Functions of Pharmaceutical Marketing
A summary of the key functions of pharmaceutical marketing.
There are hundreds of reasons why companies and organisations use marketing to promote their products or services. But not all reasons will be applicable to the world of pharmaceuticals.
This post will discuss the six main functions of marketing within the pharmaceutical space and will include some tips and tricks on how to maximise each element within your own marketing mix.
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1. Awareness
One of the main functions of any marketing campaign regardless of industry is to generate brand awareness. Brand awareness is defined by HubSpot as “the extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services.” The main objective of a brand awareness campaign is to ensure that the brand or product is embedded into customers’ lifestyles and purchase habits, so they don’t have to think twice about becoming a customer - time and time again!
Over time, that brand awareness can just become the norm in society like “I will Google that” or “are you an Apple person?” or can you pass me the “Band Aid.” It goes into the subconscious and once there, it will encourage repeat purchases.
So how can you build brand awareness within the pharmaceutical space? The principles are the same as in any other industry but what tactics are the best at generating brand awareness in the pharmaceutical industry?
Print advertising
Print is not dead! Despite living in a digital world, print is very much an important element of the marketing mix in the pharmaceutical industry. With publications covering all aspects of the supply chain, you can always hit your target audience. People engage with print in a different way than digital offerings and don’t forget that most publications now have a digital edition of the print magazine with embedded links allowing for brand interaction with an engaged audience.
Web advertising
This is one of the most popular ways of building brand awareness in the pharmaceutical industry. Placing banner advertising or web placements with key media partners that are targeted to your audience is an excellent way of getting your name out there in the market. A word of warning though that web advertising is all about getting as many impressions as possible and not a high click-through rate. People are averse to clicking on banners so don’t be put off by low CTRs. The key with web advertising is longevity and patience.
Google Ads
Google is king, and it’s important that this isn’t overlooked when trying to build brand awareness. This is more subtle than other techniques but ensure that your keywords and Google Ads strategy are in line with your overall marketing to maximise search results. If people are searching for a product or service, and you haven’t got that keyword covered in your campaigns, you could be missing out on direct traffic.
Social media
You might not automatically think of social media as a great fit for the pharmaceutical industry, but it can be if you choose the right platform. Sure, Instagram might be a challenge but platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter do an excellent job at building brand awareness for pharmaceutical companies. Social media is a great way of bringing your brand’s personality out and engaging with your audience, driving a conversation, and building that trust that is so important with brand awareness. And why stop at social media?
Interactive media such as Podcasts
In the UK, there are over 15 million people listening to podcasts daily and in the US over 55% of the population have listed to a podcast. Therefore, there is little doubt that they are now playing a huge role in people’s daily lives. It used to be complicated to record and upload podcasts but now all you need is a microphone, and you are away! Podcasts allow brands to interact with consumers naturally and not via a sales pitch or promotional activity. They give an opportunity to inform, entertain, engage and advise the audience, and ultimately build trust and recognition. To find out more about podcasts, see our previous blog on running podcasts in B2B life sciences.
Without brand awareness, other marketing functions will be made more difficult, so it’s important to focus time and money on building awareness, as fruitless as it may seem at the time. Strong brand awareness is the result of multiple marketing efforts that go against immediate customer interaction. You must play the long game with brand awareness and because of this, it can be hard to measure and requires constant activity for what seems like limited gains.
You can measure a banner on a website and know that the CTR is 0.02%, but what does that really mean? It seems low so the inclination would be to scrap it in favour of a tactic that delivers immediate response, but constant brand awareness is key in developing long-time, engaged customers and ultimately highly qualified leads.
Key pointers
You must play the long game with brand awareness. Try not to worry about low CTRs or limited data from print and focus on other metrics such as direct traffic or site traffic numbers.
It’s a crucial part of the marketing mix in any industry including Pharmaceuticals so don’t skip it. You won’t be able to generate any qualified leads without people knowing who you are!
Play around with techniques. It doesn’t always have to be about web advertising. Start a conversation, be personable and entertaining across multiple platforms to maximise success.
Be personable, informative and create impact. Just because we work with highly scientific information doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining and have a personality.
2. Lead generation
The holy grail of B2B marketing: Converting people into qualified leads that you can actively sell to and convert to customers. This is the primary function of any pharmaceutical marketing strategy; you want to generate customers and even better repeat customers. According to HubSpot, a lead is “any person who indicates interest in a company’s product or service in some way, shape or form.”
In the pharmaceutical industry, leads are typically gathered after receiving or opening communication as opposed to the cold calling route of generating leads. For example, someone clicks on an e-book you have promoted via an e-blast or on LinkedIn. It’s important to note that not all leads are created equal and should not be treated as such.
The term teaching you to suck eggs springs to mind here… but to make sure this blog is covering all bases, here is a quick run down of the different types of leads:
Marketing qualified leads (MQLs). MQLs are people who have engaged with your marketing activity but are not ready to receive a sales proposition or call yet. This could be someone who fills in a form on a landing page to download an e-book.
Sales qualified leads (SQLs). SQLs are people who have taken steps to express or indicate that they are interested in your product or service. For example, someone who fills in a contact us form on your product page.
Product or service qualified leads (PQLs). PQLs are people who have used your product or service and are now interested in becoming a customer or supplier. This could be someone who has contacted the company through the landing page, trialled the product and is now keen on putting in a further order.
For more, see a previous post on lead generation in our sectors. So, what are the best marketing techniques to generate leads in the pharmaceutical industry?
