As the relationship between clients and companies shifts towards a more personalized tone, the value of customer experience keeps growing. Different tools like social media or personal meetings create various opportunities for communication and engagement. The number of such tools is growing in quantity and quality; this tendency allows the target audience to be more flexible in their choices. However, whatever customer interaction channel you choose, one specific communication approach is always solid. Yes, we are talking about personalization.
According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, 71% of clients expect their experience with the companies to be personalized. In comparison, 75% of respondents claimed they would easily switch brands once they were unsatisfied with their digital experience.
Of course, this could not leave the pharma market unaffected. Patients and healthcare providers strongly require an individual approach for various reasons like time restrictions or personal specifics. So, global pharma and healthcare organizations should rethink their engagement and content marketing strategies to ensure their clients will not switch sides.
Key healthcare marketing trends that organizations should follow in 2024
Understandably, marketers must constantly stay informed about the latest trends and innovations that can change the industry. In this article, we decided to list some of the most prominent healthcare marketing trends to follow in 2023.
▶️ Personalization at scale
Personalization isn’t a new healthcare marketing trend for digital marketers in the pharma and healthcare industries. It’s been a long way of changes in pharma marketing, and this way most often led to the best. Tools, strategies, and methods are advancing quite rapidly. It provides companies with sophisticated and consistent means of determining whom to target, disseminating content more thoughtfully, and engaging HCPs across channels worldwide.
Of course, personalization is the cornerstone of marketing strategies today, whether you are working in pharma or any other area. A personalized approach became a part of overall marketing planning as it’s not only about the correct client’s name in the header. A correctly personalized marketing campaign considers local and professional specifics or their target audience, as US therapists and cardiologists in APAC usually require a different approach.
The demand for a more personalized patient experience and better service catalyzes tectonic changes. It affects how companies worldwide communicate, create relevant content for their clients, and, of course, what means of communication they use.
🚀Omnichannel engagement facilitation
When it comes to determining digital communication channels and how to use them, it’s vital to remember the difference between multichannel and omnichannel approaches.
Multichannel allows using all channels separately from each other, while omnichannel bonds them into a complete customer journey. Omnichannel engagement technology enables healthcare marketers to provide better customer experience — evenly across all channels and avoid pointless repetition of the same content.
In 2023, omnichannel engagement is not declining but instead growing as big pharma companies discover its benefits in engaging both new patients and HCPs.
🎥 Mobile apps and video content
The rule “meet by clothes, see off by mind” is an instant axiom for marketing. It significantly affects your business’ representation on the web portal or mobile app. Regardless of the growing popularity of mobile applications or websites, it is still a valuable tool for pharma marketers and healthcare brands. Any healthcare organization should not underestimate the importance of mobile devices for its target clients. Instead, they should consider the website or application as a personal business card with a mindful message and accurate design. And oh, do not forget search engine optimization.
At the same time, it is worth paying more attention to your video — its quality, quantity, and popularity among viewers. Video materials are easily spread via word of mouth if someone finds them valuable and fancy enough. Take recordings of your webinars or learning courses and adapt them for public visibility and online reviews.
💎 Further development of AI/ML tech
Without any doubt, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies are one of the most successfully-invested fields all over the world. With AI-driven software, pharmaceutical marketers can target many patients more precisely, measure success, and enhance their integrated campaigns. In addition, AI-driven software attracts pharma companies that study its potential in new drug discovery, patient diagnostics automation, and clinical trials which is great for recruitment campaigns.
😎 Patient engagement via metaverse
As we see more and more successful projects implemented within the metaverse concept, the skepticism toward investment in metaverse-based projects is starting to fade. When talking about the pharma and healthcare industry, we can also name numerous examples when metaverse marketing technology helped to reinvent some standard procedures and attract more patients.
For instance, the metaverse was successfully implemented within application patient portals, training apps, patient simulation, immersive learning applications, etc., and provided qualified healthcare service according to the best medical practices.
🔳 Next-gen connectivity
Pharma and life sciences businesses have successfully implemented such modern technologies as blockchain. Blockchain could be used to trace the drug’s transportation, its origin, and the procurement of raw materials. This technology dramatically reduces the number of third parties involved in the process chain, significantly reducing costs and improving safety. Also, blockchain-powered Decentralized Apps (dApps) safeguard the user’s privacy without 100% relying on a single hosting point.
📲 Digital and social media channels
In 2023 the communication between pharma companies, healthcare professionals, and prospective patients via various social networks will only deepen. Also, social media platforms can provide pharma marketers and HEORs with large amounts of valuable medical information that may help in understanding the preferences of healthcare consumers and HCPs.
Finally, social networks are a powerful tool that allows companies to provide education or advertise current social projects.
🔎 Martech technologies
For many Marketing Tech providers, 2022 was a big year, as pursuing excellence in digital marketing contributed significantly to the industry’s growth and expansion. A rapidly-changing MarTech domain matures fast. It helps to increase content marketing production capacities and offers new solutions for marketing operations, valuable data collection, and, further, advanced customer experiences you can implement (like electronic health records with patients’ direct access).
For instance, advanced CRM allows a modular content approach that will enable both: the marketing team and agency to embrace all benefits of advanced content tagging and reusable content and use integrated management tools within the system. And finally, specialized software and innovative practices play a vital role in the success of your communication, coordination of media assets, decision-making, and healthcare marketing strategy in general.
What should healthcare marketers do?
The world does not stand still, and no one should, especially pharma marketers. The number of improvements that can significantly affect the pharma business is only growing without the intention of stopping. Healthcare organizations worldwide are discovering more and more ways to make their business fast, stable, and highly productive.
It could be easy to get lost among all the tricks and approaches. Nevertheless, once you try something new and receive the first benefits of new ideas, it would be challenging to stop implementing other valuable technologies. Still, the best way to understand what’s best for your particular business company is to get an expert individual to your case and demands.
Reach out to our experts to get personal consultation about pharma marketing trends and a few tips on how to implement them into your company’s activities.
