10 Reasons Why Pharma Companies Should Use Social Media
Ten reasons why you should use social media for your pharma and life science organisation.
Social media is a key component in our everyday lives. It has turned into the place we go to find news and information, whether we are casually browsing or otherwise.
As a marketer, social media is also a great way to get people familiar with you and your brand because people trust it to be an impartial platform where those users choose (for the most) what content they see from whoever they choose to follow.
Customers are using social media to find products and engage with different brands, and users of social media will be following at least one brand on their chosen platforms (Marketing Sherpa).
In 2018 there were 3.1 billion people active on social media and 2.9 billion of these were mobile users. If this wasn't enough to get you and your pharma organisation - especially within the B2B space - on social media, here are a further 10 reasons.
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1. INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS
With 3.1 billion active users it’s hard to imagine why your target audience wouldn’t be using any of the main platforms, for professional or personal use. Organisations are using social media to help them find customers and clients; it's a great tool to aid the sales process and to find organisations to work with or buy from. Which is why brand awareness is critically important.
The best way to increase your brand awareness on social media is by knowing your target audience. Once you know who you are targeting you can tailor content to those people to make more of an impact. Visual content is a great way to get the attention of your audience and using visual content means people can quickly see what you are saying. Dive into your social analytics to establish who you are currently attracting to your pages and cross-reference this with your buyer personas.
2. SHOW YOUR BRAND VALUES
You can use your social media platform to showcase your brand values which drive everything your organisation does. This said, post content onto your social media platforms that are relevant and informative to offer value to your audience alongside such internal brand content. Posting informative posts will show your audience that you can offer them value alongside messages of a public relations or corporate responsibility nature.
Social media can give audiences insights into what happens behind the scenes at your company, which is great if you are looking to build relationships via that channel. Use it to make your audiences feel involved and respected via your mission, values and culture.
3. BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER
Social media can help you become a trusted supplier of information. Supplying such information over social media can position you as trustworthy with your profile as the place to go for more advice or information in the future. Similar to providing PR content, becoming a thought leader is a great way to build trust with your audience and position you and your organisation as an expert in the pharma field. Thought leadership is especially good for the B2B market because this is the type of marketing where your customers are looking for solutions to problems.
4. STAY RELEVANT
Social media lets you post entertaining and informative content that your followers will be happy to see in their feed. As social media platforms allow you to keep posting new content, you will keep popping up in your audiences feed and they will subconsciously start to remember seeing your brand, making your website or your social profiles the first place they go when they decide to make a purchase.
Set yourself goals so you have something to strive for each week and/or month. If you successfully reach the goal then make the requirements for completion higher. Build relationships with your audience and you will stay relevant because they will want to keep sharing your content. Be sure to stay active because if there is nothing for your target audience to interact with then nothing can be achieved.
5. INCREASED WEB TRAFFIC
Social posts and ads are a brilliant way to get people visiting your website. Using your social media you can push out the blog posts and news pieces you are creating as a way to get more people accessing your website. If people are actively clicking on the blogs your writing this means they are interested in the information you have to offer.
Make sure your web address is always available and find ways to make posts that link back to your website. Use pinned posts to highlight certain pages on the site and vary this content consistently. But do not always appear to promote your own content and links. Vary posts and avoid over-promotion.
6. GENERATE LEADS
A huge benefit of social media is that it's a great way to get people interested and familiar with your brand. Social media makes it easy for people to show you when they are interested in something you are offering. If your offer is gated, where an email address is required to access the content, you are building awareness as well as generating leads in the process. A big win-win for the scientific marketer who can demonstrate this via the platform's analytics tools.
Use your social media to share links to gated content this will help you gain access to a filtered audience and don't be afraid to experiment with social ads to reach audiences outside of your current pool of followers.
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7. BOOST SALES
Social media gives you an opportunity to show people what products you are offering without being too overpowering. More and more people are using social media for the purpose of finding products and organisations, certainly younger audiences are taking to social media to find products and recommendations.
If you can establish a good presence on social media you will have a strong chance of selling your products or services. We have previously looked at social selling on social media platforms on this blog which is worthy of investigation.
8. WORD OF MOUTH HAND REVIEWS
Word of mouth is hugely important in B2B pharma and social media gives those people who leave reviews and talk to each other a louder voice. When people talk online about products (which often also translates over to offline channels into a face-to-face environment) it builds credibility.
Social media is also an easy way to get reviews from existing clients that show why they like working with you and following you on those platforms. When people see reviews from real organisations or business professionals, they begin to trust you because they know you already have similar working relationships with others in the wider pharma industry.
9. PROMOTE CONTENT
Social media is also a great way to get new people to see your brand, posting good valuable content to new faces is a great way to get them engaged. That is the case for any sort of content you want your audiences to see. Make sure you have a detailed content marketing plan, as well as a distribution strategy so your content can be seen, to keep the engagement of your viewers after the initial capture.
10. CREATE NEW CONNECTIONS AND STRENGTHEN CURRENT ONES
Once you have made an impression people will start liking, commenting and sharing your content which will begin showing in others' feeds.
When this happens, you can use social media platforms to participate in chats and show people that you can offer them value in a personal manner. If people, see that a friend has liked something then they are likely to open the post and start reading.
USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
The pharma industry, certainly B2B pharma, is often criticised for not adopting newer or more creative marketing methods to engage with their audiences. Social media is a prime example. The good news is that more and more B2B pharma organisations are realising that the reasons for adopting social media within marketing plans are too strong.