Imagine driving on a highway with your eyes blindfolded and your ears plugged. Sounds scary right?
That's what a good marketer feels if they are to run a marketing campaign without data analytics.
In the complex pharma world, data analytics has become even more crucial as HCPs are among the toughest audiences to reach and keep engaged. And this is why I’m dedicating today’s article to the importance of data analytics for pharma marketing leaders.
Targeting healthcare professionals (HCPs) lies at the heart of pharma marketing, as they are best positioned to prescribe the correct pharma products to their patients .
HCPs and clinicians are driven to improve patient care outcomes, and this need connects them with pharma companies and marketers who excel at providing valuable and research-driven products.
But how can marketers stay abreast with continually evolving HCP preferences, patient needs, and HCP clinical protocols? This is where data analytics steps in and transforms how marketers engage and interact with their target audience.
Every interaction between a brand and its consumer gives birth to vast volumes of data. When analysed and processed, this data carries valuable insights into consumer behaviour, enabling the possiblity of highly personalised and targeted HCP campaigns.
Marketing and sales strategies in the pharmaceutical industry are heavily reliant on data analytics as data-driven insights offer the opportunity to grow revenues exponentially. For instance, data visualisations enhance executive-level decision-making, allowing pharma marketers to achieve their target objectives.
The Role of Data Analytics in Pharma Marketing
Use of data analytics for your marketing campaign is not optional anymore. It’s absolutely necessary. Here are a few important roles data analytics play in making a marketing campaign successful.
Segmentation - By analysing incoming data, you can subclassify your audience into logical segments. This segmentation will help you tailor your marketing messaging in terms of content as well as the delivery of that content. And tailored messages always promise a higher engagement rate.
Personalisation - A bland, one-for-all marketing approach is a thing of the past now. It’s difficult to engage people with generic communication. Every message and interaction needs to be personalised. And marketing analytics takes HCPs’ interaction patterns and personalises future interactions for higher engagement.
Real-time Pivoting - Marketers keep a close eye on the constant stream of interaction data from the campaign and make changes in real-time to steer away from anything that’s not working and to double down on anything that’s yielding results.
Benefits of Data Analytics in Pharma Marketing
According to research published in Big Data Research Journal, data collected from interactions with the target audience helps develop and improve the marketing strategy of pharma companies.
Now let’s have a look at the top benefits of making effective use of your marketing analytics.
Highly Targeted & Resonating Messaging
Data analytics helps you develop laser-sharp targeted messaging to effectively connect with HCPs.
How does it do that?
By letting you create a detailed profile of every single HCP and your interaction history with her along with her preferences.
A healthy connection with HCPs is invaluable for your campaign’s success and data analytics strengthens this connection through personalised messaging.
A Measurable Impact
Data analytics make sure that every single data point is being monitored and recorded. This granular data paves the way for data-backed decisions rather than marketers’ whims.
Analytical tools support these marketing goals with predictive models facilitating measurable campaigns. Marketers can objectively measure the impact of all their marketing efforts by evaluating data generated through HCP interactions.
With data-driven insights, it’ll become easy for you to identify inefficiencies throughout the consumer journey and replace them with marketing strategies that actually work.
Heightened Accuracy & Efficiency
Even the most creatively planned and executed marketing campaigns fall flat and fail to deliver ROIs when they lack accuracy and efficiency. Pharma marketers need to actively scale their marketing campaigns and maintain accuracy while planning, executing, and evaluating their promotional campaigns.
The revolutionary computing power of data analytics supports heightened accuracy, creating a roadmap for user engagement, lead generation, and lead conversion. In the long run, it facilitates a close-knit bond with target consumers through effective engagement across all the marketing channels.
Personalised Marketing with Data Analytics
Hyper-personalisation is a ground-breaking trend in the pharmaceutical industry, enabling the creation of highly personalised marketing campaigns that appeal to target consumers. Hyper-personalisation, at its core, refers to extensive targeting, one-on-one communication and individualisation to facilitate a deep, lasting connection with every individual HCP.
Naturally, this is impossible without marketing analytics and insights from HCPs’ interaction with your marketing messages. These insights allow marketers to target and tailor every aspect of the product journey, from product development and packaging to marketing communication and distribution.
Power of the Dashboard
A dashboard becomes a crucial tool if you want to effectively implement your marketing strategy. It offers access to real-time marketing analytics to your marketing team as well as to Medical Science Liaisons (MSLs). This valuable data guides them in tailoring their interactions with every HCP which allows a personalisation that is not possible without a live dashboard. Another upside of a live dashboard is that your entire marketing team has access to the same data and it becomes easier to collaborate for the best possible results for the HCPs as well as for your organisation.
Predictive Modelling with Data Analytics
A report by GlobalData reveals that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics will continue to innovate the pharmaceutical sector by facilitating predictive modelling. Results show that over 30% of pharma companies will rely on data-driven predictive modelling to streamline marketing endeavours and boost sales.
Predictive analytics lies at the crux of revenue generation and loss prevention in the pharmaceutical sector because it facilitates accurate forecasting. Predictive models prevent pharma leaders and marketers from spending in areas that don’t guarantee ROIs. Pharma marketers harness machine learning algorithms to make accurate predictions about future outcomes.
Suppose a pharma company wants to penetrate a new market where multiple competitors enjoy robust consumer demand and engagement. In that case, predictive modelling will help forecast demand alongside identifying the right communication and distribution channels. Predictive models allow marketers to stay abreast with ever-evolving consumer behaviour and marketing trends.
Social Media Listening with Data Analytics
According to a recent Hootsuite survey, around two-thirds of marketers believe that social media listening with analytical tools is the simplest strategy to capture consumer demands and preferences.
A relatively new approach to digital marketing, social listening tools like Brandwatch , BuzzSumo, and Talkwalker facilitate an in-depth understanding of existing customers and potential customers. They allow marketers to eliminate all barriers and boundaries and penetrate personal environments where consumers and clinicians share their needs and preferences sans restraints.
Analysing consumer communication and HCP interactions on social media facilitates real-time research into evolving pharmaceutical trends and doctor-patient relationships. That’s not all. Social media listening allows brands to retain and sharpen their competitive edge by facilitating competitors’ analysis and understanding brand perceptions across social media platforms.
Final Thoughts
Data analytics has revolutionised how pharmaceutical companies engage and satisfy their consumers, equipping them with insights and tools that facilitate highly personalised and targeted messaging. Modern-day marketers cannot build lasting and impactful HCP relationships without harnessing the potential of data-driven insights.
Data analytics in your marketing campaign acts like the navigator who’s giving you driving instructions. So it better be a good one. You need to have a data dashboard that has the ability to capture every important data point and make it accessible to you in a way that supports your decision-making.
As Geoffrey Moore, the renowned author of Crossing the Chasm, aptly describes it, “Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway.”
Analytics are no longer an over-the-top frill to elevate the sophistication of a marketing campaign. But rather, it is a necessary and vital tool to stay abreast with the market trends of the rapidly advancing pharmaceutical sector and effectively connect with HCPs.
