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The Golden Rules for Online Marketing Success

Pulse Issue 8 2024

"The Golden Rules for Online Marketing Success"

Pharmaceutical marketers are embracing digital channels more than ever before. But watch out! Marketing online runs the risk of becoming ‘wallpaper’ if the content is bland, undistinctive, or undifferentiated. Pharma companies need to think of a unique, creative value-add to stand out online.

Here are the top six golden rules for online marketing success.

Rule #1: Be Useful

Cut-through starts by making sure your communications are ‘useful’. The biggest message in recent years from consumers to all marketers is simply this: be useful to me, don’t sell to me. Add value to customers and patients by plugging pain points and gaps of knowledge, and providing them with something relevant to their issues, that takes them closer to achieving their treatment goals.

Rule #2: Emotion and Science Works

Use emotion, always! Use your brand’s unique mix of science and emotion to tell your story and connect with customers and patients. We, humankind, make decisions based on emotions. That’s why corporates invented procurement departments: to take the emotion out of buying! The most powerful way to connect with humans is through storytelling. Your online marketing content must be ‘story-rich.’

Rule #3: Determine your target audience and channel-plan

Make sure you’re going after the audience with the right focus or breadth to achieve your company, business unit, sales or communications goals. We often find that the GP, the HCP, the patient isn’t the only important audience to consider.

  1. Who are you targeting?
  2. Who are they engaging with to form opinions?
  3. What channels are they using, what content are they looking at, what keyword phrases are they searching for?
  4. Which of your competitors are indexing well for those search terms?
  5. Where are the gaps in the channels, content, stories being used and told? Focus on filling the gap competitors are not active in so you can stand out.

Also, as you build out your strategy to cut through make sure you don’t miss out on trying to engage with the KOLs, the carers, pharmacists and other specialists that could help you achieve your objectives.

Rule #4:  Understand your customers’ journey   

When trying to solve the First Golden Rule, Be Useful, you’ll need to give the audience what they want and need. But if you don’t know what that is, you may want to map your customers journey and work out the opportunity for your brand to stand out.

  1. What is the customer (HCP/Patient) diagnosis and treatment pathway?
  2. What happens along this path, what is adequate and what are the problems?
  3. What role does your brand play and how can it add value that’s differentiated from your competitors?
  4. How does your customer read/view/interact with content along the journey? What channels, formats, frequency, voices?

At the end of completing this tip, your brand will be in a stronger position to fill the gaps and to dial-up its greatness.

Rule #5:  Integrate your channels 

When thinking about how to deliver a great impact, plan how your channels should work together to engage the audience at the right points in their journey. When channels are integrated, the customer’s experience is improved and the brand can achieve better results.

  • Ensure your channels connect with one another and have synchronized messaging that funnels through awareness, engagement, and conversion.
  • Involve your sales reps – ensure they understand your digital channels and can promote them.

Rule #6:  Engage with your audience 

If there is an opportunity to engage with an audience while being useful, take it! It will help your brand better understand your customer and potentially generate insights which in turn could add future value and improve health outcomes.

  • Have a two-way conversation with your audience online, not just a static presence.
  • There’s a significant opportunity for your audience to interact with you through chat-bot, social, Q&A submission.
  • Ask: What are they (my customers) looking for, are they getting it, can we offer it to them, and are we interesting?
  • What is the creative potential? Is there an opportunity for a brilliant idea, a really well-crafted design, something interactive?
  • Engagement contextually in channel and medium.
  • Influencers and KOLs are a key leverage here – our target customers listen to each other, and pay attention to the views of like-minded sources who they respect.

Simon Davies
simon.davies@bastionbrands.com.au
M: 0402 425 545

 

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