We’ve seen a dramatic shift in how companies operate in the last two years as they transitioned from doing business in-person to doing business online. The pharmaceutical industry is no exception.
Now, it seems like the digital shift will have a lasting impact. For example, one of the top pharmaceutical companies globally, Pfizer, has recently announced that it is getting rid of face-to-face sales teams.
It has eliminated a few hundred pharma sales positions. The company will replace about half of them with positions in new areas of the company to facilitate digital engagement with healthcare providers.
Pfizer won’t be the only one taking a digital-first approach to pharmaceutical marketing. During the pandemic, other companies have displaced sales teams with commercial operations and marketing teams that focus on digital marketing through web, mobile, email, and social media.
To be successful, marketers will need to understand how to engage their target audience with relevant messaging instead of just spamming doctors with generic content that is unrelated to their areas of specialization.
The Case for Highly Relevant Content
There are a lot of benefits of taking a digital-first approach to marketing. When done well, it’s a cost-effective way for pharma companies to reach a broader audience of healthcare providers.
However, one concern with getting rid of face-to-face pharma sales reps is that doctors will become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of digital messages they receive from pharma brands that aren’t tailored to their specific needs.
Broad-based messaging may have worked in the early days of digital marketing when only a few companies were doing it. However, today’s healthcare providers are bombarded with digital messages in the forms of email, SMS messaging, social media, and website marketing. That makes it easy to ignore low-quality content and irrelevant messages.
The marketers who succeed in this new era of digital pharmaceutical marketing will be those who master the art of delivering tailored messages to their audience of healthcare providers. By speaking directly to providers about their pain points and concerns, marketers can get their attention and help them find the solutions they need.
At the same time, sales teams aren’t going away entirely in the pharmaceutical industry. So, it will also be necessary for salespeople to become digitally savvy if they want to add value to their company.
How HealthLink Dimensions Can Help You Perfect Your Digital Messaging
Treatment Insights from HealthLink Dimensions is designed to help marketers understand their audience so they can deliver content that speaks to them directly.
With this tool, you can get an in-depth understanding of a provider’s treatment behavior that goes beyond their board certification and specialty.
We use proprietary data sourcing to unlock valuable insights derived from physician treatment and diagnostic behaviors. In essence, we provide all the information you need to craft your messaging to resonate with your audience and capture their attention.
You need a way to stand out, and in this new age of pharmaceutical marketing, that’s by delivering content that’s relevant to your audience instead of taking a broad-range cookie-cutter approach.
Once you have your message, you need to get it out to relevant providers. HealthLink Connect is here to help you deploy your messages with an omnichannel strategy that includes email, mobile, social media, and web deployment.
Need Help Going Digital? Let’s Talk
Going digital doesn’t mean that sales and marketing should be impersonal.
HealthLink Dimensions can help your sales or marketing team take a personal approach to digital marketing with tools that let you understand your target audience and discover the best ways to reach them online.
Contact us today to learn more about our services or to get started.