Can social listening support your omnichannel approach?

Omnichannel is one of the current buzzwords among pharmaceutical companies but what does it actually mean? Within my role as Head of Client Marketing at CREATION.co I have spoken to numerous omnichannel contacts within the pharmaceutical industry all with different interpretations. One definition I particularly found useful described a good omnichannel campaign as providing your audience with relevant and personalised messages in a calculated sequence where all communications synchronise across channels. For the pharmaceutical industry the eventual aim is to make all Healthcare Professional (HCP) interactions feel like a conversation with a sales rep, one who has referred to their conversations to date, understands where they are on the journey and is able to provide the next piece of relevant information.

One challenge I have seen is how omnichannel can often be confused internally with multichannel. Multichannel is a more simplistic idea of adapting your key message around a particular campaign for each of the channels and pushing that message out to your audience whereas omnichannel is about being able to deliver a coherent message which flows intuitively across channels and understands where the HCP is on the customer journey to date and what they need next. For the HCP a true omnichannel experience means receiving easily digestible information which they need, at the right time, on the channels they use, to consume at their own pace.

So how can social media insights support your omnichannel strategy?

After many years supporting the pharmaceutical industry with Healthcare Professional social media intelligence CREATION.co has seen a growing interest lately from our clients who are responsible for omnichannel strategy. By studying the organic conversations of HCPs online they want to identify any needs or pain points to be addressed as well as understand their online behaviours in order to deliver an omnichannel strategy that will resonate.

Being able to break down the online discussions and behaviours for each of your key segments enables you to provide an improved communications strategy tailored to their needs. These segments might be grouped by role type, persona, mindset or even stage within the journey. The more we understand about each group, for example what is driving their discussions, their needs/concerns, where they go for information, what causes them to speak positively/negatively about brands etc, the more we can personalise messaging and target appropriately. 

Providing insights to your reps on what is important to your HCPs can help them become more efficient with their interactions and build better relationships. Once you understand where your HCP customers are online and what they want to know about there is also an opportunity to leverage the right digital channels either enhancing or even replacing the personal 1-2-1 conversations of a sales rep. 

With so much data accessible one issue is how overwhelming this can be. It has become so important for pharmaceutical companies to work with agencies who don’t just bring additional data but are able to interpret this data and provide actionable insights on what this means for you. This allows teams to focus solely on improving their omnichannel approach.

Another key part which can sometimes be a struggle is being able to close the loop and feedback to your marketing teams what you are discovering and respond accordingly. By continuing to track the social media conversations of your HCPs you are able to monitor the impact of the changes you make to your omnichannel strategy and understand their effectiveness. By feeding this information back into the strategy planning you can course correct and continue to improve. Having a cross-functional team involved in a project like this can really help the team become more agile and respond to what is discovered in the data more efficiently.

 Omnichannel is a continuing learning curve with new technologies providing constant new data sources. HCP social media insights is one part of this data source that can help you work towards your mission of a true omnichannel experience. If you would like to talk about how we could support you with your omnichannel approach please get in touch: [email protected]