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Ways Pharmaceutical Brands Can Increase the ROI of Digital Marketing Campaigns

From Dr. Harshit Jain, Founder and CEO of Doceree

Pharmaceutical brands hired sales force during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, marketers within those organizations that had primarily focused on face-to-face communication to reach doctors were forced to quickly switch to a digital approach. During this time, pharmaceutical marketers achieved higher ROI on marketing initiatives by running campaigns on endemic networks and point-of-care platforms to better connect with doctors. Currently, 48% of US doctors treat patients through telehealth platforms, which has increased dramatically since 2018 when only 18% of doctors used it.

eMarketer reported that digital advertising spending in the health and pharmaceutical industries rose to $ 9.53 billion in 2020. This is how pharmaceutical marketers can increase their ROI on campaigns by turning to endemic platforms and point-of-care platforms as the advent of digital media heralds the new normal for doctor marketing.

Use real-time audience insights to optimize digital campaigns

Digital marketing for doctors was once a black box marketing approach – data wasn’t available until the end of a campaign. To increase the ROI of a campaign, marketers need to understand what is and what is not in the midst of marketing efforts.

Now pharmaceutical marketers can take advantage of real-time analytics to measure campaign efficiency. Rather than waiting for results at the end of personal efforts, marketers have the opportunity to identify areas of effectiveness and, equally importantly, ineffectiveness to better allocate funds as marketing initiatives progress. With solutions to measure engagement and identify the messages that resonate most with clinicians, pharmaceutical brands can increase the ROI of a marketing investment. If a telehealth medium gains more traction with doctors compared to the messages displayed through a doctor networking platform, then if the engagement rate becomes unfavorable, the resources can be allocated to the more impressive outcome to create more traction for the campaign to achieve.

Assess the relevance of context when placing marketing messages for doctors

The choice of the digital platform is crucial for the success of a marketing campaign. Finally, a message sent to a doctor during their personal time, while they are sharing a family moment on Facebook or while shopping online, hinders the impact of those messages. Doctors simply are not in the mindset to receive and engage in messages and additional medical messages that may benefit their patients during their personal time. The impact of exchanging medical messages through endemic networks and point-of-care networks – EHR, online medical journals, and telehealth channels – is therefore greater when doctors are involved in professional activities. When entering these online portals, it means for marketers that doctors are in the medical mindset and messages can be exchanged at the appropriate times using AI-enabled solutions about the latest products, treatments, or disease awareness.

Present hyper-personalized messages on telehealth platforms

With telehealth projected to reach $ 175 billion by 2026, pharmaceutical brands will continue to allocate heavily resources to commercializing doctors through endemic point of sale. Telehealth platforms have become the new normal as patients become interested in digital communication with doctors. It is now the job of pharmaceutical marketers to use a digital medium that attracts the doctor’s attention while documenting, diagnosing, and prescribing the patient. While chatting with a patient, an on-screen message can be displayed during the discussion without disturbing the doctor, and a video message can be displayed to a doctor while waiting for a patient to join the channel for their consultation. Most importantly, hyper-personalized messages must be delivered so that content resonates with the doctor for maximum impact. Messages during patient exchanges should be educational and not interactive. In point-of-care networks, pharmaceutical brands should send their communications to doctors who don’t need interactive clicks that take them to another screen. The value of telemedicine messages enables doctors to raise awareness with doctors in the moment to best advise the patient.

Marketing campaigns for digital doctors will evolve based on behaviors doctors adopted during the pandemic. With marketing solutions available to brands to better understand doctors in real time, pharmaceutical companies can pursue new technologies that enhance their messaging on endemic platforms and point-of-care platforms. The advent of endemic networks in digital media has transformed the way doctors market to pharmaceutical brands and will improve the way marketers use data analytics to get the highest levels of engagement during campaigns.

Harshit Jain, MD

About the author:

Harshit Jain MD is the founder and CEO of Doceree, the first global network of physician-only platforms for programmatic marketing. With Doceree, Harshit wants to solve the acute problem of rising health care costs by marketing doctors from pharmaceutical brands more efficiently and effectively on digital platforms with methodical use of data and creativity. More information about Doceree can be found at: doceree.com.