Implications of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the B2B Pharmaceutical Industry
The B2B pharmaceutical marketer is just getting to grips with a new-look environment and agenda.
COVID-19 is spreading rapidly throughout the countries and communities that we live in. As we do our part to stay at home, distancing ourselves from our friends and family, we can only hope things get better for everyone.
For the time being, we are settling into new ways of working and facing a new set of implications that we might not have thought possible, certainly didn’t expect, at the end of 2019.
This post will explore some of those implications that create the current environment a B2B pharmaceutical marketing professional (or any customer-facing professional for that matter) currently operates within.
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THE IMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19 ON B2B PHARMACEUTICAL MARKETERS
New ways of working (and selling) as well as tackling COVID-19… here is an overview of common ways that the global pandemic is affecting pharmaceutical marketers.
1. ADAPTING TO NEW WAYS OF WORKING
We are all currently in the process of adapting to a new way of working from home. The pharmaceutical industry professional’s day comprises visits to headquarters and manufacturing plants where absolutely necessary, with most work happening from newly set up offices at home. Virtual meeting rooms, be it internally or externally, are the new norm with routines being set up throughout the day to keep us focused. For tips to help you work from home more effectively, and also, more happily, click here. Investing in this workspace area now, and setting up a new routine to support this new way of working will help in the long run.
2. MARKETING CAMPAIGNS ARE DELAYED OR BEING REVIEWED
A MarketingWeek survey found that in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak only 14% of UK marketing campaigns are continuing as planned, with 49% of those campaigns delayed indefinitely. The same study found that 69% of its marketing respondents see a sharp decrease in demand for products and services as the pandemic worsens and the future becomes increasingly uncertain. We must come to terms with the fact that the campaigns we had planned for the year might not be valid and that further time and resource needs to go into the planning phase. Review your situation and alter your strategy accordingly.
3. EVENT MARKETING: CANCELATIONS, POSTPONEMENTS AND DIGITAL EVENTS
We’ve previously published a list of the events in the pharmaceutical industry that are affected by Coronavirus. Access the full list (continually updated) of those events here. These events are all changing, which means that potential opportunities to showcase products and services, as well as build and maintain business relationships, are being severely hampered. Some of these events are postponed with others converted to digital versions of those events which is a welcome relief to pharmaceutical marketers and B2B professionals alike. But the situation is far from ideal for anyone involved as possibly the main channel for connecting organisations and people has disappeared, at least for the time being.
4. SALES ARE FINDING NEW WAYS TO SELL
While salespeople will still have a role to play in B2B pharmaceuticals, reaching customers, being top-of-mind, and capturing demand as it happens will require those salespeople to alter the way they operate. Often, B2B pharmaceutical marketing departments invest heavily in marketing technologies but rarely utilise all of a platform’s features. That will change now due to Coronavirus. Live chat, social selling and other online communities are presenting options for B2B sales who will finally take advantage of investments made in digital marketing and explore new ways of selling.
However, it’s believed that many B2B professionals are going to be caught flat-footed, having delayed investments in the past or shying away from such technologies and relying on more traditional methods which have always worked in the past. This said, sales forecasts for 2020 are next to obsolete meaning that the organisation’s sales targets as well as the individual targets of the salespeople have also changed.
5. BUDGET FREEZING AND FURLOUGHING
We are seeing that marketing budget freezing is becoming a familiar story for B2B pharmaceutical organisations. Cashflows are being affected to the point where government help is required to keep employees receiving monthly payments via a furlough scheme, thus keeping them away from their work until the organisation can afford to pay the full wage again. Marketers are still mostly in their positions as the organisations and brands still need to live on, however, in a capacity with limited budgets. In most cases, marketing spending and budgeting has been frozen completely where resources are diverted elsewhere in the organisation. This has meant that the pharmaceutical marketer is adopting new marketing strategies and tactics.
