Remember when marketing any product or service meant roadside banners, painted-posters on walls, or at most a TV advertisement? If you are millennial-born, then don’t even bother recalling. Even finding new products or services in a newspaper advertisement or in-between your favourite TV shows seems like a distant memory now. Not that, newspaper and TV ads don’t exist anymore. They do. It’s just that people are far more likely to stumble upon those advertisements on their social media handles or while browsing the internet.
Today, the marketing and publicity industry has shifted online, almost entirely, and digital marketing has become the most powerful marketing tool available. This has made marketing mechanisms much more available and cheaper, thus increasing the competition across all industries. To ensure that your product stands out to your customers amidst the legion of ads they see every day, you need to diversify your marketing strategy. This is especially true for cut-throat industries like Pharmaceuticals. A single channel of marketing is not enough anymore.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
So if a single channel of marketing is not enough, then does that mean increasing the number of channels will do the trick? No, it won’t. Multichannel marketing involves distributing your marketing content across various channels, which are, although an improvement over single-channel marketing, not enough to attract buyers. You see, it’s not just about reaching customers across multiple channels but also about engaging customers on those channels.
This is where Omni-channel marketing comes in as it involves establishing a seamless shopping experience for your customers across all the channels available. What it means is that if a random customer comes across one of your products on his Facebook feed, then he should see the same product image on his Instagram handle within a few hours, followed by an email about that very product a few days later. This level of personalisation can be achieved and harnessed only by establishing your brand’s presence across online channels like website, social media handles, text-messaging, and mobile app, as well as offline mediums viz. shopping malls, product-launches, etc.
Why is Omnichannel pharma marketing important?
Around 86% of shoppers are observed to hop across at least two marketing channels while shopping for a product. Sometimes, they make online purchases of a product while standing in line for the same product in a physical shop. Considering the changing landscape of pharma marketing where the buyers are no longer bound to any single platform, almost every pharmaceutical marketing company is today, turning to Omnichannel marketing in the pharma sector.
They realise that people come across their products in physical magazines as well as various websites, and have an equal presence in physical and online communities. Moreover, the B2B clients of pharma marketing are getting increasingly impatient when it comes to researching and purchasing the desired products and services. Pharmaceutical marketing companies need to be present everywhere at all times; in short, they need to be Omnipresent. Naturally, Omnichannel pharmaceutical marketing has become indispensable nowadays.
How to Setup Omnichannel Marketing in the Pharma Industry?
For any pharmaceutical marketing company, it is essential that they set up an efficient pharma marketing system using Omnichannel mechanisms. This involves various modifications and add-ons to the company’s existing marketing setup since Omnichannel pharmaceutical marketing is all about curating a seamless shopping experience for potential end-consumers as well as B2B clients. Below, we have broadly iterated the major aspects and the primary steps of setting up your Omnichannel marketing system:
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Integrating your offline and online channels: The integration of your physical and digital marketing channels is mandatory for providing a smooth and continuous shopping experience for your customers. Hence this is the first and the most important aspect of setting up your Omnichannel marketing system. In this step, focus on promoting health literacy through a holistic approach ranging from the label on the medicine bottle to the website that provides advanced health information.
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Incorporating the latest technology: Handling modern marketing campaigns, for B2B as well as B2C clients, in the pharmaceutical industry requires a strong technological setup with stacks like CRM is non-optional. Incorporating technologies like blockchain, digital analytics, ML and data management will help enhance the entire business chain of end-users, doctors and drug manufacturers.
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Generating effective content: In the pharmaceutical industry, similar to all other domains, your content is the most significant part of all your marketing strategies. You need to produce and publish content that attracts, engages and educates the customers in equal measure. The content used in marketing materials is the most powerful tool of your marketing strategy and must thus be curated carefully.
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Acquiring and analysing data: The biggest output of Omnichannel marketing, besides product promotion, is the consumer data you can acquire through it. In this data-driven age, the future of any business solely depends on how much they know about their consumers and how effectively they apply this knowledge. Maximum data insights can be obtained through structuring your IT, Legal, and Marketing team around data acquisition and analysis models.
A pharmaceutical marketing company can go about creating their Omnichannel strategies in various ways. But when it comes to pharma marketing, it is best to get expert help. Amura Marketing Technologies offers 360-degree growth solutions that are focused on providing brands with long-term returns. Isn’t that what we all want?
