By Jamie Doggett 
Evidence
and experience is continually teaching us that healthcare professionals (HCPs)
are not just present on social media but are also highly active. For many
pharmaceutical companies, it has taken a long time to shift from traditional
channels for physician engagement, to embracing multichannel marketing with
HCPs. Now that pharma is seeing the value in this avenue for marketing it is
being slowly incorporated but digital tactics implemented often lack
effectiveness because they do not engage customers with meaningful messages, at
the right time and the right place.
There is a new opportunity for all that social media has presented – to get customer feedback en mass from the quantitative and qualitative, unprompted conversations of physicians. Using social media we can listen to the conversations of HCPs to inform the best messaging, the best timing and the best positioning of our marketing. Let’s take a look at how multichannel tactics can be used not only to implement your marketing strategy, but also to inform it.
1. Right message
You have
to talk about what your customer cares about. You don’t want to be that person
in the party that just stands there talking about themselves; what they do,
their achievements and how great they are. The art of appealing to your
customers is in showing a genuine interest in what they are interested in. You
need to add value to the conversation and you cannot simply guess what they
like. Listen to them to become informed in this area.
Healthcare
professionals are individuals and their needs and interests thus differ from
person to person. However, there are also trends that can be found, based on
location, therapy area, role type or a combination of these. For example, you
may discover Spanish dermatologists are concerned about prescribing the right
product for quality of life while American dermatologists want the best value
for money. Equally, this may be the concern of American dermatologists but what
about the nurses or the pharmacists?
It is
important to be aware of your corporate voice in your marketing. In some areas
we have seen healthcare professionals respond negatively or sceptically to
pharmaceutical companies because they were too promotional or patronising.
There may be value in presenting a highly professional, corporate persona or
you may want to be more ‘at ease’ and personable; listen to your customers’
responses to each to find the best for you.
As well us understanding and using your customers’ language and aligning with their values it is important they know yours. Make sure your messaging has some focus on communicating your brand values, ethos and mission. If you can win people over to why you do what you do, and customers feel like they can align with your ‘why’, the task of selling becomes a lot easier.
2. Right time
The
balance between a marketing campaign prepared in advance, and opportunistic
tactics is a delicate one. Having a marketing strategy is essential but this
strategy can incorporate both. When you know your corporate voice, and whether
this differs or remains consistent across various platforms, you can ensure
that the content posted at different times is consistent.
In terms
of getting the right time you might consider planning posts at times that you
know will make an impact, such as at the start or end of a congress or perhaps
on a disease awareness day. Knowing the time that your customers are likely to
respond positively will maximise engagement. Be careful, however, of
automation: it can be a really helpful tool but without a real person to verify
the post as it goes live it might end up being at an inappropriate time and
corporate voice can be tarnished.
Preparation,
from a compliance point of view, can get you ready to give instant feedback.
Especially at events this can be very useful. Some companies develop a group of
pre-approved segments of posts such as certain phrases or an entire post which
can then be used live during a congress. This gives the impression of
spontaneity and real time engagement whilst remaining compliant and well prepared.
3. Right place
Those in
regional or global roles have to consider how cultural contexts or views may
affect their message to different areas. There may also be a need based on a
certain location, for example in one instance we saw nurses in one region of
the UK struggling to use a certain medical device. As the issue was limited to
one location the company was able to respond by sending messaging and training
to that specific region.
Getting messages on the right platform and available on the right devices is an important aspect of this as well. You may discover in your initial research that many of your HCP customers are using certain sites to gather information from, or perhaps their conversation is occurring on one particular network. Social data can give you an indication of how an individual is accessing the information, from a device point-of-view. This allows you to consider whether your content should be suitable for hard copy, widescreen (i.e. laptops/computers) or small screen devices such as tablets or mobile phones.
4. Master social
When
marketing on social media it is important to think about balancing your post
type. Make sure you have a good mix of information, activation and engagement.
Information can bring users to you out of interest, and good quality original
information content helps position you as a thought leader. Activation causes
your customers to feel something and want to act on it – this can be emotive
and should definitely be inspiring. Engaging with customers compliantly can be
done really well if there is a good strategy in place.
Avoid
overly ‘wordy’ posts. We have seen in many therapy areas HCPs respond to and
engage more with media like video, infographics and gifs. These posts must
still find the balance between information, activation and engagement as well
having the right message, time and place otherwise they can be seen as ‘trying
too hard’ or ‘gimmicky’ thus actually pushing customers away.
Social can
be combined very effectively with congress, meetings and publications.
Remembering the importance of message,
time and place, consideration should be given to which congress, meeting or publication to be involved with and what
the engagement looks like. This will be achieved by knowing HCP behaviours.
We have
seen companies who are traditionally very engaged during congress meetings
disappointed because HCPs had not engaged with their material – the issues vary
from not appearing at the right congress, to not posting on the platforms where
the HCPs are, to posting material that simply wasn’t very engaging.
Using
hashtags and account handles can successfully bring your posts into a certain
stream of conversation or engage with organisations and customers. Consider
which hashtags your customers are using and who the influencers are so you can
be in the same stream as them.
5. Closed-loop marketing
Once you
have found the language that resonates with your customers, understood how time
affects customer opinions and have learned how location and environment impacts
customers’ expressed needs you can run a successful multichannel marketing
campaign. But it should not stop there.
Starting with a clear outcome in mind from your marketing, you need to measure your success through ‘closed-loop marketing’. Continue to listen to your customers to make sure your efforts are resonating. After each cycle, redress your tactics or goals in order to become more and more effective each time.
What next?
Start
strategising! Being well prepared in this journey of marketing is highly
important. As the ancient proverb goes ‘good planning and hard work lead to
prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.’ It can be helpful to work
with a cross-functional team of colleagues, to align on vision and customer
goals and collaborate on each individual’s skills and experiences. Then, once
your roadmap is set before you, start the marketing loop by listening to your
customers!
