Pharma & Medico
Companies
Events represents the 2nd largest area of spending for pharma marketing and sales with an annual spending of approximately $7 billion (Veeva Systems).
Despite the increasing patient load and administrative burden on HCPs, the events channel continues to thrive. Embracing virtual event technologies, seamlessly integrated with customer data and event planning systems, eliminates the manual data entry required for hybrid and/or physical-only events.
As patient demands for targeted, complex, and personalised treatments grow, providers still require essential information and education. However, a notable shift is occurring as HCPs increasingly prefer attending these meetings virtually with 96% of HCPs say they would benefit from attending more conferences, meetings, and CME events virtually (Ashfield Healthcare).
One source-of-truth where external HCPs, employees, and sales channels can see, learn, and engage in relevant product material, in a time- and cost efficient manner, to train and enable themselves to become experts in your pharma products.
Engaging Knowledge Sharing for Pharmaceutical Companies
It's time to give HCPs precisely what they yearn for – content tailored to their needs, delivered at the right time and place, and presented in their preferred format.
Pharmaceutical companies face a myriad of challenges in effectively disseminating their product and sales information to Health Care Providers (HCPs). These challenges, intricately intertwined with the complexities of the healthcare industry, demand innovative approaches and strategic solutions to ensure that crucial information reaches its intended audience.
Information Overload: HCPs are bombarded with an overwhelming volume of information from various pharmaceutical companies. Cutting through the noise and capturing their attention has become increasingly difficult. Pharma companies must find unique ways to stand out and deliver their messages in a concise, compelling, and memorable manner.
Regulatory Constraints: The pharmaceutical industry operates within strict regulatory frameworks that govern the promotion and dissemination of product information. Navigating these regulations while effectively communicating the value and benefits of their products requires a delicate balance between compliance and creativity.
Shifting Digital Landscape: The rapid advancement of technology and the increasing digitalisation of healthcare have fundamentally transformed the channels through which HCPs access information. Pharma companies must adapt to this changing landscape, ensuring their product information is readily available across multiple digital platforms and tailored to meet the preferences of HCPs.
Limited Access: Gaining direct access to HCPs has become increasingly challenging due to factors such as restricted visitation policies, busy schedules, and limited face-to-face interactions. Pharma companies must explore alternative channels and strategies to reach HCPs effectively, such as virtual engagements, telemedicine platforms, and targeted digital marketing campaigns.
Information Relevance: HCPs require accurate, up-to-date, and relevant information to make informed decisions about patient care. Ensuring that the right information reaches the right HCPs at the right time is crucial. Pharma companies must employ sophisticated data analytics and market segmentation strategies to tailor their messaging and deliver personalised content that resonates with each HCP's specific needs and interests.
Building Trust: Trust plays a pivotal role in the relationship between pharma companies and HCPs. Establishing and maintaining trust requires transparent and ethical communication practices. Pharma companies must prioritise transparency, provide comprehensive and unbiased information, and engage in open dialogue with HCPs to foster long-term trust and collaboration.
Educational Needs: HCPs continually seek educational opportunities to stay updated on the latest advancements, research, and treatment options. Pharma companies must address these educational needs by providing high-quality, evidence-based resources, continuing medical education (CME) programs, and interactive platforms that support HCPs' professional development.
Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that combines innovative technologies, data-driven strategies, regulatory compliance, and a deep understanding of HCPs' preferences and needs. By embracing these challenges as opportunities for growth and collaboration, pharma companies can forge meaningful connections with HCPs, effectively communicate the value of their products, and contribute to improving patient outcomes.
Top challenge related to
digital HCP engagement
is 'providing real value'
Rebalancing Pharma Investment: Prioritise Better-Performing On-Demand Channels over Personal Preferences
Achieving the right balance between traditional and digital channels is a delicate process, blending artistry and scientific precision. It requires a deep understanding of HCP needs, preferences, and the ever-changing landscape of channels and content.
To make informed decisions, pharma companies should immerse themselves in customer insights, leveraging a solid data foundation. This data-driven approach allows for a predictive understanding of shifting customer preferences and the relevance of various channels and content types.
