• Digital Marketing, that new girl in town. Right? Tell me more

Yes and no. Digital Marketing is not new. Most of the other industries have already adopted it by now and many completely depend on it. However, it is new in Pharma where the reach of digital marketing is very weak.

Digital Marketing is a highly evolved form of marketing, the essence of which is customer centricity and customer specificity. Digital Marketing looks at a customer almost through a microscope and brings out the minutest detail about his persona and needs. Then, based on those set of specific needs, specific services are offered to him. This results in better acceptance and ROI

  • So is there something wrong in whatever we are doing now?

The answer to this question lies in your P&L statement where growth in your marketing expenditure is growing year after year, but the growth in sales is unable to match up. Also, you may be trying your best to manage growth in bottom line, maybe by cutting marketing cost, reducing manpower, reducing raw material costs etc.  Till yesterday, your marketing was driving your bottom line growth. Today CAs in your company are ensuring bottom line growth.

If you logically see, the problem lies in the fact that we spend large amounts of money on prescribing Drs and even a larger amount of money on non – prescribers. Simply because we do not have an accurate idea about who’s who. If we just could reduce the latter and put more money on the former, our problems would have been mitigated.

For that, we need to become sharper in our marketing practices. Our knowledge about our customers’ likes, dislikes, behavior, needs, pain points, have to become far more accurate. And for doing that Digital Marketing is a very big help.

  • Ok, but why should we go digital? We can clean up our existing operations as well?

There are few reasons that should motivate every Pharma Marketer to go Digital.

  • First and foremost is the customer specificity. You can target your customer with deadly precision about his persona, prescribing behavior, needs, etc. In conventional marketing that is very difficult.
  • Secondly, it is cost-effectiveness. At a small fraction of the cost of conventional marketing, ANY tool of Digital Marketing can get you far better marketing objective fulfillment. Also, you need not invest in any gadgets. You are using your customers’ mobile phone, laptop, etc. to reach him.
  • Thirdly, human intervention is very less in Digital Marketing which means that critical factors like the consistency of running a campaign, appropriate communication for the appropriate customers, etc. are all managed digitally.
  • Fourthly, you can get a very wide reach with digital marketing. That may be possible with conventional marketing but would be very expensive.
  • Fifthly, going digital shall differentiate you from your competition. Connect with your customers shall be far more engaging and customized compared to anyone else. In a ‘me-too’ world of pharma marketing, that itself is a huge motivation
  • Sixthly, you shall be able to remain connected with your key customers even if you have attrition in your field teams. With attrition levels touching 25% + levels across the industry, this is a big bonus.
  • Seventhly, and most importantly, measuring the exact reach, impact of your promotional efforts, ROI, etc. is very accurate in Digital Marketing. Far better than conventional marketing
  • We are fine. In fact, we have also gone digital. We have websites, Applications, Tab promotion, Webinars…

Great, Congratulations! You have really taken the lead in going digital. Along with this if you are also doing the following, then you must be rocking

  1. You have set measurable objectives for all your Digital Activities?
  2. You have KPIs for each of your Digital Activities
  3. You have a customer list that is classified on the basis of business return status, prescription status and demographic parameters. In short, you have a customer – persona based list
  4. You have been able to replace some conventional marketing methods with Digital Marketing Methods?
  5. You have been able to reduce the expenditure of your conventional marketing after you have started your digital campaigns?
  • We heard that there are several tools in Digital Marketing.

Yes, there are several. But the most important and relevant tools w.r.t Pharma Marketing are listed below

  1. Email Marketing – Very useful tool to reach out to 10 – 10,000 relevant customers with automated, custom-designed, personalized, mail content. Easy to get a response and to do analytics upon to understand the impact.
  2. In – Bound Marketing –This tool is used to create favorably inclined customers or leads and thus helps your field force in their in-clinic discussion and conversion. Very useful tool
  3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Backbone of Digital Marketing. This tool helps you get the desired visibility (read drive traffic) for your website, landing page, mobile application, etc. This tool is based on how Search Engines like Google work. Critically important if you have a very busy website or mobile application
  4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Critically useful if you have an OTC portfolio, or a medical application, website that needs to be advertised to masses. You would be amazed at the low expenditure needed for running this and the high return that you get. Very easy to do analytics upon.
  5. Social Media Marketing (SMM) – If you want to spread a concept, a therapy, a website for doctors, and many more using either Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, YouTube, or all of these together, you have to use this. You can target your specific customers and expose them to meaningful content designed by you. Not very personalized but very useful for a well-defined group of customers.
  6. Finally, Web Analytics –In many ways this is not a tool but is an integral part of all the above tools. This heavily draws support from Google and uses its tools to analyze your digital activities and gives a very accurate direction to it
  • How do we know that Digital Marketing is working?

You know that digital marketing is working in many ways.

  1. If your analytics tells you that you are able to connect and service the most desired kind of Drs, it means digital marketing is working.
  2. If you have been able to fulfill the same objectives of conventional marketing at a much lower per – customer – expenditure, it means digital marketing is working.
  3. If your digital properties are getting more hits, generating more leads, it means digital marketing is working.
  • Must be expensive, no?

Not at all. In fact, this is the main calling card for digital marketing. However, if digital marketing is given to half – knowledgeable professionals without proper experience and understanding of pharma marketing, then the expenditure can increase dramatically without much increase in business parameters

  • What all do we need to go digital?

It can begin with just the email ids and mobile phone numbers of your customers.

But much before anything else, you need to fix the ‘Why’ of digital marketing. Unless you are clear about the objectives of digital marketing, you may unnecessarily raise your expectation and incur expenditure.

Hence, get a good Pharma Digital Marketing Consultant to study your portfolio and suggest objectives to you and propose a Pharma Digital Marketing Strategy to you

  • How should we approach digital marketing?
  • Step 1: Get a Pharma Digital Marketing Consultant to conduct a workshop with your marketing team so that there is crossmosis of their pain points with the consultant who shall then suggest appropriate Digital Marketing Tools as a solution
  • Step 2: Start small. With your marketing team and the Pharma Digital Marketing consultant define your Digital Marketing Objectives. If you go wrong here, all further steps shall fail
  • Step 3: Get email ids and Mobile phone numbers of your customers. This is the most difficult but most critical piece of data that shall become the pillar for all your digital activities.
  • Step 4: Based on your Digital Marketing Objectives, create Customer Plans. No, not brand plans but plans for each class of customer
  • Step 5: Hire a good Pharma Digital Marketing agency to roll out the plans with specific timelines and endpoints
  • Step 6: Select some of your bright marketing people to learn Digital Marketing so that there could be some in – house talent to take care of the digital activities
  • We know some agencies who do all these. That should be good enough, no?

No. That is a standard mistake that many companies make.

You must understand that for Pharma Digital Marketing to be successful, the team that works on it must have SME or Subject Matter Expertise. The team that works on this must have very high level of practical pharma marketing knowledge and expertise. Along with, they must also have a high degree of understanding of medical subjects.

You see, Digital Marketing in pharma is an extended and refined form of pharma marketing itself. Hence, unless the practitioners of Pharma Digital Marketing are very well versed with Pharma Marketing, going Digital is next to impossible. You may simply end with investing money on some tools without any result