Dive deeper to understand the ROI on Webinars and Online Events
Globally, doctors are a busy tribe and getting them involved in any offline activity is becoming challenging every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even harder. Time is a resource which is scarce and valued highly by busy medical professionals. Make no mistake, doctors are still keen on getting relevant clinical and specialty specific information, albeit through their preferred channels. Lately, there has been a sudden surge in Web based events and digital symposiums as an answer to the COVID-19 constraints.
Pharma marketing professionals and web event organisers should understand the key advantages of this channel and plan their events such that they align all their efforts to maximise the ROI on such initiatives.
Let’s review the most important advantages of doing such events digitally. The top ones are:
1 Maximum Reach – There are only a limited number of participants who can attend a physical event. However, when you are doing an event digitally, you can effectively reach anywhere across the globe. The digital events therefore expand the influence boundary to a very wide range.
Recently, MedSynapse partnered with PSEDM for their digital Symposium on Endocrinology. The three day long annual symposium was hosted by the Philippine Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism on MedSynapse, through which PSEDM could expand their reach beyond the Philippine and surrounding region and reach out to Endocrinologists globally.
2 Communicate Beyond the Core Target Specialty – The digital event reaches doctors who do not belong to the core target group but are nevertheless relevant to the brand. For example, general practitioners or pediatricians would never attend an offline endocrinology congress. However, with web events, it is possible to reach such specialists if you have relevant information for them. This way, the HCPs can expand their network and can also communicate and hear from doctors whom they would otherwise not be able to reach.
MedSynapse partnered with NUS for their digital event on COVID-19. The event showcased participation of HCPs from different specialties coming together to discuss on the current pandemic and the way forward.
3 Creating Multiple Touchpoints with the Attendees: Before the event, an awareness campaign along with teasers of the upcoming sessions help spread awareness and raise interest. This enables the participants to mark their calendars, and plan and attend the sessions from the comfort of their own home or office. These sessions can either be live or pre-recorded based on the feasibility of the speakers and add additional flexibility to the format. Post event, a summary along with links of the archived video and presentation can be shared with the doctors so that they can recall the most important points. In this way, by creating multiple touchpoints with the doctors, organisers can maximise the impact of the event.
4 Reaching the Non-Participants: There are some doctors who generally don’t participate in offline events due to their busy schedule and other organisational constraints. With digital events, all such doctors now have the option to attend your event and you get access to the doctors with whom you could not connect before. This also helps establish a long-term relationship with the doctors and they can be engaged with after the event.
5 Precise and Personalised Communication: By having digital marketing tools in the arsenal for orchestrating the event, one can create a very personalised and targeted communication and messaging for the doctors. These targeted messaging depends on the agenda, speakers, specialty of the event on one side and preference of audience on other side. This helps ensure that doctors feel that the event is highly relevant for them and they are motivated to attend the sessions of the event.
6 Data Driven Learning:Event Organisers can learn in detail about the drivers of failure and success more effectively with the online events, because they can do a data driven analysis of the whole execution process.With the tools of Business Intelligence like Power BI and Tableau in place, they can also setup the live dashboard and reports that help them with decision making and planning future engagements even more effectively.
7 Gather Additional HCP Insights: On MedSynapse, companies can add interactive polling and survey to their editorial content. Such small surveys and questionnaires not only fuel engagement but also help companies gather valuable insights from the interactions. These insights help companies figure out the most important reasons and issues doctors consider while prescribing their brands. It also provides information on whether there has been significant mindset change of the prescribers after going through the event content.
Effort vs ROI on Web Events
Doctors up to date their knowledge by attending conferences because at such events they hear from the best and the brightest in their field of work. This gives them the opportunity to improve their clinical expertise very quickly and effectively. The sponsors and organisers of these medical events can greatly improve the ROI if these events are done digitally over web and executed well.
Other Insight Articles in Webinar Series
MedSynapse’s Webinar and Web Events solutions help pharma companies transform their HCP engagement strategies with a goal to drive excellence. MedSynapse works with its partners, sponsors and organisers of such events on regular basis. Our aim is to help companies execute these Web Events effectively and maximize the ROI on such initiatives.
