Pharma marketing is late to the game of digitization
– how do you seize the opportunities?

Pharma is going through a seismic change, as healthcare is evolving from a prescriber-centric value chain into a multi-stakeholder ecosystem, with the patient squarely in the centre, payers as the main gatekeepers, and increasing decision power being devolved to other healthcare professionals, like nurses and pharmacists.

To remain successful, pharma needs to adapt its go-to-market model to this new reality – fast! One of the key components of survival and long-term success is a “total makeover” of the marketing mix. Indeed, with over 90% of healthcare professionals and 60% of patients online for medical purposes, digital marketing has definitely reached the tipping point for life sciences. But what is the optimal mix? Not only for prescribers, but for each key audience in the ecosystem? And what is the % of digital and the digital strategy for all these groups?

So, how can you seize the opportunities of digital such that you create a sustainable competitive advantage?

1. First and foremost, avoid the “tactic in search of a strategy” fallacy! The fact that you can do it, does not mean that you should do it. Therefore: define a digital strategy first.
2. In this new digital world you will need to shift resources. You will therefore need to prioritize tactics and decide what % of the marketing mix will be allocated to digital tactics in terms of resources. In parallel, you need to decide how during execution synergies can be created with the rest of the mix by fusing offline with online.
3. You need to determine what are the digital “must haves” and “strategic differentiators” for the new stakeholders, including payers and patients, and how to facilitate e-connectivity between selected stakeholders in a win-win setting.
4. Ensure your strategy is executed flawlessly by designing and setting up the appropriate organization and processes for it.  Should it be a dedicated team or be part of everyone’s job? How many FTEs are required? Howdo you enable change? What can be learned from best practices in pharma – and from other industries?
5. Constantly monitor new trends (e.g. customer experience, social media, mobility/ubiquity,  “connected health” …), assess their impact for pharma and decide how and when to add them to your digital strategy.
6. And finally, define the appropriate impact metrics to assess performance of the implementation.

Pharma is late to the game of digitization (see figure). Other industries have woken up to the digital future much sooner than healthcare. But the rate at which it is now catching up is to be seen no less than meteoric.

“ This pharma e-marketing workshop has given me an overview of available e-tactics, and tools for evaluating and prioritizing the tactics according to strategic needs and ideas for measuring investment. Excellent starting point!”

Charlotte Vestergaard, Nordic Copaxone Marketing Head, Sanofi-aventis – Denmark