Healthcare Marketing Agenda

The partners of our international network - Worldwide Partners Healthcare - discuss trends in healthcare marketing communications at regular intervals to characterize global expectations for the coming period.

The pharmaceutical and healthcare industry will have to cope with a variety of changes. Development costs and duration for product innovation are reaching unprecedented levels.
Increasing regulatory control, fragmented target groups and increased cost pressure are presenting new challenges to all market participants. With cost pressure, marketing budgets are of course once again under scrutiny. But for the marketing future in particular, there are many new opportunities, because the need for marketing and communication measures is increasing, and less product innovation must be compensated for by targeted marketing. Marketing can also provide valuable impetus in the development of new business areas.

New target groups must be addressed. Payers are moving into the spotlight, which means at the same time that cooperation with health insurers and health economic marketing are becoming increasingly relevant. Regulatory authorities, associations, the media, patient organizations are becoming target groups. Here, it is essential to restore trust in the pharmaceutical industry through transparency.

Healthcare professionals remain the most important contacts, but communication content, form and occasions are changing. Marketing has new tasks in presales, aftersales and overall integration. And not only because of the reduction of manpower in the sales force. Up to 60% of B2B buying decisions are already made before a decision maker even comes into contact with the sales team. That's why branding and communication that precisely meets customers' current information needs is a top priority.

The biggest changes are in the target group of patients. Today, they inform themselves in a more targeted manner and thus exert more influence on the choice of medication and treatment. With the development from health to health care, they are becoming self-determined patients and thus consumers. Whether young or old, they are increasingly looking for ways to increase This is true at least in highly developed societies with high purchasing power. There, the healthcare and wellcare sector will grow, as will the market for lifestyle medicines. This requires greater competence in consumer oriented marketing. The following topics are at the top of the agenda:

Customer centricity

Marketing is challenged to manage each of the touchpoints in the lifecycle and create an integrated communications program where users are directed to the right sources at the right time. Touchpoint analytics can be used to identify who should be approached and engaged in a dialogue, and when. In B2B, it is well known that stakeholders look for different information at each stage of their decision-making process. In the inspiration phase it is neutral evaluations, in the search phase case studies, in the comparison phase ROI figures and facts, in the confirmation phase service offers. All this must be offered to them so that customers remain loyal and become convinced followers. At a time when patients trust their smart phones more than doctors, support for successful communicative interaction with patients is welcome in the medical sector, for example.

Above all, customer centricity means aligning the content of communication with customer needs. What are customers, the physician, the patient, or the decision-makers in an HC organization interested in? What information do they need to make a decision?
Here, it's sophisticated content marketing that adds value, solves problems, or gives customers and prospects a stage to showcase themselves, their brands, or their expertise. Sometimes an entertainment offering helps build a good, close relationship and trust in products or the company brand. If this trust exists, a doctor or consumer is more likely to choose a brand without delving into time-consuming scientific studies.

Social and mobile marketing

The healthcare industry has a lot of catching up to do in social marketing. Spending on digital marketing, of which social media activities account for only a fraction, stagnated at 3% of marketing budgets last year. This is in contrast to the behavior of users, who increasingly seek information in knowledge and specialist portals, exchange information with friends and acquaintances on social networks, and make intensive use of interest networks such as patient groups or doctors' networks. Health is a burning issue for almost everyone. The interest here is in disease symptoms, causes, treatment methods, prevention and rehabilitation, nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Mobile channels are preferred for this purpose.

Some HC companies use social media to generate new leads or to establish a closer customer relationship, others create communities and topic pages. Overall, however, all of these activities are rather restrained, as patient-to-patient dialog is difficult to control. Companies can only be mediators here, a role that requires a great deal of sensitivity and knowledge of the legal conditions, for example, if one wants to redirect from these pages to specific brands or products. In mobile applications, on the other hand, the HC industry is leading the way. mHealth extends far beyond marketing communications and opens up new business areas in patient care.

Big Data

In consumer marketing, Big Data is currently the big buzz topic. The ability to collect, analyze, and interpret customer data promises success and ROI despite high capital expenditures. When payers and HC providers better segment and understand their customers, they can adjust their product portfolios and develop more effective communications programs. Consumer insights, demographic, socio- and psychographic data, lifestyle or lifestage attributes, buying habits, attitudes toward one's health and health-related behaviors are fascinating data. Their analysis and the strategies derived from them help to win and retain customers. In the German healthcare sector, however, Big Data is viewed extremely critically, because both doctors and patients react extremely sensitively to the collection of health data.

B2B companies also rarely jump on the "Big" bandwagon because they generally have smaller target groups and no huge media budgets whose distribution needs to be improved. Nevertheless, data analysis on a smaller scale is essential to be able to optimize communication, but also to measure and prove marketing successes.

Branding and creation

Analyses are the basis for successful marketing. Good strategies and content are vital. But without creative excellence, everything remains theory. With an ever-increasing flood of information coming at us via mobile channels even more and around the clock in the future, it becomes even more important to be unique and unusual to get through to the prospect easily and quickly.

Consistent branding, great imagery and motion graphics, emotional content and stories that are easy to grasp on the one hand and appeal to emotions, create desire and build trust on the other, are all gaining importance. Coding and data cannot replace art and text. On the contrary, brilliant, strategic brand management consultants, imaginative creatives, designers and excellent content suppliers / copywriters and video ninjas become the best friends of marketing managers when they inspire with gripping stories in new and old media and thus help to achieve business success.