It is essential to reallocate resources away from unwanted content, redirecting investment towards on-demand channels that yield better results. By reconciling high-tech capabilities with personalised, high-touch interactions, companies can strike the right balance between technology and human touchpoints, empowering sales and medical representatives with the necessary digital skills to navigate evolving customer engagement models.
By adopting concise and tailored campaigns, pharma companies can create meaningful connections with stakeholders. By doubling down on segmentation and targeting, companies can deliver personalised experiences that resonate with customers. This customer-centric approach requires an agile mindset, constantly adapting to the changing demands of the industry.
In summary, the future of customer engagement planning lies in an omnichannel approach, driven by data and customer insights. It requires a careful balance of resources, focusing on personalised content, and enabling sales and medical representatives with digital competencies. By embracing these strategies, pharmaceutical companies can position themselves at the forefront of customer-centricity, driving meaningful connections and delivering exceptional experiences.
Empowering HCPs with Essential Clinical Data and Anticipating the Future of Engagement
In the landscape of healthcare professional (HCP) engagement, pharmaceutical companies need to proactively anticipate the future by embracing new engagement strategies; what use to work does not cut it anymore. It is crucial to create concise, personalised HCP campaigns that cater to the unique needs of these stakeholders, leveraging segmentation, targeting, and data-driven insights.
By establishing a robust data foundation, pharmaceutical companies can gain a deeper understanding of HCPs' evolving channel preferences and content consumption patterns. This knowledge empowers a predictive approach to meet the dynamic wants and needs of the HCPs. Furthermore, implementing a HCP experience planning framework strengthens the ability to adapt to external factors and absorb potential risks, ensuring a successful and future-proof engagement strategy. Embracing these forward-thinking approaches will enable pharmaceutical companies to thrive in an increasingly digital and customer-centric healthcare environment.
Despite the high relevance of new clinical data to the work of healthcare professionals, a significant gap exists in delivering this crucial information.
In a study conducted by EPG Health, the pharma industry has spoken loud and clear, identifying the foremost challenge among a diverse array of 23 digital Health Care Provider (HCP) engagement hurdles: the urgent need to deliver real value.
As the world gradually emerges from the grip of travel restrictions, one thing remains abundantly clear: the demand for virtual and hybrid events among HCPs will continue to soar, surpassing even the levels witnessed before the pandemic. The industry, keenly aware of this paradigm shift, is diligently preparing to meet the evolving needs of HCPs head-on. However, a critical issue lingers – virtual events, while undeniably valuable, lack the immersive face-to-face networking opportunities intrinsic to traditional in-person meetings.
Beyond networking, a staggering 88% of HCPs place immense value on CME (Continuing Medical Education) accredited events, conference highlights, and the convenience of on-demand recordings. It is a clarion call for the pharmaceutical industry to refocus its efforts, investing more deeply in these avenues that hold tremendous potential for enriching HCP experiences and driving meaningful engagement.
The amount of medical information has been
estimated to double every 73 days
Cascading Pharma Content
Content cascading involves creating a core piece of content and then repurposing and distributing it in different formats and through multiple channels to maximise its visibility and engagement. Overall, content cascading offers pharma companies a strategic advantage by expanding reach, increasing visibility, enhancing engagement, reinforcing messaging, optimising resources, and creating long-lasting content assets. By adopting this approach, companies can effectively communicate their key messages, educate and engage HCPs, and ultimately contribute to improved healthcare outcomes.
Virtual Product Launch
Virtual product launches and knowledge sharing provide opportunities for pharma companies to deliver rich multimedia experiences during product launches. They can incorporate videos, animations, 3D models, and interactive elements to showcase the product's features, benefits, and mechanisms of action. Pharma companies can invite renowned experts, thought leaders, and key opinion leaders from different parts of the world to participate as speakers or panelists. Pharma companies can also schedule virtual launches at their preferred time, making it easier to accommodate various time zones and ensure maximum attendance. This convenience promotes wider participation and accessibility.
HCP Enablement
Virtual partner enablement offers pharma companies the opportunity to overcome geographical limitations, drive cost savings, foster collaboration, deliver personalised content, and leverage data insights. By embracing virtual platforms and technologies, pharma companies can empower their business partners with the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources to effectively navigate the evolving healthcare landscape, enhance their capabilities, and drive mutual success. This also enables pharma companies to efficiently engage and educate partners across different regions, ensuring consistent messaging, knowledge transfer, and alignment of strategies.
