‍This is a four-part series on Humanizing the Omnichannel Experience in the Pharmaceutical industry. Here, we do more than just describe the issue from an academic point of view; we highlight and investigate real examples that we have resolved for many of the Top 20 global companies in the pharmaceutical industry in the last 20 years.

You can also contact us to cover the topic with further detail.

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1/ THE DIGITAL BIAS: HOW an incomplete picture of hcp's leads to meaningless relationships

Segmentation is, and has been, the crucial pillar of business strategy and execution. Wrong, incomplete, or obsolete profiling databases have sunk the most brilliant plans. With the inception of the digital era, a seismic shift has happened: many businesses have been enriching customer pattern recognition with digital behaviour and third-party intent data and have adopted sophisticated machine learning algorithms to classify them. Increasing concerns about data privacy are waving digital marketing professionals’ learnings on the last 20 years, and workarounds are being sought extensively.

Our experience in omnichannel design and implementation across the industry has revealed that many marketing leaders tend to focus too often on these technological solutions and the digital footprint these stakeholders leave on-line instead of looking at the drivers of these behaviours. Unsurprisingly, many customer profiles are digitally biased, missing key information about their needs, desires and drivers or even missing non-digital players.

How can you revert this bias?

Needless to say, we encourage you to carefully understand all your customer needs, motivations, aspirations and what they expect from your company to ensure relevant connections. Our approach is based on human sciences such as business anthropology, psychology, and ethnography.

You can discover real-world examples and a detailed explanation of how our solutions have played a pivotal role on solving these issues for Top20 global pharma companies in the 1st part of our four-part series, that can be downloaded here. You can also contact us to elaborate more on that.

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2/ LACK OF INITIAL COMMUNICATION FOCUS CREATEs EARLY DISCONNECTION

Marketing automation has propelled content programs across industries, and during the Covid-19 lapse of time cross-media solutions have been triggered all around. Reaction towards e-mail delivery, attendance to webinars or content download have enriched the most well-prepared data pools with priceless information to classify their customers and stakeholders. Notwithstanding, this has led to content saturation and burnout, with a backlash in which people around the world go through massive unsubscriptions. This trend is so common that it is very well-known among marketers under the name of the “Cancel Culture”. This is the reason why heavy focus on targeting the right content to the right people at a very early stage is becoming increasingly important.

How can you better target your customers with relevant information?

Classification systems need to gauge customer interest in content fast enough so that these don’t run away. I'ts strongly advised your algorithms include omnichannel data, that is, not only marketing-driven feedback, but also sales force opinion, customer service inputs, etc. It is essential to perform motivational segmentation to concentrate your strategy on your customer’s real needs (and preferences) from the very beginning, guaranteeing a better engagement and powering machine learning results for personalised content. Our omnichannel strategy approach is human-centric, we bring value by uncovering the deepest insights, unveiling north star desires that drive human behaviour. We will provide real examples on this issue and how to address it in a meaningful way on our 2nd part of the series. By downloading The Digital Bias, you will be automatically subscribed to the whole series; if you want further information on this topic you can contact us as well.

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3/ PERFECT STRATEGIES USUALLY WORK ONLY ON PAPER

There are many elements that entail complexity when designing a successful omnichannel strategy, besides the most obvious -number of channels involved-. Geographical diversity implies not only intricate cultural uniqueness, but also geopolitical concerns, social media preferences and habits, different health systems and idiomatic shades. Tech stack limitations, issues in data quality, erratic digital behaviour or even company culture will impact in the implementation success. But when it comes to execution there’s a key factor: the ability to clearly convey the overall strategy to the organisation and achieve cohesive mobilisation across business units.

What does this mean for omnichannel managers?

When trying to orchestrate all these complexity vectors within a plan, a challenging intellectual effort takes place. A common issue we’ve identified is that brilliant plans are designed to solve these issues, but these only hold up on paper, because they are either too complex to bring to reality or too difficult to internalise by teams. As a manager, it's paramount that you look beyond marketing and design simple frameworks, defining clear guidelines to guarantee the acceptance and implementation of your strategy in the different countries and by different team members. Do you want us to elaborate more on that? Download The Digital Bias, or contact us.

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4/ MARKETING AND SALES REALITIES ARE OFTEN NOT ALIGNED

Complexity is not the only reason why brilliant omnichannel plans backfire. There’s also a strong dependence on your team’s capacity and willingness to work on it. We usually find huge skill gaps across channels’ staff and misaligned incentives among them. Many salespeople or customer service representatives don’t see enough return on investment to the time they spend on the CRM and omit key data or simply don’t pay enough attention to this critical process, spoiling project traction.

So, how can I improve my omnichannel strategy?

Proper, formal training needs to come along excellent communication. The overall mission of the project needs to be stated and engraved in each one’s mind: it’s not a tactical effort, but a global strategical move. Involving all the channels early in the process will slow the design process but will make it more robust. Going too fast and/or not getting everyone onboard might render all previous efforts useless. Ensure that the appropriate incentive system is in place and help everyone understand how their actions will bring them closer to their goals and the global ones.