Creative Pharmaceutical Marketing Ideas
Creative pharmaceutical marketing ideas for the pharma marketer's next marketing plan.
Pharmaceutical marketing can be a tricky business. There is a great deal to say but often we are constrained in how we get the message across. Of course, print and digital display are first on the list of ideas, but there is more beyond this for pharmaceutical marketing professionals.
Creativity was previously "just an image". And that image was usually in a print advert. As marketing advanced through the social media era and arrived at the inbound methodology stage, we have so much more scope to be creative and engage big messages, quickly and succinctly.
An effective multi-channel customer engagement strategy is imperative to any campaign. There is, of course, the usual suite of marketing tactics which we see often in the pharmaceutical industry - webinars, white papers, e-books, e-blasts, tech sheet downloads, case studies etc. These are all great, don’t stop producing them.
Subscribe to receive weekly insights
But here are some other ideas of how you could get your message across. This post explores additional ideas and concepts that may sit alongside your traditional marketing methods.
INFOGRAPHICS
Both data-rich and visually appealing, pharmaceutical infographics are an ideal method of getting across long messages, quickly, easily and in a very engaging way. The infographic can explain in one visual document, the problem, the feature and the benefit of your product. I believe there is not enough good use of infographic documents. Got lots of data and stats to get across? Look no further than the humble infographic.
YOUTUBE
Video is big and will be big for a long time to come. It's an obvious one, but using it creatively is an art, not a science. It's easy to create a 30-minute masterclass with your technical people standing at the front of the screen talking at the camera. Stop right there. Make no YouTube session no more than 6 minutes, condense it. Pay for creative services, use voice-overs, whiteboard animation and things like time-lapse. They have a much better impact and keep the audience engaged so much more than a presentation.
You do have to invest in creativity. But it will be worth it, I promise. At relatively little expense a creative agency can create a compelling video several minutes long that catches the eye and gets the message over quickly and efficiently.
ANIMATED VIDEO
A short 30-second animated video is an exceptionally good way of getting over large and complex concepts, quickly and in an engaging way. They need to be no more than thirty seconds and can contain a striking number of messages in that time. Some great examples are Catalent's OptiForm® Solution Suite video.
APPS
Tricky one and not right for every campaign but developing an app could be a really easy way to get your content message over in a practical way. For instance, a CDMO we worked with years ago developed a series of apps aimed at the consumer end of their product. There was light engagement but enough to guide the product through development and give real data to the doctors who would be using the information. It’s not right for every campaign, but certainly worth exploring.
Always remember - be mobile-ready, whatever platform you are delivering your message on. Make sure it is compatible with all screens.
3D WALKTHROUGHS
Again, a bit of investment is needed here on a good visual creative, but well worth the effort. Especially if it’s a new medical device development, these are perfect for 3D visual fly-throughs. But it’s not just devices and applications that can benefit from a 3D walkthrough you can also put this technique to good use to explore concepts as well.
CONTENT
Good old-fashioned content. We're lucky to be in an industry where people still want to read. If we were in B2C, marketing, our audience might not want to read a whitepaper. However, for the pharma marketer, that’s exactly what our audience want. So, get creative with content. There are plenty of blog posts on how to do this, speak to a good agency, but do develop a content strategy with an eye on inbound and lead generation.
We have published a number of pharmaceutical content (with examples) posts on this blog that are worthy of exploring. See Pharma Content Marketing Examples and Types of Science Content Per Buyer’s Journey Stage for more.
ORGANIC SEARCH
Following on, having content gives you the ability to increase visibility on search engines. Start by incorporating keyword best practices like updating URLs, page titles and meta descriptions, incorporating authoritative links and using keywords naturally—not stuffing—throughout your content. You can also post on high-traffic sites like SlideShare or YouTube for additional momentum.
YOUR EMPLOYEES
Are your sales and marketing staff promoting the latest produced? Use their signatures of the sales staff to point to the latest video/blog/whitepaper. The sales team are sending thousands of emails to new customers, what better platform to have than to have them promote your latest offering in their signatures.
Staff are mentioned on this list because organisations and marketing teams can arm their colleagues (who are natural ambassadors of the organisation and brand) in many ways to promote the organisation. Use your staff creatively to market your pharmaceutical organisation... perhaps setting up brainstorming sessions with various and random department staff is a start?
LIVE EVENTS
You will certainly have the booths booked in for the major shows and these are great platforms for any launches etc but also take advantage of the event conferences talks, can you nominate your expert for a talk at one of the events?
Outside the major events, perhaps a roadshow could work taking a team of experts on a tour of your customers to take them through the latest product launch could be a good way of covering ground. Perhaps hiring a venue and your target audience to come along. Ensure you have good takeaways for the event, and create pre-event and post-event content.
GETTING CREATIVE WITH YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS
For all these I would recommend that you speak to good creative agencies, even if your in-house capabilities are solid, they are the experts. The main advice is don’t be afraid to explore, get ideas and get creative.
Of course, you need to measure the results and effectiveness of your creative pharmaceutical marketing. Not everything will work. Closed-loop marketing should make this easier, or inbound marketing software that will effectively monitor engagement. Keep an eye on the competition as well, what are they doing? Where are they appearing? All this will help you establish a successful multi-channel customer engagement strategy.
For more on creative design in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help you, visit our section on creative.
