Lots of pharma companies want to do digital, but they are stuck and are unable to go the whole hog, as they are clueless about measuring the RoI of their digital investment.
It’s not that pharma has any reasonably accurate way of measuring the RoI on various promotional activities undertaken by their field forces. Take for example the Visual Aid, which is launched with great fanfare at pharma marketing meets – has any company ever measured the RoI and is able to say that, this worked and this did not? It’s a spray and pray approach with most promotional efforts, be it free samples or CME meets RoI is rarely measured in a way that enables marketing managers to measure and improve the RoI.
But the field forces are mandated to deliver sales targets, month-on-month and they do. Because if they don’t, they’re out – that’s the number one reason for the skyrocketing attrition in the pharma field force.
To be able to measure the RoI on digital in pharma, it is necessary to understand customers as individuals and create newer segmentation based on these needs and interests. This calls for the NextGen RCPA of data collection and personalized communications that engage customers, based on which pharma must create customer experiences that matter to them.
If your content does not scratch, where it itches the customers, digital or phygital, customers will not feel at home (comfortable, delighted, and wants more), which is what matters. Not a feel-good, aah we did digital euphoria, which will soon die down as customers simply ignore it as they did when pharma launched a plethora of webinars.
More importantly, going digital is not digital marketing, but a customer-centric strategic marketing approach of using digital channels to augment the personal relationship with customers developed by the field force to deliver content that is contextual both to the company’s strategic intent and customer’s interests.
Some points to consider, before you Do Digital:
To know more about creating the NextGen RCPA of data collection to engage various stakeholders in the Rx generation (Customer Engagement + Customer Experience = Customer Loyalty) process, be there at MedicinMan Pharma CEO Roundtable and DigitStorm 2022 in September in Mumbai.
Write to me at anupsoans@medicinman.net for sponsorship opportunities to network with Healthcare, Pharma, MedTech, Digital-health, DTx, and many other healthcare players.
