Pharma Omnichannel: An Enhanced Personalized Customer Experience

The pharmaceutical industry’s particularly slow pace of change was tested in 2020 with the pandemic. The sudden transition to virtual meetings and other forms of digital engagement showed that, in fact, we can pivot quickly when the need is urgent. The industry’s sudden shift to digital engagement has triggered companies to rethink their previously fragmented approach to managing physician and other customer/key stakeholder relationships.

However, we have yet to work out the best way to mix in-person and digital engagements. With siloed teams causing a lack of insight into how many times a physician has been touched, there is still a disjointed experience for our customers in the pharma industry. What do we need to do to catch up with other industries, such as retail, finance, and hospitality, despite some progress?

Notwithstanding the industry’s typical resistance to change, we have seen great strides in recent  years when it comes to improving our customer engagement model. From reshaping the role of our sales reps to adopting new technologies, it is clear we have all realized we need to be more customer-centric and with a less siloed marketing approach. 

Over the past few years, multichannel marketing had been evolving as a solution to the marketing challenges plaguing the pharmaceutical industry, but the success was limited. At first, multichannel marketing appeared to be a somewhat effective strategy as it enabled pharma to activate multiple channels simultaneously. However, pharma would soon realize that this approach of adding channels to the mix to get  their message through was based on siloed activations in separate channels, with limited, if any, coordination, or intersection across stakeholders.

Faced with a challenging healthcare environment coupled with the fast evolution of digitalization because of the pandemic, the industry quickly realized the noisy, overwhelming, uncoordinated channel use and promotional waste of the multichannel approach. Some companies are now replacing this multichannel marketing with omnichannel marketing to enable simultaneous orchestration, optimization and personalization across channels and multiple stakeholders as they strive to reach and engage customers to meet their evolved new needs. The current pandemic has taught us how quickly we sometimes need to adapt, reinvent and be there with our customers, especially nowadays where customization and personalization are the name of the game. 

Simply put, omnichannel is an ecosystem, an integrated form of multichannel – “multichannel done right.” It is about providing appropriate and relevant content across different channels that tie together to create a unified message, without becoming repetitive. Instead of the fragmented and siloed multichannel approach, omnichannel marketing employs the simultaneous orchestration of channels across personal, non-personal, and media, and addresses the integrated needs of multiple stakeholders – consumers/patients, healthcare professionals, and payers.

Bringing the channels and stakeholders together in a truly integrated manner is the pivotal shift required to break through today’s noisy and crowded pharmaceutical marketplace. Channels are connected and designed to work together. Content in one channel will relate to content in another. That means you no longer must repeat the same information everywhere. Instead, you can move people through your ecosystem by designing an experience or content journey. In other words, omnichannel enables you to work in a customer-centric way – orchestrating and sequencing content to meet specific people's needs.

Today’s goal is to improve the customer experience/journey, and omnichannel marketing has the potential to do that by targeting physicians with the latest advancements in science or by increasingly influencing the number and adherence of patients on therapy through integrated promotional efforts that engage them in their own healthcare journey. This promotional approach will also enable pharma to optimize spend as it efficiently navigates and truly impacts all relevant channels and stakeholders – you activate your ecosystem by designing specific pathways or “customer journeys.”

A customer journey is the customer's digital path – via touchpoints and CTAs (Call To Action) – through the ecosystem. In other words, it requires sequencing channels and content. People start at one point and then move forward through a series of interactions with your company or brand. If you use an adoption ladder, you know the major stops people must travel through to arrive at the destination. 

Even simple customer journeys can provide experiences of real value. Each touchpoint builds on the last, enabling HCPs to develop their knowledge on a topic. Mixing channels and content types improves the experience. That makes it effective and especially engaging as you can present information in different ways by mixing channels and enabling HCPs to experience multiple content formats. Content is more relevant to their needs, delivered in a timely manner, and is more engaging — making better use of the potential of digital technology.

So, you orchestrate channels and content to unfold HCP experience. For example, an HCP might start with a rep engagement (F2F or e-detailing), moving to an approved email (follow up providing links to online info), which prompts them to learn more on a brand website (additional topic info), where they book an MSL discussion during which they are invited to a relevant webinar (KOL discussion on the topic).

In summary, omnichannel marketing allows serving customers through personalized interactions based on their preferences and other patterns. This is so far the greatest benefit of omnichannel: all the channels are connected, and content integrality provides the opportunity to build personalized customer journeys. This is the shift toward customer-centric, personalized care that life sciences and pharmaceutical companies have declared as their priority. Being customer- and patient-centric is necessary for companies that truly believe in the concept of making a positive impact in the lives of their customers. Business growth will happen because of it.

To have a successful omnichannel approach you need to ensure your marketing team builds and/or relies on the following capabilities:

• Proper HCP/key stakeholder segmentation schemes based on their specific targeting needs

• Capacity to create personalized customer journeys and orchestrate the customer-centered vision

• Integration of multiple channels

• Ability to create content for a whole mix of channels

• Marketing automation system

Omnichannel provides tangible benefits and advantages over multichannel “siloed” communication – both for companies and for HCPs. Companies get more effective and efficient marketing. And they can integrate improved customer insights to their marketing and customer journey planning. Medical professionals get a far better experience. So, some of the clear benefits for companies include:

• Cost-efficiency: due to greater ROI on each interaction flow, as the touchpoints are more directed and clearly impacting each one with value

• Customer understanding across channels – interests, knowledge, preferences, thus more frequent and meaningful interactions in a clear, organized but dynamic pattern

• Customer-centricity: greater customer satisfaction/HCP engagement as they see value given personalized relevant content and curated experiences

• Strategic and consistent brand messaging: you work strategically – providing the right/relevant content, to the right person, in the right order

• Convenient management and coordination via a single center

• More meaningful KPIs and metrics that will deliver financial benefits

One more benefit of this approach is that omnichannel allows transcending the inherent limitations of each channel, making the message heard in its entirety, adjusting the tactics to the idea, not the idea to the channel.

The most used channels in pharma are: F2F calls, e-detailing, mass mailing, rep-triggered mails, social media, webinars and mobile apps – and all have their limitations, whether it be time, reach, length/number of characters allowed, availability, technical requirements, interactivity, consent, etc. The reality is that although channels and opportunities are growing in number, it’s neither possible nor sensible to invest in everything. Success requires understanding the right channels for a particular audience and integrating them to create a consistent experience across them all.

To summarize, the principle at the heart of understanding the difference between multichannel and omnichannel is to be selective. The goal should be to use “many” channels (multichannel), but in such a way that there is a seamless experience across the most appropriate channels for your customers (omnichannel).

Without an omnichannel mindset, you may be missing out on crucial opportunities to improve your brand experience across all channels, at every stage of the buying funnel. To move ahead with a truly omnichannel experience, companies need a complete view of digital and in-person touchpoints for each customer and an analytics program to process this data. In the end, it is crucial to deliver insights that can guide marketing and field teams. 

Enabling omnichannel marketing requires cultural change for more agility, measuring and adjusting frequently, in contrast to the long-term plans that traditionally drive pharmaceuticals’ commercialization. There needs to be coordination at the heart of any omnichannel marketing approach. This means that teams across marketing, sales, medical, IT and operations all must align to the brand strategy and enhance the customer experience. Companies require leadership commitment to plan for scale, process design and technology choices to avoid falling back to multichannel, uncoordinated activity.