and scope or reach of the message. Technologies can easily enhance both– email, online searches, and multimedia presentation software allow marketers to reach larger audiences, and reach them more frequently. Still, savvy marketers know that technology must also help build credibility in the relationships which are critical for marketing success. Successful pharmaceutical marketing strategies can use social-media and data-mining to learn about thought-leadership among physicians or consumers in a particular niche, and then use appropriate methods to build credible relationships in the same space.
Technology can also help marketers learn to be more successful
Information is valuable, and the appropriate use of technology not only helps marketers provide decision-makers with multimedia education about their products, it can also help marketers gather, store, and utilize information about prospective buyers and market niches in ways that build and strengthen the credibility of the marketer and the marketing itself. Adaptive learning analytics capability embedded into marketer-sponsored software can help marketers learn from their audiences, and quickly mold both their messages and media to best fit a particular audience. For example, analytic tools in a proprietary mobile app can tell marketers how long a buyer’s finger hovers over a particular button on an iPad’s touchscreen before deciding whether to click… and the same software can likewise quickly test multiple on-screen marketing scenarios until it finds the quickest way to ensure that all-important click-through.
Technology has the power to deepen and strengthen pharma companies’ relationships with buyers, leading to more sales. If you’d like to learn how a successful pharmaceutical marketing strategy can help your product, please contact us today.
