The communication model between Pharma and Doctors has evolved through time. Today, in the era of digital connectivity, Pharmaceutical companies are trying out varied channels to communicate their message to a large audience of doctors. Digital media have already been accepted by Pharma marketers as a powerful channel to engage doctors in the long run and digital content marketing is now the ‘’go-to online strategy’’ of most brand and product leads.
(To know why the ‘’Content-Community-Commerce’’ Model is Pharma’s best bet to market to doctors, Click Here)
Content Marketing Institute reports that the most successful marketers spent 40% of their budget on content marketing in 2018. Today’s pharma marketing teams look at leveraging webinars, online CMEs, healthcare news, microsites, mobile communication and social media channels to inform and engage customers. While doing so, they need to adhere to certain parameters for producing a smart and solid content marketing strategy that is effective, innovative, and addresses all the pain points of their audience related to product/therapy information.
5 Tips for Successful Content Marketing
- Align Your Content Strategy with Your Marketing Goals: Your marketing goals can be anything – brand recall, therapy leadership, KOL engagement, market expansion, etc. Marketers must realize that the best way to design an effective content strategy is to outline your plan around your marketing goals. Each goal call for a separate set of content with a unique pitch, tone, and format, hence, a blanket approach is a strict no-no.
- Understand your Target Market: Pharma content strategies are more successful when they study the mindset of doctors – the consumers of their content. Mindset analysis of doctors serves as a major step in the content marketing process. Once a marketer dives deep into the perceptions of physicians, he/she can plan out a functional strategy that gets the ball rolling for their brand. It is crucial for Pharma marketers to dig deep into the minds of doctors and find out the latest underlying perceptions for a specific therapeutic area through online polls and surveys. This will help them pinpoint the information gaps that their content must fill.
- Encourage neutrality and science in your content: ‘Pharma brands highlight only the positive aspects of their brand and drugs’ – is a preset notion in the minds of HCPs which is tough to wipe out. You are well aware that Doctors love science and hate bias brands; ensure that your content does not favour your brand excessively. The key to approaching a sustainable and successful content strategy hinges on developing a trusted relationship with the doctor community. Therefore, build a relationship on the grounds of neutrality and science. As a Pharma marketer, simply boasting about your brand is also a big NO. Rather, discuss your drug and support it with scientific data. Include recent clinical trial reports, weave newsworthy stories around case studies and state the science behind the making of the drug. If possible, try reaching out to a strong audience of doctors by finding a neutral third-party platform to disseminate your brand’s product and services.
- Refrain from Drafting Dauntingly Lengthy Articles: It is noticed that Doctors are the busiest professionals on this globe. Marketers need to consider how they consume information online and tailor their strategy accordingly. One out of every 2 doctors present on Docplexus platform uses mobile-phones to access information. An article, a feature or a case study with a word count over 1000-2000 demands several scrolls on the mobile screen which, in turn, is likely to lose readers’ attention. Hence, keep it short, sweet, and mobile-phone friendly to glue your doctor audience to your content pieces and see the magic happen!
- Nail your Content Performance with Periodical Assessment: Always remember to take a very close look at the numbers. Track and measure what type of content is working with your target audience. Identify the top-performing content formats and the key performing indicators for types of content that you generate for Doctors. Tweak your content plan along the way to get the best results for your content marketing efforts. Check if the brand messages that you are trying to pass on are hitting the mark. Apart from the quantitative metrics like reach, likes, and comments, look at the qualitative outcomes – Are the mindsets shifting? Have you been able to resolve misconceptions? Are your customers primed for your product launch?
Content strategy planning for any business requires a thorough analysis of all these aspects. From building the foundation through a deep understanding of doctors’ needs to introducing innovative content sets to keep them engaged; pharma marketers can build a winning online marketing strategy for their brands.
