3 best practices to update and improve your healthcare pharma marketing acumen

The industries of marketing and healthcare change all the time. New technologies emerge and disrupt long-held working styles, and advanced strategies rise in popularity to address critical industry pain points. When these sectors, and their various updates and shifting practices, come together within healthcare marketing, it can be a bit difficult for professionals to keep up.

At the same, failure to incorporate new approaches and solutions could result in the organization lagging behind its competitors, and unable to capture new opportunities or branch out into different service areas. For these reasons, it's imperative for marketers in the healthcare and pharma sectors to brush up on their industry acumen, and update and enhance their marketing strategy.

Here are a few tips and best practices to help keep your organization's marketing on the cutting edge:

1) Check on your website

It's imperative that your website is an accurate and up-to-date reflection of your organization and the services that you provide. This extends not only to the content itself, but the experience that your website provides visitors.

There are two things to take particular note of here:

1. Physicians (71%, according to Klick Wire) say HCP websites influence clinical decisions.
2. Website visitors will leave your site and head to a competitor if the site design is clunky and hard to follow, or if main features and information are difficult to locate.

In this way, one of the first steps you should take to improve your healthcare pharma marketing is to enhance your website, and ensure you have an in-depth understanding of just how this touch point fits into your audiences' experience.

The industry changes all the time, and it's important for marketing strategies to keep up.

2) Consider content marketing

Content marketing can provide valuable information to patients and healthcare professionals and then softly guide them to your products and services. It is a leading strategy today, and it isn't difficult to understand why. Today's consumers don't react to pop-up or other outdated ad placement techniques - in fact, 20% of users have ad blockers in place and don't see this content anyway.

The best way to reach out to your audience is through interesting copy - accessible on your website and even shared through social media or other channels - that answers questions, informs your audience and addresses their needs.

"[Y]ou have an audience who can buy your products or services," Digital Authority Partners President Michael Reddy wrote. "And that audiences goes online to educate itself before interacting and transacting with a vendor. Especially in the healthcare space, everyone is trying to learn something new. Whether it's tips and tricks about technological advancements, new diagnostics options, or general industry news."

3) Offer content for patients, as well as the physician and specialist audience

As We Go Health contributor Cynthia Meyer noted, much of healthcare marketing strategies have traditionally centered around content for physicians, specialists and other professionals in the medical field. And while these audience sectors are still a top priority for 62% of healthcare and pharma marketers, it's important not to overlook your patient audience.

Supporting the patient experience through credible content, mobile accessibility and online patient portals can go a long way toward providing for this audience. Meyer also suggests looking into public online patient communities to get a better sense of current consumer-patient needs and interests. Taking this a step further to build relationships with community leaders can also enable direct connections from your organization to your patient audience.

"Social listening and connecting with influential patient leaders can lead to a whole targeted audience that would have otherwise been closed off," Meyer pointed out.

Connect with one of our expert consultants today to explore how you can deliver your marketing message through multiple channels.