6. TWEAKING MARKETING TACTICS TO DRIVE ONLINE ENGAGEMENT AND SALES
Whilst the face-to-face environments have currently been shut down, online environments are thriving. For B2B pharmaceutical marketing, this creates somewhat of a conundrum. Supply chains are still open, but they have slowed down considerably. Only when the market picks up again - after the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted - marketers should divert the majority of their efforts to making sales or other short-term monetary objectives. Instead, marketers are keeping brand building and engagement alive, and keeping that rapport with their target audiences in anticipation for things to go back to normal. But the tactic (and message) is different to a point where the marketer should always ask him or herself: “What is appropriate during this outbreak?”
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7. INCREASE IN DIGITAL STATISTICS
Neil Patel, using search data, identifies several industries where organic traffic is up (week-by-week basis), with pharma and healthcare on that traffic growth list. Generally speaking, the manufacturing industry as a whole has dropped, but you can expect that your B2B pharmaceutical manufacturing website is experiencing an increase in traffic. This increase in organic traffic, with professionals from across the entire supply chain working from home and experiencing more time to browse, will also be mirrored with social, referral and direct traffic. Therefore, there is a focus on digital content at this present moment - this is where you should also focus.
8. KEEP LINES OF COMMUNICATION THROUGHOUT THE COMMUNITY OPEN
One aspect I’ve seen changing in B2B pharmaceuticals, and I think also big pharma for that matter, is how open communication channels are - more so than ever before. Organisations and publishers are going that extra mile to ensure that clients and audiences can still access one another easily. New communication lines are open (some which you might not expect B2B organisations to utilise) and new communities are built to support the people within the industry who thrive on this sort of interaction. A sense of community has never been greater - and it is good to see the industry coming together at a time when it needs it most.
9. FOCUSING LONG-TERM
B2B professionals, regardless of their hierarchical status within the organisation, need to work through a process that focuses on the long-term stability of the organisation. What will it take to navigate this crisis, now that our traditional metrics and assumptions have been rendered irrelevant? More simply put, it’s our turn to answer a question that many of us once asked of our grandparents: What did you do during the war? Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal state their solutions on McKinsey as a call to act across five stages, leading from the crisis of today to the next normal that will emerge after the battle against Coronavirus is won: Resolve, Resilience, Return, Reimagination, and Reform.
“Beyond Coronavirus: The path to the next normal.” McKinsey.
10. A DAILY REVIEW OF THE SITUATION
Organisations in the pharmaceutical industry are literally taking things one day at a time, pausing each day to understand any new developments and their implications on business and life. Reviewing developments, targets and progress to stay on top. This daily review with team members is so common that I cannot see where we’d be without it if it would cease to exist.
11. TACKLING COVID-19
There’s no doubt, COVID-19 caught many of us off-guard. Including governments across the world. But the pharmaceutical organisations themselves have seen similar viruses and pandemics before and have developed knowledge from tackling those viruses. They are currently researching vaccine candidates and undertaking inventories of research portfolio libraries to identify additional potential treatments for research and development. Some organisations have donated compounds with the potential to treat the virus for emergency use and clinical trials, including compounds formerly tested on other viral pathogens such as Ebola and HIV. Others are exploring ways to use existing technologies that provide the ability to rapidly upscale production once a potential vaccine candidate is identified. A comprehensive list of organisations and what they are doing to tackle COVID-19 can be found on the ABPI website. Your organisation is likely have a similar focus.
KEEPING THINGS MOVING
In difficult times such as these we find ourselves in, stopping in our tracks isn’t the best course of action. If possible, marketing departments need to keep working and focus on late 2020/early 2021. The budget that you haven’t spent at the first half of the year will come in useful during this next period. B2B pharmaceutical manufacturing and marketing must go on so that organisations can still compete and operate as close to normal as they possibly can.
If your team size has decreased, focus on the marketing tactics that engage with your audiences. If your organisation is heading in a new direction, ensure the marketing message follows suit. If you’re finding it challenging to work from home, alter your working environment. Keep calm and carry on B2B pharmaceutical marketing folks - you and your organisation are doing a great job. Set your sights on the end of the year and into the beginning of 2021 as we’ll get through this soon.