Healthcare is always changing—and at an alarmingly fast pace. To keep up, medical affairs must have a strong omnichannel strategy.
Healthcare professionals are constantly bombarded with information from various sources, making it even more crucial to deliver messages that actually meet their needs. In fact, by truly connecting with them and understanding who they are, your organization can set clear goals and create tailored content to engage them on a deeper level.
In this article, we’ll explore all of the elements that make up an effective omnichannel strategy. That way, you can get to work on tweaking your approach and reap the rewards that follow.
The Foundation Of An Omnichannel Strategy
An effective omnichannel marketing strategy for medical affairs organizations relies on two core components: understanding the target audience and setting clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Understanding your target audience
One of the most important pillars of an omnichannel approach is understanding your audience. Since healthcare professionals (HCPs) vary in their specialties and styles, audience segmentation plays a big role. It also helps create a more personalized customer experience.
Additionally, segmenting HCPs and key opinion leaders (KOLs) based on their practice areas will allow you to use targeted medical communications. For example, cardiologists may require different resources and educational content through different communication channels compared to endocrinologists.
It’s also crucial to understand that HCPs have diverse learning preferences, such as:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Kinesthetic
This is where platforms like Acceleration Point’s Medical Excellence services come in.
Understanding this can help you tailor your materials to meet their needs. Plus, identifying gaps in knowledge can help your medical affairs professionals focus on delivering the most relevant content. This ensures that HCPs receive the information they need, when they need it, which is part of creating visibility.
Remember, data-driven audience insights are essential for shaping how your messages are crafted and delivered. So, by analyzing data from different touchpoints or using software like Kwello, your teams can gain more valuable insight into HCP behaviors and preferences.
Setting clear objectives and KPIs
If you want your omnichannel strategies to be more successful in the pharmaceutical industry, it’s important to focus on setting clear objectives. You can also improve the overall customer experience by aligning these goals across your marketing, sales, and medical affairs teams.
Similarly, you can track the effectiveness of your efforts by using relevant KPIs. These KPIs may include engagement rates, which measure how often healthcare providers interact with content. They can also include conversion rates that track the percentage of HCPs who take your desired actions, such as signing up for additional resources.
Content Development And Tailoring
When it comes to content development, it’s important to look at the role of modular content creation and implement a content tailoring strategy.
Modular content
Modular content refers to creating reusable, standalone content pieces that you can easily adapt for various:
- Social media platforms
- Digital channels
- Formats
- Audiences
This approach helps streamline the content creation process by allowing medical teams to repurpose existing material for multiple channels and contexts.
To create modular content, your medical affairs teams can start by breaking complex medical education material down into smaller pieces. These may include key messages, data points, graphics, and more. However, you’ll need to remember that this content won’t be as effective without a strong content tailoring strategy.
Content tailoring strategy
Content tailoring strategies usually involve crafting targeted materials that will resonate with various audience segments. Because you’re focusing on different sections of your audience, you’ll also need to take formatting into account.
Tailored content can take several formats, including:
- Peer-reviewed publications for in-depth scientific insights
- Online modules for interactive learning
- Videos for quick engagement (even through channels like social media)
- Symposiums for face-to-face discussions
By using these different formats (and incorporating techniques like digital listening), your medical affairs teams can effectively deliver relevant and impactful content. As a result, the content will also help to boost HCP interactions with your medical science liaison, engagement, and understanding, which can improve the educational outcomes of your strategy.
Overcoming Challenges In Omnichannel Execution
Implementing an omnichannel strategy successfully means your medical affairs teams must navigate challenges they may encounter with digital KOLs, HCPs, and pharmaceutical companies. The two most common challenges your teams may face are:
Knowledge sharing barriers
Perhaps the biggest challenge in the execution of omnichannel strategies is translating global medical communications into local contexts. Each market has its own regulations and dynamics that can potentially complicate the implementation process.
For example, an engagement strategy that works well in one country may not resonate with HCPs in another country. This may be due to differences in practice patterns or the regulatory environments. Additionally, variations in resources and capabilities across different regions can lead to inconsistencies in how your strategies are executed.
To tackle these issues, you’ll need to establish a comprehensive knowledge-sharing framework. This framework can help to facilitate more open communication among teams in different markets. As a result, it will allow them to share successful practices, insights, and lessons they’ve learned.
Continuous measurement and improvement
Setting up feedback loops is incredibly important for assessing and tweaking your omnichannel strategies. These loops allow your medical affairs teams to collect data from HCP interactions and engagement metrics. In turn, they can gauge the effectiveness of these strategies.
Some techniques for gathering feedback include:
- Surveys
- Analyzing engagement statistics
- Having brief meetings to assess outcomes
- Using a social media monitoring platform such as Kwello, which has newly updated capabilities.
Using a data-driven approach like this can give your teams more valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. That way, they can easily identify areas for improvement.
Once their feedback has been collected, your teams will also need to adapt their strategies to reflect the new information they’ve received. By continuously refining and improving your strategies, you can make sure that they remain effective and responsive.
FAQs
What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing in medical affairs?
In medical affairs, multichannel marketing involves using multiple channels to communicate with HCPs. This can include things like in-person meetings, email interactions, or social media. However, since these communication channels usually operate in silos, they lack integration.
On the other hand, omnichannel marketing focuses on creating a more seamless experience across these channels. It focuses on a holistic approach where all of these interactions are connected, which allows for more consistent messaging and tailored content. This content is also specifically tailored depending on the HCPs’ preferences and behaviors.
Omnichannel strategies are generally more effective because they create an opportunity for deeper engagement and better relationship-building.
What are the key components of an omnichannel medical affairs strategy?
There are five key components to any omnichannel medical affairs strategy. These are:
- Clearly defined goals and objectives: Before implementing an omnichannel strategy, it is important to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you will measure success. This will help you create a plan and select the right channels to reach your target audience.
- Segmentation and targeting: In order to effectively reach your audience, you need to understand who they are and what their needs and preferences are. This will help you create targeted content and messages that will resonate with them.
- Integrated communication: An omnichannel approach requires coordination and integration across all channels to ensure a consistent and seamless experience for the audience. This may involve using a central platform or system to manage and track engagement across channels.
- Personalization: An omnichannel strategy allows you to deliver personalized experiences to your audience. This can include tailoring content and messaging based on the individual’s needs and preferences, as well as providing personalized support and resources.
- Analytics and measurement: To determine the success of your omnichannel strategy, it is important to track and measure engagement and outcomes across all channels. This will help you identify what is working well and where you can improve.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to omnichannel marketing, creating an effective strategy isn’t the only challenge. Rather, the obstacles involved with implementing this strategy can get in the way, too. Fortunately, with comprehensive software like Kwello and our expert insight, you can refine your omnichannel strategy in no time.