Content
Content is key! A bank of content allows you to develop multiple touch points via a landing page. You can create a vast amount of free and insightful information and include a CTA, be it a “contact us” button or a “download now” which then takes the visitor to a landing page. The more informative and entertaining the content is, the more likely it is that someone will click the CTA and ultimately end up on the landing page. And remember just because you might have an e-book in the bank, doesn’t mean you can’t slice it up to make lots of other content. Perhaps an infographic used on LinkedIn or promoting the articles individually to maximise return might achieve this. You don’t have to just use the original piece of content to drive leads.
Email is a great and cost-effective way to reach people in a defined target audience and specifically people who already know who you are. Buying emails, or e-blasts as we refer to them, from trusted partners with the right target audience is a great way of widening the net. It does two things: Helps generate brand awareness and including a piece of content with a CTA is an excellent way of generating leads and pushing them straight to a landing page. Keep emails clean, and tidy and include a clear CTA. Often the most successful e-blasts are the simpler ones!
Events
Face-to-face events… Oh, how we have missed you! Now back with a bang, this is a keyway in the pharma industry to generate engaged leads and move them through the sales funnel as quickly as possible. Everyone who has registered to attend an event is already somewhat engaged. Face-to-face conversations are a much more powerful tool in the selling process than other marketing efforts, so ensure that events feature as part of your lead generation activity.
The key here is to make sure the event you are at is aimed at the right demographic and target audience, so spend time doing some due diligence before you sign on the event dotted line. What is imperative with events is the follow-up. Don’t forget to get data from all the people you meet, get them in the funnel and follow up or it will all be a missed opportunity.
Paid social
This is linked to content as social media is hinged on content no matter what platform you choose to use. Don’t think social media should only be used to build brand awareness because in fact, it’s very good at delivering leads if you use it effectively and strategically as the call of action is so easy. A click here, a swipe there and boom, you have a lead. A great example of this is LinkedIn which allows easy targeting and the ability to have a CTA. LinkedIn also can host the landing page (Lead gen forms) for you making it even easier to get leads as there is no need for form filling. Why not try using both the LinkedIn landing page and an external landing page to test which performs better? See a previous post on LinkedIn advertising tips in pharma for more.
There are many ways to generate leads and it may seem overwhelming at first but if you only remember one thing, it would be to always direct the CTA to a landing page. Don’t just direct to a homepage. You should always be trying to point people in the direction to convert to a lead. Keep the messaging consistent and the creative clean and that will also encourage people to actively click.
3. Engaging audiences and customers (via thought leadership)
Thought Leadership, as HubSpot again states, is a tactic content marketers use to build credibility for themselves or leaders in their company. The goal of thought leadership is to become or to be seen as an expert in your field of study.
Ultimately this is the bridge between brand awareness and lead generation as thought leadership or content marketing can deliver both functions. By building informative, entertaining and researched information, it can be used in a whole host of varieties and forms and tailored to each customer profile.
The key to thought leadership (and ultimately any marketing activity) is to know your target market, know what they like, what they dislike, what makes them tick, and what makes them switch off. Buyer personas or customer personas are a good starting point and will allow you to build content that fits their needs. But remember we are all humans and need change (and evolve over time) so it’s imperative that buyer personas are constantly reviewed. By making the content genuine, personable, and targeted to your customers, thought leadership is a huge asset that can be used across your marketing strategies.
Another good tip which links to lead generation is to make sure the content is published in various forms and formats and in different places. It makes the piece of content work harder whilst also allowing people to consume the content in different ways. To go back to my earlier e-book example, this could become an infographic post on LinkedIn, turned into a poster and used for Lead Gen or Tweet snippets from the articles with links to a landing page. There is so much you can do with one piece of content so experiment to see what works best for your audience.
To some other functions of pharmaceutical marketing…
There are many more functions of marketing that can be applied to pharmaceuticals but alas this post can only be so long, as can any attention span!
Related posts
4. Product or service launch
This would entail using marketing to actively sell, promote and launch a new pharmaceutical product or service, a common function in any sector. For this, brand awareness and ultimately product awareness is key to the success of the new product or service so a lot of emphasis on brand awareness is required to maximise return. You would also run lead generation and thought leadership at the same time, whilst you are building brand awareness for the long term. You would likely develop some immediate sales/enquiries during such phase.
5. Promoting events
This is reasonably self-explanatory! The pharmaceutical industry has hundred if not thousands of events every year either external or internal. Marketing is a key function to promote these events be it to get people to physically attend, tune into a webinar, or just visit a booth. Events are a great way of building brand awareness and generating leads all at the same time so active marketing across the board is a keyway to maximise event success. The more people you can get to sign up for an event, the bigger the potential lead pool gets, so don’t miss this if you are attending or exhibiting at an event. For more, see this post on pharmaceutical event marketing strategies.
6. PR
PR is a large function in pharmaceutical marketing due to the nature of the industry. Handling both positive and negative press is a vital function. Stay tuned for a future blog post on how to maximise PR opportunities, in addition to this post on the perils and pitfalls of pharmaceutical PR.
Pharmaceutical marketing functions
So, there you go, the six main functions of pharmaceutical marketing (in a nutshell). This post has just scratched the surface in terms of the detail behind each one, so stay tuned for more blog posts in the future focusing on each function in more detail. If you would like to discuss how we can help your business with any function of pharmaceutical marketing, please get in touch!
For more on strategic digital marketing approaches in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help you, visit our section on web.