During the past decade, India has witnessed drastic change in the organizational behavior of different businesses. With the digital age, most industries have set up their businesses online, and even a few of the pharmaceutical companies have entered into the digital world, while many other pharma companies are still trying to organize their online marketing strategy.
The ease of access to information available online as well as the growing interest of consumers to explore digital technology has led to the success of taking any business online and organizing it digitally. In this digital age, many doctors have started to adapt digital technology in their medical practice. Doctors have become internet savvy, and follow updates about the latest advances in the medical field, and have even changed their patient’s treatment plans based on the information they obtain on the web. In addition, digital media has also made it easy for sales reps to contact doctors as nowadays it has become very challenging for sales reps to get face time with doctors. Even patients have become pro-active about their health, and search for information about their medical treatment from variety of sources online.
Although, digital marketing is a vast field that the pharmaceutical companies are trying to explore, they are not taking full advantage of the different digital avenues that are currently available to them. For instance, most online websites are mobile friendly as a majority of people access the web from their mobile. However, only about 4% of pharma companies have mobile friendly sites.
In the near future, digital marketing will become the core of marketing campaigns, and the pharma marketing will be covered by different digital channels like media, messaging, web, mobile, social network. The pharma companies need to leverage the available opportunities strategically and avoid certain threats and pitfalls that may hinder their progress. For instance, healthcare companies need to have proper vision for the implementation of digital marketing, they need to:
- Have a proper vision for the implementation of digital marketing,
- Integrate digital marketing into the current marketing strategies,
- Consider the future of digital marketing applications and not just focus on its applications for the present, and
- Understand the regulatory and legal boundaries, and limit the marketing strategies within those limits.
The dilemma that the Indian Healthcare-Pharmaceutical companies’ face is the level of upcoming regulations in India like the UCPMP act, which was always the need of an hour. The UCPMP act limits the amount of drug related promotions that pharma companies can legally provide. Some pharma companies have come up with digital marketing strategies to promote their companies while remaining within the norms of the UCPMP act regulations. The number of legislative changes and advancement in digital technology are changing the face of healthcare-pharma industry in the market.
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