Pharmaceutical PR
6 creative ideas for pharmaceutical public relations (PR).
A small bruise or a full-fledged health treatment - whatever the situation is, the pharma industry is often the answer to our health-related problems.
If you own a pharmaceutical company or plan to build one in the future, you must be well aware that your industry is essential and much-needed because it serves people at a time when it is needed to potentially ease pain and distress. Hence, you must know how to connect with people.
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The connection you form with audiences is not for entertainment like the brands do in almost every other consumer industry. Mainly, pharma industry brands do promotions to spread information about a particular product or service.
Perhaps, it may be due to the seriousness of the industry that pharma brand builders work on limited and simple ideas. But, information - even the most serious of information - does not have to be bland all the time! But, yes, bland is how most pharmaceutical-based ads look like, regulations or no regulations.
What if you had a list of creative ways or methods to make your promotion more interesting and engaging? Public relations and advertising are significant in pharma. Leading with this thought, here are some innovative and creative ideas to help you strengthen your pharmaceutical public relations.
1. Try using augmented and virtual reality
The future is virtual, and all industries are upgrading faster. As per Statista, the VR software market may grow to 16.3 billion by 2022. As a result, pharmaceutical firms have a fantastic chance to break down barriers between patients and customers. Even though this technology is still in its infancy, several businesses are already building their apps and techniques to provide product information and information about virtual clinics.
You can learn from GSK, who created The Migraine Experience. The concept of this virtual reality headset is to generate empathy and awareness in people about the deadly suffering that migraine patients go through whenever they have an attack. The campaign ensured that it get right to the point and started conversation and engagement.
To make this more effective, put your audience at the centre of your business by showing them the whole experience of utilising your products and letting them know how much you care about their health anytime by using virtual reality.
2. Including AI chatbots
A first-class customer experience is an essential part of any business, and artificial intelligence has the potential to help you achieve that.
Brands can utilise chatbots, which automatically respond to patients' questions and requests on digital platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook. It’s critical for the pharmaceutical sector since it streamlines patient communication and dramatically enhances the customer experience by providing that immediate response.
Digital platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook allow brands to use chatbots, tools that automatically answer questions and requests from patients. It is of utmost importance for the pharma industry as it streamlines communication with patients and drastically improves the customer experience.
Some examples to see are:
1. Johnson & Johnson is using AI-handled chatbots to interact with patients. Many companies will likely follow suit.
2. Amag Pharmaceuticals sexual health chatbot. This campaign aimed to de-stigmatise the topic of women's sexual health and educated women about Intrarosa, their medicine for alleviating discomfort during intercourse. In addition, they intended to provide a safe space for women to acquire helpful information while maintaining their anonymity. It functions as a "choose your path" method, with women choosing from three different characters with whom they identify to learn about their illness.
These reinventive campaigns have a solid design to ensure that the audience can better interact with the brand and connect with the products. As a result, the idea of traditional pharma marketing has gone out of the window to make space for simple, creative, interactive, and innovative campaigns to maintain better public relations.
3. Build a solid online presence
Trustful and engaging content can improve the online reputation of your brand. You begin to earn authority points, making your brand a go-to source for both doctors and patients.
Bad and positive reviews might impact your search engine rankings. As a result, you must determine which keywords to use to disparage your items to make the appropriate improvements. For this, your website's content must be entirely trustworthy, establishing you as a credible source of information.
Uninformed groups such as those who believe in other untested "medical practices," such as acupuncture, might leave negative evaluations, as can something more forced like the zodiac signs or the belief that a tarot reading can cure all of your health problems.
The ultimate goal should be to shun the noise that uninformed groups can make by the good reviews.
4. Social media - a rising platform to interact with users
When the number of followers of your brand increase, you will start noticing a trend in how people interact with your posts. They either ask questions about your products or review their quality.
There are two things you can do with each of these:
First, send a catalogue of all your products with prices and details to those inquiring about prices; they will be grateful. Moreover, some of them might order other products too.
Another benefit of social media - you can use good review messages as testimonials. Again, it adds credibility to your brand and products. You can take the help of a social media assistant to do the research and help you with social media content.
Social networks may not contribute to the direct sale of pharmacists, but that does not mean you can't use social media for your marketing strategy. But, you can always attach the direct link to your website where your patients can directly buy all your brand's products/services.
You must have good-quality images of your products since most networks hook with users visually, such as Facebook or Instagram.
5. Take advantage of the best SEO and PPC strategies
If you want more people to know & navigate to your website, you must have a solid Search Engine Optimization strategy.
Everyone strives to be the first to sell to doctors and patients in the pharmaceutical industry, but how do you do it? You will appear at the top of all searches if you can meet Google's expectations.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key to doing it. It entails looking for keywords that match common searches, developing engaging content and promoting high-demand products on the market.
When Google recognizes that consumers interact with your website or eCommerce store, the platform will reward you by boosting your pharmaceutical company's visibility. The following are some natural approaches to accomplish this:
Making titles and blogs with trending keywords
Creating a user-friendly website
Producing Informative content
Producing multimedia content (Video Blogs, Podcasts, Webinars)
Now, this is the free version to appear in all the search intent of your target audience, but there is a paid way to do it: The Pay Per Click strategy.
Once you are clear about your SEO study, you can invest in Facebook, Instagram, and even Google to show your ads to your predetermined audience.
Using this strategy, you pay a Cost Per Click (CPC) every time your consumers click on these ads. Together, these two strategies can move a large number of customers to your website, translating into more product sales in the long run. When these two techniques are coupled, they can drive many visitors to your website, resulting in more product sales in the long term.
6. Creating educational content can leverage your website
What do you do when you have a mild headache? Most people usually look for their condition and possible cure on Google. Unfortunately, after searching, they learn that they risk having a heart attack and dying quickly when they read the first blog. Believe it or not, this happens frequently, and the information is typically incorrect.
Creating content-based on facts can help counteract misinformation, and in a field as rich as medicine, you will never run out of things to write about. The primary goal is to link the articles' topics to the quality of your products so that customers can obtain a direct answer to all of their problems.
You can use the following and various other formats to present educational content:
Blogs
Statistics
Articles
Transparency reports
That was the list to help you if you are looking to improve your brand identity and public relations.
However, producing detailed content can take hours of research, which can consume all the energy of business owners. Therefore, it’s always good to use virtual assistant services for research purposes. Pharma business owners can save time and money by working with a virtual assistant.
Always consider that paid strategies are there, but they won't work unless you produce powerful and relevant content. In addition, an industry that involves health and medicines heavily relies on purposeful and good content. So, as a brand owner, you must focus on creating and spreading knowledgeable content to sustain & grow your brand.
For more on PR and communications in the pharmaceutical sector, and how we can help you, please see our agency page.
Guest contributor: Priya Gupta. A writer and content strategist with Wishup, Priya is a quintessential millennial at heart. She specializes in long-form writing, which requires in-depth research and analysis. She likes to write about remote working solutions, art, cinema, and technology. In addition, she loves to peek into the past through literature and curates startup news in her free time.
