With the advent of Pharma 5.0, omnichannel strategies have been the talk of the hour, and several success stories have led more enterprises to embrace them. Since it is an integration of multiple channels, offering a holistic and customised experience to patients and HCPs has never been more seamless. This tactic has revolutionised marketing silos, allowing enterprises to gain insight into target audiences through a plethora of interfaces, including social media, digital platforms, applications, email, messages, and more.
There are some significant benefits of the omnichannel approach, and the key changemakers are:
- Patient-Centricity: Since Pharma 4.0, the industry has navigated ways to couple big data with AI, and that has made all the difference. Delivering content across varied mediums and scraping insights of patients has become prompt and more accurate. Thus, patient satisfaction has reached new heights, fostering deep relationships with caregivers and other stakeholders.
- Boosting Patient Experience: In continuation with the above strategy, omnichannel approaches have unlocked new pathways towards a better patient experience during their overall therapy timeframes. Accessing multiple channels allows enterprises to bring accurate medical data to the table for consumers. Moreover, enhanced engagement has been reported with patient support programmes and through meaningful interaction with sales representatives. Ultimately, this leads to long-term patient retention and loyalty.
- ROI and Sales: Omnichannel approaches in oncology pharma marketing allow companies to gather high-quality interfaces and assign resources more effectively to boost sales. Moreover, the capacity to track and gauge the impact of individual channels enables companies to distil their strategies over time, ensuring gradual improvement and better returns.
Post-COVID-19, oncology pharma marketing has delved deeply into omnichannel strategies to build relationships with different stakeholders, such as patients and HCPs. Let us explore the key factors in optimising omnichannel strategies in the pharma industry:
- Comprehending Customer Needs: To make an impact through the omnichannel approach in the oncology pharma industry, a holistic understanding of consumer needs is essential. Enterprises must identify the importance of consistency, simplicity, and versatility in content delivery across multiple channels. This calls for proper communication techniques and practices. Reports suggest unique communication needs among cancer patients, with half desiring quantitative data and the majority requiring qualitative data. On the other hand, both caregivers and patients often struggle to communicate transparently. Different patients with nuanced cancer treatments experience communication hindrances, which has led HCPs to shift from a “one-size-fits-all” to a more customised discussion strategy.
- Applying an HCP-Focused Framework: The pivot towards a better omnichannel approach is to craft and adapt to a more HCP-focused framework. This strategy requires a deep understanding of HCPs, considering their unmet needs, experiences, emotions, and behavioural drivers. Structuring a strategy that prioritises context, leverages empathy, and shapes expectations is essential in fostering positive consumer interactions through omnichannel communication.
- Promoting Advanced Analytics: AI/ML models for predictive analytics have been key drivers in achieving effective omnichannel oncology marketing. By leveraging these analytical capabilities, enterprises can gather and analyse large datasets, enabling real-time moderation of marketing strategies. This involves optimising mediums and crafting communication on an individual level, thereby enhancing the omnichannel experience.
- Selecting Meaningful KPIs: Enterprises should focus on KPIs that best reflect the consumer-enterprise relationship status. Metrics such as website visits, lead conversion rates, and engagement volumes should be investigated and acted upon. Tracking these metrics with accuracy can provide deep insights into individual consumer needs, aligning the company’s visions and innovations with their desires.
- The Significance of Voice of the Customer (VoC) Research: Voice of the Customer (VoC) research acts as another driving element for optimising oncology omnichannel strategies. VoC-driven data helps gauge softer KPIs, considering the context in which channels are utilised. It provides quality insights into each channel’s metrics, overall customer perception, and competitive benchmarks. VoC analysis should focus on factors significant to HCPs and interpret data into actionable insights through advanced analytics.
Well, optimising is one part of the overall oncology omnichannel marketing in generating ROI. But the whole game prefers those enterprises that are continuously monitoring omnichannel advancements. By gauging these insights, companies get a comprehensive understanding of their real-time status, enabling them to tweak marketing strategies and thus leading them toward better outcomes.
Even though most of the factors we have already discussed during optimisation strategies, here are the insights into measuring omnichannel successes:
- Paving specific objectives and Key Performance Indicators: It’s already been discussed earlier in this article but it’s never sufficient to put pressure on hot KPIs that drive change like- social media engagement, conversation rates, email click rates, website visits, and consumer satisfaction scores. By monitoring these parameters, enterprises may focus on the areas (that require more attention) to improve further.
- Leverage Tracking tools and Data Analytics: Another point of discussion that we have covered earlier but enterprises need more information and hence we are discussing this again. ETL tools (Extract, Transform, and Load) can be a game changer for enterprise websites as they can manage large sets of datasets and transform them into target systems at a time. Some of the examples include- Oracle Data Integrator, Google Cloud Dataflow, etc. CDPs on the other hand offer a more personalised consumer experience. It also works seamlessly while abiding by complex data regulations and compliances like CCPA and GDPR.
- Applying Cross-Channel Attribution Models: In an omnichannel ecosystem, attributing engagement and conversion to particular channels can be daunting. Applying cross-channel attribution models makes pharma enterprises comprehend the contributions of individual channels and interfaces in the consumer journey. By aligning perfect actionable to nuanced channels and interactions, attribution models deduce a more factual status of the impact of each channel, allowing enterprises to assign resources effectively and reform their omnichannel strategies.
- Gather and utilise customer feedback: One of the first parameters in the omnichannel approach towards oncology pharma marketing is the company’s response to consumer feedback. To measure omnichannel success, companies can nurture surveys, feedback forms, or consumer interviews. These will give them a holistic idea about their qualitative insights with a more median metric rather biased one. Subsequently, they can optimise omnichannel strategies by integrating that feedback.
Conclusion
Since omnichannel strategies have become an integral part of Pharma 5.0, keeping up with advanced analytics to foster patient-centricity is essential. Gauging success through meaningful KPIs, leveraging big data and AI/ML models, and integrating customer feedback is the key to sustainable omnichannel marketing. Enterprises that remain consistent and flexible in adapting to emerging insights will lead the way in oncology marketing, fostering stronger HCP relationships and enhancing the patient journey.