Omnichannel in Pharma: Benefits & Strategies

Post Covid-19, Pharma companies have realized the limitations of relying too much on, and also investing heavily in, face-to-face visits. They now also understand the inherent shortcomings of that model in terms of creating disease awareness or ensuring value addition to all the stakeholders. 

And since other industries are vigorously adopting digital and advanced analytics, why should not Pharma get the cue and make attempts to transform its marketing models? Well, it seems the industry is all set to adopt digital engagement to connect with healthcare professionals (HCPs). 

The focus will now be on gradually moving from physical to virtual interactions aided by the technologies that enable the integration of customer interactions across channels. In short, the days of omnichannel marketing in Pharma are here. This unique approach can also run concurrently yet independently with a multichannel engagement but with more focus on customers. 

With omnichannel engagement, Pharma companies can ensure tailored and engaging experiences for HCPs with a perfect sync between channels and touchpoints.

In this blog, we will discuss omnichannel engagement in Pharma, the benefits, and key strategies that could transform companies in this sector.   

What is Omnichannel Marketing in Pharma? 

Omnichannel marketing in Pharma is a unique approach to reaching and engaging customers across touchpoints and bringing them a complete digital experience. It’s a powerful approach to synchronize and optimize all marketing efforts across channels and stakeholders to enhance experiences for service providers and patients alike. 

The utility of the omnichannel model lies in boosting customer engagement across levels and meeting the integrated needs of healthcare professionals. By adopting an omnichannel strategy, a pharma company breaks free from the traditional organizational siloes and looks to execute the promotion activities in the most innovative way possible. Developing and executing omnichannel marketing takes some effort and also requires various strategic-level changes, such as those that healthcare SEO companies do. 

Benefits of Omnichannel Engagement in Pharma 

More pharma companies are making a switch to omnichannel for leveraging a more effective and efficient form of marketing. By doing this, they aim to benefit from the evolving technologies and gain improved customer insights. This new approach will help them plan customer experience better and ensure value at key junctures of the journey.   

Benefits are many when omnichannel engagement strategies are deployed in the pharma sector –  

• Customer experiences in tune with specific profiles – Omnichannel marketing is truly customer-centric as it focuses on providing an improved experience and helping businesses design customer journeys in tune with the specific profiles 
• Data-driven decisions – Pharma companies are now able to use customer data for relevant communications as omnichannel marketing brings a complete insight into the interests, actions, and preferences of customers. 
• Targeted communications – Using omnichannel marketing is the first step towards fusing customer needs with your engagement efforts, then making use of the data and ensuring targeted communications at each stage of the journey. 
• Right content to the right person – Unlike multichannel marketing where channels are not synced together, the omnichannel approach benefits from the seamless nature of data and content flow which makes it easy to provide the right content to the right person. 

Key Elements of Pharma Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Developing and executing omnichannel marketing takes some effort and also requires various strategic-level changes. More importantly, you need the support of a robust technology framework as there will be a need to optimize interactions across customer touchpoints and channels. All this however can become easy when you have the knowledge of the key elements that make omnichannel marketing effective in the pharma industry.  

Some of the key elements of developing an omnichannel strategy are –  

More Focus on Virtual Care and Medicine  

The harsh reality of Covid-19 has taught Pharma companies the value of turning to virtual and integrating communications across channels and audiences. So, their focus should be on finding new modes of engagement between the concerned stakeholders. This can be achieved by adjusting the messaging and making it reach every party. In a sense, a pharma company must ensure that HCPs, physicians, and patients all have access to virtual care and medicine with a little less emphasis on face-to-face interactions. 

Optimization Across Channels  

Gone are the days when pharma companies got value for money just by staying focused on one or a few channels. The times have changed as customers now have various touchpoints to play with and this is something the industry can’t ignore. In fact, the real purpose of adopting omnichannel marketing is to optimize messaging across channels and audiences so that great experiences can be delivered. On the other hand, messaging does not reach audiences when the focus is on a few channels alone.    

Personalization 

With multichannel marketing, personalizing customer messages was never a possibility. Since channels are not synced in this form of marketing, it’s always difficult to maintain a uniform flow of messaging across channels. On the other hand, omnichannel marketing uses advanced technologies, analytics, and data which makes it easy to target customers based on their specific needs. This form of marketing makes it easy to serve customers in the exact needs of their journey with a brand.    

Performance Measurement 

With traditional models, it was always difficult for pharma companies to track and measure various marketing metrics and performances. Now thanks to the emergence of technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP), it’s now easy to measure impact across channels and touchpoints. These technologies have made it possible to do dynamic analytics on each customer. And when marketing campaigns are smarter, more acute customer insights will be available. 

Data-driven Decisions

The easy availability of key customer data across touchpoints is one of the major benefits of omnichannel marketing. And when data is available, making informed decisions becomes easy. So a pharma company can better understand which audience profile to target more, where to spend more, and so on. It will also know better know which metrics to give more resources to and where to curb the investment. With a complete understanding of the audience, marketing ROI will always be on the desired lines. 

