Content is Still the King in Pharma Marketing

Digital Transformation is helping pharmaceutical industry to revisit its business model, to improve processes, and to deliver an authentic customer experience to HCPs in their journey. Companies are now focusing on omnichannel engagement, data driven insights, responsiveness and personalization towards patients and doctors. However, Technology is an Enabler, not a Strategy in itself. It just helps companies to get where they want. It’s part of the strategy. A content marketing driven approach that uses technology as vehicle is much more likely to succeed

Tech-enabled marketing is taking more prominent role in business and more so in Pharma. However, it is easy to forget why technology exists in the first place. The objective of digital is not just to keep up with trends, building new “innovative” products in a market that’s pretty saturated. And even though all these digital transformations are incredibly important, we need to keep ourselves focused and make sure we’re solving the real problems – HCP Engagement. At the core of HCP engagement is ‘right medical content’. All successful products come with an inspiring story. Marketing campaigns are meaningless unless they are based on a strong foundation of ‘content that delivers value’.

Marketing maverick Seth Godin rightly states,

‘Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you sell but about the stories you tell’.

This is extremely relevant for Pharma which is facing new challenges in medico-marketing.  When delivered through a digital channel, a personalized and relevant content can create wonders. In this insight article, we discuss the ways to create great contents for engaging HCPs.

Medical Contents Types and Formats that Doctors Prefer

In last decade and before, doctors were hugely dependent on medical reps and medical conference for latest treatment protocols and drug updates. Only during these events, they had the chance to interact with their peer group and exchange ideas. Right now, they are having always-on access to authentic medical information. Through online doctor network like MedSynapse, they are in continuous dialogue with over 200,000 peers. Today’s digitally savvy doctor chooses the type of medical content he wants to consume, and when he wants to consume. Using the analytics on behaviour of doctors on MedSynapse platform, we identified the top content types preferred by doctors and the top of the chart are following:

1. CLINICAL PATIENT CASES: Clinical patient cases and discussions around them are one of the most favoured content types. Online networks like MedSynapse have opened up a great channel of communication for the busy doctor. Doctors can now instantly reach out to other member doctors of the platform and seek their opinion on challenging clinical cases.
2. DOCTORS ACTIVELY SEEK DRUG UPDATES AND TREATMENT GUIDELINES: After patient cases, doctors prefer to engage with information on latest drugs, treatment guidelines, medical devices, and diagnostic tests. Such updates generate more engagement if they are in summarised format with crisp and concise information. Note that such updates should be optimised for mobile channels.
3. DOCTORS PREFER ONLINE CME CONTENT: Doctors can now overcome the constraints of time, location and high cost of offline CME programs. Many countries now have made it mandatory to earn CPD points for retaining medical licenses, creating a pressing need to find more convenient ways of taking them. Online medical content with CPD points award generate huge interest in the doctors’ community.
4. CONTENT OPTIMISED FOR MOBILE DEVICES ARE PREFERRED: About 80% of the content are consumed on mobile devices.  All the text and media for any medical content to be marketed should be legible and readable on mobile screens. The tables in the content should not have more than 3-4 columns so that they can be rendered well on mobile devices.
5. CONTENT SHOULD BE SHORT AND CRISP: The attention span on the mobile device is low therefore the doctors should be able to go through whole content in not more than four to five scroll actions.  An ideal content should be between 1250 to 1750 words. An abstract at the beginning and summary/conclusion at the end helps convey and re-enforce the key message.
6. CONTENT SHOULD BE INDIVIDUALISED AND CUSTOMISED FOR THE TARGET DOCTOR: Medical content disseminated to the doctor should be individualised and should offer the information that he/she is looking for. With latest advancement in data driven marketing, it is possible to give exactly the personalised information that doctors are looking for.
7. DOCTORS PREFER TO HAVE TWO WAY COMMUNICATION OVER CONTENT MARKETED: HCPs don’t just want to consume the information provide to them. Even with Medical Reps and Medical Affairs professional, they have this exchange of information on additional queries and doubts. They expect the same on content delivered via digital channels as well. Pharma marketers need to ensure that all such touchpoints where doctors express their opinion and ask for additional information is responded promptly.

At MedSynapse, we have built a thriving community of 200,000+ verified doctors from Middle East and South East Asia. By working with us as partners, Pharma companies can tap immediately into the community and we help them design their Content Marketing Strategy. We not only provide the captive HCP audience through our platform as an audience for these contents but also offer end to end services including digital brand strategy, medical content creation, project management, media/creative services, moderation, pharmacovigilance, and analytics/reporting.  We do the heavy lifting for our clients so that they focus on offering a great customer experience to their target HCPs.