BY HEMAL SOMAIYA
Combining the approach with data and technology-driven, targeted applications provides the highest ROI.
Multichannel marketing has been the go-to strategy in many industries, including healthcare, for decades. And for good reason. With multichannel marketing, companies indeed experience a multitude of benefits. But there are challenges to this approach as well.
Having lead blockbuster brand launches in the pharmaceutical industry for over 15 years, I’d like to share the industry trends I’ve observed over the years as we continue to target physicians as consumers.
THE ADVANTAGES Greater reach: By using more communication channels, marketers naturally reach more members of their target audience. By expanding marketing campaigns to more channels, you’re more likely to find new customers and new buying opportunities.
Improved engagement: More often than not, more channels mean more customer touchpoints. More touchpoints give consumers more chances to engage with a brand and create more opportunities for the brand to communicate with the customer.
Enhanced communication options: In today’s rapidly innovating marketplace, marketers need to find physicians on their preferred channels rather than passively waiting for them to find their brand. Meeting physicians where they are ensures the brand message is increasing the share of voice in the minds of the physicians when it matters the most. A physician with limited knowledge of your brand may be best engaged through a targeted email campaign, whereas a physician who is already considering a purchase may respond strongly to social media testimonials of the product.
Cohesive, effective strategy: Multichannel marketing takes the complete buyer’s journey into account in its strategy. By combining campaigns from multiple channels, marketers can create more impactful messages tailored to the physician’s place on their path to purchase. Television and social media are a common and successful multichannel pairing, as is the tried-and-true radio and television combo.
THE CHALLENGESAlthough there are significant benefits of multichannel marketing, there are growing downsides. As iteration and innovation of new technologies and communication channels accelerate, traditional multichannel marketing is seeing diminishing results. Challenges of multichannel marketing include:
High cost and low returns: More channels means more management, and with it, time, money, and resources. Multichannel marketing is inherently siloed, meaning that each department and channel works independently and often with little to no communication or shared information, including crucial data-sharing. Siloed strategies can lead to high costs, low ROI, disjointed messaging, and confusing, often redundant customer experiences.
Real-time attribution: Accurate, real-time data and attribution are incredibly important for successful multichannel marketing. However, it is difficult to determine which message triggers a specific customer response. Tools like media mix modeling (MMM) and multi-touch attribution (MTA) are currently used by most marketers who use a multichannel approach. However, neither of these tools provide accurate, real-time information, nor do they provide data across digital and traditional offline channels.
Keeping pace with innovation: Communication and marketing technologies are constantly evolving, making it increasingly difficult to keep up with new advertising and social media platforms, location-based marketing, and SMART technologies. To keep pace with innovation, marketers must constantly research the newest channels and create effective strategies around them—all on the fly.
Inadequate analytics: Analytics systems, training, and teams have not successfully kept up with the increasing amount of data needed to manage a successful multichannel marketing strategy. Many companies try to do their analytics in-house, however, marketers report that qualified analytics professionals are difficult to find. To properly synthesize data into meaningful marketing information, marketers need a robust platform—or a new strategy altogether.
Targeted messaging: Today’s physicians are constantly bombarded with marketing messaging. Whether online or offline, brands must create messaging that breaks through the noise and connects with physician values. Pharma marketers must know their physician’s demographic, psychographic, purchasing history, and preferred communication channel to tailor targeted messaging.
Leveraging the benefits of multichannel marketing—but thinking through select targeted approaches to deploy it sequentially—is the way of the future when targeting physicians. Multichannel strategy still works, but combining the approach with data and technology-driven, targeted applications provides the highest ROI.
Source: Mansueto Ventures, LLC
Original Content: https://shorturl.at/flQS8
