Pharma sector: Benchmarking your 2018 media plan

With the first quarter of 2018 in the books, it's time to assess where your pharmaceutical marketing plan stands today compared to where you want it to be. Benchmarking your media plan will help you understand where your marketing investments have generated the most value so you can optimize resource allocation in the months ahead.

Analyzing campaign integration

A successful pharmaceutical media plan should leverage integrated messaging across all channels. By targeting physicians in multiple media environments with cohesive messaging, pharma marketers can optimize the use of their resources. For example, a media plan that shares assets between print and digital channels can control costs by avoiding the need for duplicate resources. For example, pharma marketers leverage market research, HCP-directed messaging, and visual assets across channels, thus eliminating the need to burn additional resources to create similar assets for digital and print.

Marketers can look at their Q1 spend to determine any duplications that may have occurred and create a strategy for better integration. To be clear, marketing integration doesn't equate to a copy and paste approach, but rather a consistency of messaging, branding, and appeal to specific personas. Marketing expert Ahmad Kareh, writing in Forbes magazine, noted that each channel can still utilize unique messaging while remaining a part of a consistent campaign. It's a matter of developing an understanding the mindsets of your target persona.

For instance, a physician reading a medical journal has different intentions than a physician reading content on his or her organization's EHR system. Therefore, a pharma marketer would need to relay the same general messaging through two distinct lenses. The strategy for print may be to spread awareness of a product while an integrated EHR strategy might seek to deliver specific facts about the product or service in question. Both approaches have the same goal, and an integrated approach keeps that goal at center stage.

Monitoring HCP engagement will show you how to optimize future resource allocations.

Monitoring HCP engagement

The beginning of Q2 is an ideal time to assess how your 2018 media plan has affected HCP engagement. Sales metrics and analysis of existing client engagement will aid marketers in fine-tuning their approach for the remainder of the year. Sales expert Richard April, writing for HubSpot, encouraged readers that keeping in touch with existing clients supports long-term business goals. Your benchmarks should address how prospective clients engage with your campaign as well as how existing clients re-engage with your brand.

Tracking engagement within digital channels will inevitably become more streamlined. By working with a strategic partner such as Elsevier, pharma marketers benefit from a robust, multichannel platform. Monitoring engagement across integrated Elsevier channels adds another layer of process optimization. This creates more opportunities for meaningful engagement with providers across all medical disciplines.

Leveraging key performance indicators

Setting KPIs and tracking performance across channels is necessary  to efficiently manage a multichannel strategy. Pharmaceutical Commerce suggested that marketers not only track sales ROI, but also metrics that monitor customer satisfaction, optimization of internal processes and market costs management. Each of these distinct areas feeds the overall success of the campaign.

Though a multi-channel approach to pharmaceutical advertising contains many moving pieces, each works together toward a common goal. By partnering with multi-platform solutions providers such as Elsevier, pharma marketers gain deeper insights into how HCPs engage with their campaigns.

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