Healthcare is one of the largest industries in the United States, and by its very nature marketing to healthcare professionals (HCPs) has its own inherent challenges.
From targeting and connecting with the right physicians to optimizing your digital engagement strategy for the highest return on investment (ROI), there are myriad obstacles and approaches to overcome them. How an organization chooses to address these will largely determine how successful they are in the long run.
Here are several of the biggest challenges healthcare marketers face, and the best ways to overcome them.
Challenge:
Reaching the Right Healthcare Providers
Identifying and connecting with the right HCPs has always been a challenge. Physicians can often be difficult to connect with due to their busy schedules, and as a result, tend to be very selective of the content they engage with.
Solution:
Familiarizing yourself with products and services, and conducting market research to pinpoint your ideal customers is essential. Segment your audience to deliver the most relevant information to each type of HCP.
Segmenting based on factors such as physician specialty, prescribing volume, preferred contact method, service location, and more can help you deliver content customized to their specific needs, maximizing the chances for further engagement, and ultimately, increasing the chance of customer conversion.
Once you’ve produced quality content with true value for your target audience, consider where and how they are most likely to search for and engage with it. What platforms do they utilize most often? What is the tone—personal or profession? Where are they most likely to interact with or share content? Connecting with the right physicians requires understanding consumer behavior and predicting exactly where your audience goes to learn about brands.
Developing and implementing targeted campaigns with specific and valuable information through multiple channels—including direct mail, email, and social media—will help you reach the physicians you’re targeting where they are, with exactly what they need.
Challenge:
Gaining Trust & Brand Loyalty
Once you’ve managed to identify your ideal customers and grab their attention, gaining their trust and converting them to loyal customers is next. Ultimately, the effectiveness of your campaigns depends on producing and deploying relevant, useful content for your audience segments.
Solution:
Every piece of content you generate should answer relevant questions, address your audience’s concerns, and provide useful information or offerings—while also reflecting their stages along the buyer’s journey.
When it comes to earning trust, especially when dealing with the healthcare market, transparency is a must.
No matter the medium, supply accurate and in-depth information regarding your products and services. Whether you’re marketing a new pharmaceutical or promoting an existing product, being upfront about your prices and data will go a long way toward gaining their confidence, as will including facts and statistics speaking to the efficacy of the products or treatments.
HCPs are savvy consumers, and providing practical, personalized material will not only help your messaging stand out from the competition, but promote brand recall and make them think of you as a valuable resource—keeping them coming back for more.
The more your content resonates with your audience, the more likely they are to engage with your brand, so providing ample interaction and conversion opportunities can make a huge difference in your campaign effectiveness. Be sure to include plenty of relevant calls to action and optimize your engagement platforms to be as convenient and easy to use as possible.
Challenge:
Keeping Your Audience Informed & Engaged
When it comes to keeping your audience engaged, it’s important to provide ample opportunities for meaningful interactions with your brand. Knowing how to do that, though, isn’t always clear.
Solution:
Keeping your audience engaged means meeting them where they are and understanding how best to reach them. Whether through social media or direct mail campaigns, an omni-channel approach is an effective way to gain and hold their attention. Utilize these platforms to attract prospective customers to your website, where they can learn about your brand and engage more with your content and offerings.
Your website is a perfect medium for motivating your audience to interact with your content—just be sure to maximize this. Include an appropriate call to action (CTA) to direct users to the signup process and guide them through their stage of the buyer’s journey.
Post or publish positive testimonials to highlight customer satisfaction, and include a place on your site for customers to leave comments or rate their experiences.
The more chances for your audience to engage with your brand, the more likely it is they will become customers down the line.
Challenge:
Overcoming Digital Fatigue
Much of the pharmaceutical marketing industry has migrated away from face-to-face interactions, and modern marketing techniques have become increasingly digital—for good reasons! This, however, has put physicians and other HCPs at the receiving end of an ongoing stream of emails and digital marketing healthcare campaigns, making it easy for your brand to be forgotten or ignored.
Solution:
Digital fatigue is a form of cognitive exhaustion caused by prolonged use of digital devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets. When audiences are inundated with digital messaging they can become less receptive and more apathetic, reducing the impact and effectiveness of your campaigns.
While many HCP marketing tactics utilize digital communications, taking a multichannel approach and connecting with your audiences through well-timed and coordinated campaigns can help enhance your reach while strengthening the influence of your content.
Leveraging email and direct mail marketing campaigns in conjunction with each other can help reinforce your brand messaging, while offering your audience more convenient ways to engage with your brand as a whole.
The tactile experience of physical print messaging makes direct mail a more memorable channel than many digital marketing campaigns. Direct mail messaging can take a variety of unique forms and textures such as interactive dimensional mailers, and while providing relevant and useful information, can leave a lasting impression on your prospective customers and lead to significant increases in your ROI.
Making your direct mailers as memorable as possible will help improve your open and response rates, while increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversions.
Challenge:
Navigating the Healthcare Marketing Industry
B2B healthcare marketing can be a difficult industry to navigate. There are many moving elements and changing factors in connecting meaningfully with the ideal audiences for your products and services, and staying on top of them all can be challenging.
Solution:
Regularly monitoring your marketing campaigns will help you identify potential issues or opportunities for growth early on, and enable you to adjust your strategies for maximum effectiveness. Knowing the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep track of will help you more accurately judge the success of your marketing efforts, while revealing areas in your strategy that can be improved.
You’ll also need to stay informed of new and emerging industry trends and marketing technologies that can enhance the way you communicate and interact with your audiences.
Ultimately, the best way to navigate the many aspects and challenges of healthcare marketing is to enlist the aid of a reliable and experienced HCP marketing partner such as PDQ Communications.
We boast massive lists of millions of healthcare professionals spanning hundreds of specialties from across the healthcare industry, and because we regularly clean and segment our contact lists, you’re guaranteed to connect with the right audience for your campaigns, every time.
Our customized editorial campaigns produce personalized, informative content that makes the most of your preferred platforms.