Training Pharma Channels
Virtual training provides a flexible and scalable solution that can efficiently reach a geographically dispersed sales force. With virtual platforms, sales representatives can access training materials and sessions from any location, eliminating the need for extensive travel and reducing logistical challenges. Virtual training offers pharma companies a cost-effective, flexible, and engaging solution. It enhances accessibility, enables interactive learning experiences, provides real-time insights, and supports continuous education. By embracing virtual training, pharma companies can empower their sales channels with the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to effectively promote and sell their products in an evolving healthcare landscape.
Events represents the 2nd largest area of spending for pharma marketing and sales
With an annual spending of approximately $7 billion, events hold the second-largest share of pharma marketing and sales. Despite the increasing patient load and administrative burden on HCPs, the events channel continues to thrive. Embracing virtual event technologies, seamlessly integrated with customer data and event planning systems, eliminates the manual data entry required for hybrid events.
As patient demands for targeted, complex, and personalised treatments grow, providers still require essential information and education. However, a notable shift is occurring as they increasingly prefer attending these meetings virtually and 96% of HCPs say they would benefit from attending more conferences, meetings, and CME events virtually (Ashfield Healthcare). Another source, MedData Group, reports that 78% of HCPs say meetings and events should be a mixture of physical and virtual (MedData Group).
Source: Veeva Systems report, Guide to Digital HCP Engagement, 2021.
PHARMA RESULTS
Novo Nordisk: We took on the challenge of helping Novo Nordisk onboard 200 of their most trusted and connected people in the European sales organisation. Within a tight time frame, we helped them on their journey to transform the culture of their European sales organisation. Novo got a customised skin on the platform that mirrored an international hotel setting, keeping the meeting experience colourful, informal, and playful. The platform offered different navigational hot-spots such as 'toolbox', 'Q&A', and 'surveys' where participants could visit and interact. Live programming such as debates were broadcasted and executed in both English and German. Overall, Novo Nordisk achieved an engaging virtual experience design, custom development, studio production content, simultaneous live translation, art direction, and project management.
Bayer Canada: For their 400+ employees, Bayer's Canadian entity choose to host their internal 2-day event in virtual settings. The team at Bayer were highly-skilled in terms of the orchestration of virtual events and as such, pushed the team at Virtual Hive in new directions in regard to new networking features, customised environment, and multiple content translation for their French and English speaking audiences. During the event, all employees were routed to designated breakout rooms based on a list uploaded in the platform prior to the event's start; as such, Bayer could ensure that the management teams could discuss matters relevant to only them while the other departments were gathered respectively in content rooms related to their responsibilities. Many of the participating employees were praising the aesthetics of the virtual scenery in the chat module which confirmed Bayer's attention to detail.
Bayer AG: They simulated an in-person product launch in a branded virtual setting, and with a few clicks, attendees were able to to join an global, real-time community, where people met and interacted (almost) just like at a physical event, but without the flights, taxi rides, venues, and hotel stays. Bayer more than doubled their expected attendee numbers, reduced the carbon footprint by 67%, and gained valuable attendee data and analytics for more informed event decisions.
Lundbeck: Together with Lundbeck, we made an online portal for health care professionals, specifically for HCPs within the Alzheimer, psychiatry, and psychology sector. Overall, 1,000 participants were enlisted for the global knowledge sharing event and many keynote speakers were presented in various breakout rooms to enhance content relevancy among the HCPs.
Orkla: While participating as an exhibitor for their many health-oriented products, Orkla had created comprehensive virtual branding to showcase their fairly large product portfolio at a large well-known industry conference. They interacted with attendees through 1:1 and group video once information-seeking participants were lurking around Orkla's exhibitor stand. This created meaningful conversations among Orkla's exhibition team and new distributors and sales channels which was their overarching event goal.
Learn More About How We Helped Novo Nordisk, Lundbeck, Bayer AG, and other pharma companies.
Want to talk to a pharma-specialist?
Got questions about Virtual Hive and its capabilities? Our team is here to help. Contact us for quick and friendly support. You can also learn about the platform in the sandbox demo here.