How will AI impact direct-to-physician marketing?

It seemed obvious for a long time that AI and machine learning were destined to produce seismic shifts in business operations across the board, but the precise entry points for these technologies were uncertain. Now that we've moved beyond the earliest stages of AI adoption in key industries, clearer pictures are emerging.

AI's influence on marketing has accelerated, growing 44% over the last two years, according to Salesforce. In the healthcare and life sciences vertical, 32% of marketers use AI in some capacity. At the same time, changes in healthcare marketing trends have resulted in fewer visits between pharmaceutical representatives and doctors. Taken together, these two trends mean that there are big changes in direct-to-physician marketing ahead.

Here are some ways AI marketing could affect direct-to-physician marketing strategies for pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.

AI could have a big impact on direct-to-physician marketing.

Personalized digital experiences

As healthcare organizations continue to roll out campaigns that attract healthcare professionals, whether they are initially successful or not, the patterns of online activity produced by physicians will provide instructive data that fuels machine learning. Ultimately, marketers will supply physicians with suggested browsing experiences and targeted emails with relevant content for doctors, timed for the best click-through rates.

The timeline for successful rollouts will depend on each organization's AI sophistication and their ability to produce content and suggestions that are relevant for their targeted users.

For this type of marketing to progress quickly, direct-to-physician marketing efforts will need to supply users with a wide variety of options and discover what's relevant to their audiences.

If healthcare marketers are successful at supplying the kind of content physicians need to successfully treat their patients, then these companies are more likely to amass the kind of data that can be instructive for effective content suggestions.

Maximizing the potential of in-person visits

Salesforce also found that 62% of customers now expect companies to anticipate their needs.

While in-person visits between doctors and medical industry representatives have decreased in recent years, they haven't collapsed, and these touch points still produce important interactions for healthcare companies and physicians.

Further adoption of AI, fueled by healthcare professionals' online interactions, will enhance the effectiveness of the in-person visits that still take place, ensuring that representatives maximize the face time they get and increasing the likelihood of continued relationships.

While we may still be in the early days of seeing how AI can influence products like CRMs, there seems to be a lot of potential for future implementations here. To prepare for the next stage, healthcare companies need to have a good handle on the data they're taking in and on how individuals in the company record offline interactions.

Automated content optimization at scale

So far, we've focused on the impact of AI when it comes to curating and suggesting content based on user interactions.

However, recent headlines have illustrated the potential for AI programs to not only curate content, but to create and revise it as well.

Alimama, which handles digital marketing for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, uses AI-powered generative bots to produce marketing text. Stateside, JPMorgan Chase inked a five-year contract with Persado, a company that uses AI to revise copy.

The benefit of using these technologies to draft and reformat copywriting is that the AI program is designed to optimize language for desired user behaviors, something that humans can tinker with, but not something they can deploy very effectively at such a large scale.

As medical marketers amass data that indicates what kinds of content and messages appeal to physicians, and as AI technology advances its capabilities, it's very possible that computer programs will write the natural-sounding language that guides physicians toward useful information from healthcare companies.

If you're interested in sharing your message with physicians, reach out to Elsevier today to find out how we can help.