How to Promote a B2B Pharma Brand
The tools and methods for promoting B2B pharma brands.
The world of marketing changes at a quicker pace every year, therefore it can be a challenge to work out the best marketing tactics and strategies to target prospectus customers. This is no different in the pharmaceutical space.
For pharmaceutical marketers, there are 2 main goals with any piece of marketing activity- building awareness and generating leads. They both go hand in hand and there are certain marketing tactics you can use to drive awareness, generate leads or both simultaneously.
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Whether you are promoting a B2B brand or a B2C brand, you need to remember that ultimately it is just human-to-human and to promote effectively, we need to understand how that person/customer ticks. Knowing your end customer is key to being able to promote effectively.
What do they want to achieve? Is it driving awareness of a new product or acquisition? Or is it to generate leads to allow for cross-selling? The objective and overall strategy will ultimately affect the tactic deployed to promote the message.
This post will look at each area in turn to evaluate effective ways to promote a Pharma B2B brand.
1. Publications (both print and digital)
This is one of the most popular ways to drive awareness within the pharma space. There are hundreds of specialist B2B publications that cater to every part of the pharma supply chain from drug discovery to packaging and everything in between. This allows the ability to target niche areas of the supply chain, key geographical regions and even specific job titles. Over the past year, many more readers are turning to digital platforms to consume this content and often the digital platforms have a slightly different audience to print. This shows that in effect you can hit 2 sets of consumers within the same publication through increased reach.
2. Newsletters
Many of the media brands in the pharma space, also offer opportunities to place adverts within their newsletter programme to subscribers. This is a great way of reaching a targeted audience that is already invested in a specialist area of pharmaceuticals. Unlike print magazines where editorial content is generally set, newsletters offer a more fluid approach whereby specific areas such as drug discovery or vaccine development can be targeted to the right people and thus avoiding marketing ‘noise’. This method also has a degree of trust attached to it as the B2B subscribers are already invested in the media company and therefore will trust that the marketing is relevant to them.
3. Digital Display Advertising
Display and banner advertising is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical sector. If used as part of a wider digital marketing campaign, display advertising can be very effective in driving traffic and generating awareness. However, it is important that the banner or display advert is placed in a position that is prominent and doesn’t ruin the user’s experience of the site itself as this will lower the effectiveness.
4. Social Media
You probably would not necessarily think of social media first when thinking about the best ways to promote a B2B pharma brand. Aren’t they for showing what you had for dinner last night or your babies first steps? Social media platforms are a fantastic way of creating awareness. Whether it is a LinkedIn article with the latest acquisition press release or a Facebook post with a ‘meet the scientist’ interview, these social media updates give followers entertaining, free and valuable information.
According to a study by Hinge Marketing, 60% of buyers check out an unknown brand on social media before they purchase. This gives pharma companies an opportunity to bring their company profiles to life through their social media platforms. The best platforms for pharma brands are the more informative streams like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. This is an area not to be overlooked.
5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimising website content to bring new opportunities through search engines such as Google. The ideal position is to be on the first page of search results, and this will help to drive traffic to your website, boosting awareness and ultimately giving an access point to generate leads through tactics like landing page banners.
This area is often overlooked in the pharmaceutical sector as it can seem like a daunting task but with a long-term SEO strategy, the results will come.
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6. Webinars
Webinars have always been a focus in the B2B pharma landscape and since COVID-19 hit in 2020 they are even more key. They have been a vital resource to keep up with the latest trends and discussion topics since shows and events were put on the back burner. Webinars can be used in 2 ways- a strategic way of generating leads and also, most importantly, a way of engaging existing and prospective customers. To get the most out of a webinar and generate maximum interest, remember that a news topic or discussion point that will solve a customer’s problem will get a better response than just a product or service offering push.
7. Content Marketing: White Papers/E-books
Content marketing is used to provide information and solutions to specific problems. By providing well research scientific lead content, it builds trust with the customer helping to convert prospects to leads. The common methods of content marketing in the B2B pharma space are White Papers and E-books. Usually gated, both options are a way of deep diving into pharmaceutical industry trends, challenges and key topics whilst building trust with the reader and crucially driving leads.
8. Events: Virtual and Face-to-Face
There is no denying that COVID-19 has disrupted the usual programme of face-to-face B2B shows, events, and conferences. Events have always been a great way to meet prospective customers and conduct business and marketing is a key part of this. It is not clear yet whether face-to-face events can operate in 2021 but the second half of 2021 is looking promising. In the meantime, events companies have devised new ways to run events virtually, and these should not be overlooked as part of your marketing strategy.
The beauty of any event, be it face-to-face or virtual, is that almost all previous marketing methods can be applied from email marketing to promote the event and company profiles to more content lead tactics such as keynote speaking, video content and gated opportunities to add to a lead generation program. Events are a powerful tool to highlight.
Promoting B2B pharma brands…
There is no one size fits all solution within B2B. The marketing strategy needs to be tailored to individual needs and objectives of the campaign and as this post shows, there are various ways within each overarching objective to promote a Pharma brand effectively. Whether it’s just to drive awareness of a product or service to generate engaged leads that can be turned into full-fledged customers, there are various tools open to Pharmaceutical brands to achieve any objective. If you need help with deciding what would be the best tactics for your pharma brand or organisation, please get in touch. Orientation Marketing would be happy to help.
For more on digital advertising in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help, see our section on media planning and buying.