THE “WILD CARD“ IN OMNICHANNEL MARKETING

Pharma Sales and Marketing are working more closely than ever to surround HCPs with relevant and personalized messages to impact engagement, preference, and ultimately, brand performance. Typical channels in the omnichannel approach to HCP marketing are:

Advertising
Social Media
Brand microsites and apps

KOL/Speaker Bureaus
Medical Media Websites

Digital Marketing
Medical Conferences

"Our KPIs measure share of voice, coverage, and frequency. We don’t have KPIs to measure the quality of the relationships we build, or the value we bring to the HCPs."

- Mehrnaz Campbell
Author, The Omni Advantage

In all of these channels, Marketing crafts the messaging and measures the impact of specific campaigns and programs in each channel. Messaging and branding are accurate, consistent, and approved - in other words, “controlled.” Results are tracked, monitored, and reported on a frequent and regular basis, and insight is gathered so that strategy can be shifted to optimize efforts. In other words, results are “measurable.” Brand leaders can rest assured that everything is being controlled and measured, and the brand strategy is being executed as planned.

Perfect, right?

Not quite.

What about the F2F field sales rep channel?

Yes, field reps have been trained and certified on the brand messaging, the clinical evidence story, and everything else they need to know to communicate accurately and effectively with HCPs through New Hire Onboarding, National Sales Meetings, Product Launches, and many other efforts. But “The Forgetting Curve” is real - humans typically forget 60% of what they learn within 20 minutes of learning it, and forget 75% of it within two days.¹

The most important slice of the biopharma omnichannel customer engagement model is a WILD CARD.

And, yes, the field has been equipped with a library of sleek Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR)-approved marketing collateral and sales aids to guide and support their live HCP interactions. But, in a 2022 analysis of 600 million HCP interactions across more than 80% of biopharmas worldwide, it was found that even though biopharmas created 20% more content over the previous year, 77% of that content is rarely or never used by field teams.²

And finally, yes - territory managers are measuring field rep performance via call quotas, territory reach and frequency, and monthly ride-alongs to assess and coach through observation. But can they really control and measure what comes out of a sales rep’s mouth during F2F HCP interactions?

What makes this a critical gap in omnichannel marketing is that the pharma field rep F2F interaction is still the most effective and preferred channel with HCPs.

Recent data shows that in-person meetings are the dominant rep-HCP interaction channel, and are on the rise.²

Clearly, field rep F2F meetings with HCPs are the most desired, most effective, and most important channel in pharma’s omnichannel customer engagement model, yet they are the hardest to control and measure because they are live conversations. There is no way to know if the message was delivered accurately and with impact. Not only does this negatively affect brand and company performance, it can introduce risk in the form of misrepresenting the brand, going off-label, confusing and misleading the market, and regulatory and legal exposure.

So, how should the industry address this critical issue affecting brand and company performance?

Footnotes

1 The Forgetting Curve
2 Veeva Pulse Field Trends Report
3 From Surviving to Thriving Changing the Paradigm of HCP Interactions