Time To Audit Pharma’s Doctor-Engagement And Other Digital Strategies

Time To Audit Pharma’s Doctor-Engagement And Other Digital Strategies 

It’s now over a year since the unprecedented global health crisis commenced. In this grueling saga, a silver lining is also visible. It helped pharma industry gain a fascinating operational experience, while navigating through disruptive business changes. The changes in the health care ecosystem, ranges from rapid espousal virtual medical care to the meteoric rise of e-marketing and e-visits to physicians.Encouragingly, the entire industry displayed a remarkable resilience to quickly get on to its feet, after initially getting knocked down by the overpowering impact of the pandemic.

One critical pharma-brand demand generating tool – in-person engagement between doctors and pharma reps, also came to a grinding halt – almost overnight, as it were, for well-known reasons. Moreover, companies started facing a crippling situation for all physical business events, such as, Continuing Medical Education (CME), active participation in medical conferences, patient engagements, and so on – as an integral part of their brand or corporate value delivery strategy.

Catching many by surprise, almost in no time, finding no other effective alternatives, several drug companies imbibed e-marketing – many of them in bits and pieces, though. Interestingly, technology based organizational transformation, which was progressing at a snail’s speed, thus far, gained momentum during the pandemic. Since then, there hasn’t been any looking back in this area. Instead, the speed of digital transformation in pharma is expected to accelerate further, as we move on.

Notably, many doctors are still not inclined for in-person sales calls. But, they haven’t stopped looking for product and other information from drug companies. More importantly, after more extensive charting the cyberspace during lockdowns, information requirements of many doctors have changed significantly, as confirmed by various surveys. The same holds good regarding their preferred channels of information and interaction.

This prompts one to ponder over a critical question. Although, a shift towards digitalization, including pharma marketing, is necessary in the changing scenario, do companies need to audit their digital marketing strategies in this area – now?

Nonetheless, this performance audit needs to be an independent assessment of a company’s e-marketing operations to assess whether its digital programs or functions are working as intended to achieve the expected goals. This article will dwell on this subject.

Are companies satisfying doctors’ information needs digitally?

The answer to this question was captured in a recent survey conducted by Abelson Taylor/Veeva. Some of its important findings are as follows:

• Amid peak of Covid pandemic, 42 percent physicians surveyed, wanted from drug companies, specific treatment protocols tailored to their patient populations. Alongside, they also need to know the latest Covid related developments in medical silences, information on how the outbreak impacts their day-to-day practice, and how they deal with patients. The survey revealed, most of these unconventional information needs were slow to arrive to many doctors.

• 83 percent physicians reported they hadn’t received any new information from reps, even remotely, in the week before the survey – in late March 2020.

• Despite reps’ visits being more preferred by doctors, which included e-visits and tele-detailing calls, these declined by 63 percent, while emails between the two increased by 263 percent during the same period.

• The average time for online meetings is now 17 minutes, despite the above preferences of doctors – versus a pre-Covid average meeting time of just six minutes. One reason could be doctors had more time with them as patient calls were less.

Therefore, the question arises, couldn’t these visits be made more customer need oriented? The possible reason for the same could be lack of simultaneous feedback mechanism for pharma marketers. Similar assessment is essential in other related areas, as well. Because, for reps’ effective virtual ‘visits’, data based – right selection of customer-preferred digital channels, content and formats for communication is crucial.

For Rep’s effective e-visits – channel, content and format selection is vital: 

This area has been well-researched in an India specific article, published by Bain & Company on December 20, 2020. The study found that physicians in India are more likely to engage with certain channels, content and formats for virtual ‘visits’ of medical reps.

The study also found – otherwise, physicians’ click-rates for digital information from pharma companies has traditionally been low – at an average around 10 percent to 15 percent, with some variation for specialties. Thus,....continue reading at...Time To Audit Pharma’s Doctor-Engagement And Other Digital Strategies http://www.tapanray.in/time-to-audit-pharmas-doctor-engagement-and-other-digital-strategies/