By Katie Kennedy The current economic and healthcare climate is putting pressure on many pharmaceutical marketing teams to do more with less budget. Some teams are having to consider what they can do without. Balancing the budget while still achieving results is difficult. Some pharmaceutical brands I speak with are considering reducing the spend on activities that fall into healthcare professional (HCP) market research to save money and invest in tactical campaigns only.
Is this the right approach?
The dangers of reducing market research
One danger we see with the reduction of budget into areas of market research is teams potentially investing into activities or resources that don’t hit the mark. Without insights into the needs, concerns and interests of your HCPs there is the potential to create resources that are not what your HCP community actually needs. When it comes to digital campaigns, without fully understanding the digital behaviours of your different HCP customer segments you run the risk of trying to engage HCPs on the wrong platforms or with resources that do not resonate. What you are spending on tactics and campaigns might end up not getting the results you hoped for.
With a reduced budget, you need to plan more smartly, not less.
In order to tighten up your overall marketing spend you need to know what activities are going to provide the best results and put your focus here. This can only be done by fully understanding what your HCP community needs. As an example, CREATION.co worked with a pharmaceutical client looking into the impact of their medical congress activity. The brand team were sponsoring a number of events each year which came with significant financial and resource implications. CREATION.co’s analysts used our dataset of 3 million verified HCP profiles, forums and blogs to examine the impact these events had among the HCP community. While some of those congresses were having little impact among their HCP community, others were stimulating important conversations during and post events. The team were able to determine which events to prioritise for investment the following year and, by cutting spending on those with less of an impact, made a notable saving on budget spend.
Should you stick with traditional market research?
So if you have a limited budget, should you stick with traditional market research or invest in social listening? For many, there is a sense that when times are tough and budgets are being cut it is important to stick to what you know. After all, traditional market research has been around for decades and offers a level of safety and risk aversion. But is it necessarily the best way?
Post-COVID the growth in the number of HCPs online has surged, and with it, the opportunity to listen in to their conversations to better understand how to support them. Many pharma teams are tapping into the benefits of HCP social media intelligence. By listening to the natural organic conversations from a wider pool of your HCPs you can truly understand what they care about and how to support them best.
Many of our clients are using insights from social media listening to help shape their more traditional market research, like advisory boards and surveys, in order to achieve better results. Social listening is no longer the new tool in town but an established and proven way to learn about your HCPs and ensure the marketing plan you execute has the best impact.
The impact of HCP social listening and market research on understanding where best to invest your marketing budget is undeniable. For those who want to choose wisely where to invest this year, I encourage you to think about how social media insights can support your plans. For more examples of how HCP social media listening can uncover new insights, read our article Social Media Listening’s potential to impact health outcomes.
