This four part ‘Omnichannel Success’ series, created in collaboration with Uptake’s in-house omnichannel and digital healthcare consultancy experts, aims to demonstrate actionable ways to unlock the power of an omnichannel engagement strategy in the healthcare sector. With each part, we have included a free resource to help you shift from thought to action. Scroll to the bottom for the download.
If you missed it, you can read Part One of the ‘Omnichannel Success’ series here, which explores the differences between multichannel and omnichannel marketing and engagement in further detail.
Unleashing the Power of Omnichannel: Transforming the Pharma Brand Planning Process for Enhanced Customer Experiences.
In the ever-changing landscape of customer engagement, the transition from multichannel to omnichannel marketing and engagement strategies is revolutionising how pharmaceutical brands connect with their customers. In this article we explore the fundamental differences between multichannel and omnichannel strategic approaches to pharma marketing, highlighting the implications for the brand planning process. By rethinking strategic brand planning and embracing omnichannel strategies and tactics, your brand teams can unlock the potential for personalised and adaptive experiences, driven by agile processes and AI-enabled technology.
A paradigm shift is needed in how we plan customer journeys to meet customers’ expectations today. Traditionally, when using a multichannel approach customer journeys have been planned in a linear fashion. By planning in this way the focus lies on determining which brand message the customer encounters and when, within each individual channel. This can typically result in uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity regarding how brand messaging should translate across different channels. Often, the messages are not fit for purpose,remain static, and fail to adapt to the customer’s unique needs or behaviours, especially when they move between channels. This results in a disjointed experience for the customers, which is far less effective at driving behaviour change.
We can employ the power of omnichannel marketing and engagement by crafting cohesive, seamless, and customer-centric experiences across channels. An omnichannel brand planning process shifts its focus away from individual channel engagement as part of its brand strategy and instead focuses on the overall customer journey, ensuring content is accessible as and when needed by the customer, regardless of channel theyaccess it through. During strategic planning, a pharmaceutical brand’s messaging and content needs to be developed with adaptability and personalisation at the forefront, catering to customers’ specific needs and behaviours at any given moment.
Enabling agile processes
It is critical to be bold and embrace lean, aligned and agile processes during your strategic brand planning. Enabling the shift from multichannel to omnichannel brand strategy requires re-evaluating the way your plans and content are developed by your management and marketing teams.
There should be a cohesive organisational culture within these teams that allows them to adopt agile ways of working and develop processes whichallow for greater flexibility and responsiveness. This flexibility is key to an omnichannel strategy, where brand messaging may need to be quickly and effectively changed at short notice to respond to different market conditions. By adopting an agile mindset during strategic planning and preparing, brands can quickly adapt to changing customer demands and market dynamics.
Utilising the power of AI during your brand planning
A greater number of tools have been developed over the past 5 years which use the power of artificial intelligence to help businesses gather valuable data about the behaviours of their customers. Typically the pharmaceutical marketing industry has been slow to adopt this type of technology, but if used correctly they can form an important part of a companies omnichannel brand planning and commercial strategy.
AI-enabled technology, helps fuel the power of personalisation within omnichannel strategies. By gaining insights from advanced algorithms and machine learning, brands can gain access to centralised and accurate customer data. This data adds value by helping to build the foundation for theunderstanding of individual preferences, behaviours, and contextual cues. Once these have been identified, it is easier for brands to deliver highly tailored content and the best experiences across all channels, which results in transforming customer engagement and satisfaction.
The evolution from multichannel to omnichannel signifies a profound change and a new way for brands to plan and execute their engagement strategies. By embracing an adaptive culture combined with ownership of omnichannel approaches by marketing teams, we can provide seamless and personalised experiences that resonate with customers at every interaction, and ensure we deliver the desired impact for the brand.
To set your brand up for success, it is essential that the pharma marketing teams responsible for the brand planning process embrace this paradigm shift, by placing the customer experience at the forefront, fostering content adaptability, develop agile processes, and harness the power of AI-driven personalisation.
Through this transformation, it is possible to unlock the full potential of omnichannel strategies to improve your brand positioning and inspire exceptional connections with customers.
Speak to the experts
Uptake’s digital and omnichannel experts are Alexandra Fulford, David Thwaites, and Ben Wilcock.
Contact us for healthcare consultancy from our experienced team.