Tips to Improve Omni-Channel Engagement for the Pharma Industry 

Omnichannel engagement is now key for pharma industries to serve new-age customers well and forge long-term relationships. This kind of marketing requires a company to ditch the reliance on the physical and move more towards the digital. For that shift to happen, there will be some tactical changes needed at key levels. 

Here are some of the tips to improve omnichannel engagement in the pharma industry. 

Research More to Understand the Audience’s Needs

Omnichannel marketing is customer-centric in nature. Its core lies in aligning the business needs with those of your customers. You will need to create strategies that consider meeting the customer preferences and expectations on their digital journey.  

For pharmaceutical companies, the real challenge is to research more and dig a bit deeper to understand what the audience’s needs are. They basically have to do two things – 

• Create accurate audience profiles to cater in tune with the specific needs 
• Research what each audience group needs from the business 

You also need to understand that customers today have more access to information than ever before, so their buying decisions won’t be influenced much by your old-school marketing tactics. 

There will be a need to devise strategies that are in sync with the current times and this is where omnichannel marketing can work. After all, customer retention rates are a whopping 90% higher for omnichannel compared to the single-channel strategy.  

Map Your Customer Journey 

Mapping the customer journey is often the first real step towards knowing your customers and their needs better. This is done to know every customer interaction across touchpoints. It will also help you deliver what is needed. 

• A customer journey map will give a complete insight into all the interactions spanning different stages such as awareness and onboarding etc.  
• The map will help you make the journey smooth for your customers. 

When you map the customer journey, it gives you a good idea of the issues your customers may face in achieving their goals, i.e. to buy from you.  

Maximize the Use of Customer Data 

Customers are quite evolved today as they have tons of information and easy access to multiple channels simultaneously. So, traditional marketing strategies are not going to work with your audience as they are devoid of data use. 

On the contrary, omnichannel marketing ensures you reach out to each group with a unique approach purely on the back of data. And when you maximize the customer data, you can better target each group at a time. Plus, omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value compared to those who use only one channel. 

• You can create multiple campaigns all running concurrently yet targeting different audiences and profiles for your pharma business 
• Each of your campaigns will have higher chances of success for being specific and audience-oriented in nature.

This clearly suggests why pharma companies need to work on a micro level with various engagement technologies to ensure their marketing messages are effective and result-driven all the time. 

Put Emphasis on Delivering Great Customer Experiences 

No matter how amazing marketing strategies you have got to work with, their value would be futile unless they focused on customers. This is the reason multichannel marketing fails to deliver the kind of results pharma companies need. 

When your marketing channels are not integrated, how can you expect customers to get a seamless experience with your brand? With an omnichannel approach, this anomaly is reduced to a great extent as here channels and touchpoints are synced and they move uniformly.

• A great experience happens when all your marketing efforts are able to guide customers successfully through different stages and touchpoints of the funnel. 
• A great experience happens when customers can reach your business from any channel and start engagement as and when they feel like it. 

Clearly, there is a lot of value in delivering a great experience as it can inspire audiences to turn into customers and this is how you can realize the true potential of your business. 

Benefit from Advanced Engagement Tools 

Omnichannel marketing in pharma can only succeed when it has the support of quality engagement tools. A lack of such tools will severely compromise the kind of customer experience you want to deliver to the audience. 

Similarly, your omnichannel strategy could only be a success when you’re delivering a hassle-free user experience which is not possible in the absence of the right tools. After all, you need technology to ensure data flow on a real-time basis as only this can help you serve customers better.     

• A pharma company will need an AI-powered chatbot to effortlessly engage the audience around the clock and across the channels. 
• The use of live chat software could prove beneficial in offering real-time assistance to queries and boosting customer satisfaction with your brand.  
• There will be various visual engagement tools as well such as co-browsing software and video chat which can be used to guide customers through various stages and channels in their journey with your brand.  

Propel Your Pharma Omnichannel Marketing with REVE Chat 

The pharma industry is among the last to adopt the virtues of digitalization and this has been a big hindrance to their potential to reach customers and serve them well. 

At REVE Chat, we are aware of the challenges that this industry faces and also realize the value it can gain from leveraging the power of omnichannel marketing engagement.

We have all the right tools that pharmaceutical companies need to make their marketing more effective and serve their target audience better.

Our AI-powered chatbot is advanced and it can be used to support customers at each stage of the journey with automated and timely responses.

Similarly, there are co-browsing software and video chat that can be used for offering a visual experience to the audience.

In addition, live chat software could be paired with the chatbot to ensure a hybrid experience and ensure value to customers for their conversations.

Make Your Pharma Marketing Progressive with the REVE’s Omnichannel Platform 

The time is right when the companies in the pharma sector took the initiative in benefiting from the virtues of omnichannel communication and helping customers in the way they should.

We at REVE Chat could be a great help in helping organizations devise and execute a robust omnichannel strategy and ensure improved ROI with their marketing efforts. 

Our tons of engagement tools can best serve pharma companies in serving and converting customers in a way they could never do before.

You can start a free trial of our chatbots or other tools and add a new dimension to your customer engagement approach.