Multichannel strategies: Making the complex simple.

For an optimal design and implementation of multichannel campaigns, a strategy must be defined that gives multichannel managers of a pharmaceutical company the desired direction. The multichannel strategy can be defined for individual products, product bundles, or entire portfolios.

Due to limited resources, it is often a question of prioritization which strategic goals are to be pursued through multichannel marketing. Are all or selective target groups addressed? Does the company want to position itself as a scientific or commercial partner? Is the patient or the healthcare professional at the centre of multichannel marketing activities? Should healthcare professionals be informed via innovative and digital or traditional channels?

On the one hand it is crucial that the multichannel strategy supports the overall corporate strategy and on the other hand that sufficient budget is made available by the company management to ensure both necessary human and systemic resources for effective multichannel management.

The first step in the concrete design of multichannel marketing campaigns is a detailed understanding of customer groups or customer archetypes. When segmenting their target groups, many pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using behavioral-based segmentation criteria (e.g. channel preferences, content preferences) in addition to traditional potential-based criteria (e.g. prescription potential).

A detailed understanding of the customer journey is also required for a target group-specific approach in order to understand at which sequences of the journey decisions for or against a therapy are made and what aspects drive these decisions. It is also important to identify how and through which channels target groups can best be reached, even if time constraints mean that healthcare professionals have less and less opportunity for a traditional sales force call.

Based on insights from the potential- and behavioral-based customer segments as well as from the customer journey analysis, the right messages can be conveyed to specific target groups via the right channels in the right frequencies and sequences. While many pharmaceutical companies today are using as many channels as possible, the right mix of non-digital, but above all digital channels, is a critical success factor in positioning the company optimally in the age of digital health.

The availability of concrete content, messages and materials is an important factor which must be juxtaposed with the content preferences of the respective customer archetype in order to legitimize a contact or appointment. Is the healthcare professional scientifically (e.g. information on primary clinical trial data) or pragmatically (e.g. practice-oriented description of side effects) oriented? Communicating content that optimally matches the preferences of the customer archetype increases the probability of future contact points.

The success of the multichannel campaigns is finally evaluated by continuous performance management and closed loop marketing. The Big Data Channel Impact framework developed by Homburg & Partner uses statistical methods to quantify which messages via which channels had the highest impact on a physician’s prescription behavior or attitude towards a product (adoption ladder). These findings are transparently communicated to the functions involved and can be optimally used in an iterative process to design new and advanced multichannel campaigns and allocate future budgets.

Crucial for the success of multichannel management is the definition of an agile and cross-functional operating model with efficient sizing and a clear role model which clearly assigns responsibilities for individual activities of the end-to-end process “multichannel management” to specific functions and persons. In this operating model, more and more pharmaceutical companies are relying on a dedicated and central multichannel management function that coordinates all multichannel activities cross-functionally, for example in the areas of marketing, sales, market access, events & congresses or business intelligence.

The functions are empowered for efficient and effective multichannel management by providing the required IT infrastructure and regular training. Additionally it is possible to include an operationalized version of the strategic multichannel management objectives in the incentivization system of the employees involved.