Top 5 pharma marketing trends in 2024
2023 was a year of many innovations and changes. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), digitalisation, wider adoption of tools for marketing automation, and numerous other technologies have significantly reshaped the world of pharma for the better.
In 2024, the industry is expected to continue changing and adjusting to new technologies that are being created and improved as we speak. What trends will dominate the pharma marketing this year?
Trend #1: Personalisation at scale
Personalisation will remain one of the main goals for many businesses and, thanks to constantly evolving technologies like AI and machine learning (ML), it’s now easier than ever to create and deliver personalised content and offers to the right audience. There is not much need to prove the efficiency of personalisation; the data speaks for itself:
- 91% of shoppers are more inclined to stay with brands that offer personalised experiences to them.
- Companies that invest in advanced personalisation see a 2000% return on investment.
- 71% of consumers state they would choose to open brand emails because of the personalised experience.
From personalised landing pages to email campaigns tailored for patients with very specific needs and pain points, there are many ways to make content more special. Everything starts with data collection, which is then structured and thoroughly analysed. And what we can expect from 2024 is the emergence of tools meant to speed up and improve personalised content creation processes.
Data-driven, personalised marketing is the future for many industries, including pharma. And in the next few years, we will witness more unique strategies and tools that help companies optimise their brand messaging respectively.
Trend #2: Video content
Videos are one of the best ways to promote different products and services, but their prohibitive production costs often make marketers look for alternatives.
Videos can help businesses find a voice and provide potential viewers with a better understanding of how they can benefit from choosing a particular company. In the past couple of years, pharma organisations finally decided to pay long-due attention to video marketing and started to create various visuals to attract more customers to their offerings. And it worked!
Video marketing has been around for some time, and it will remain pivotal in 2024. It’s poised to evolve and become even more cost-effective and popular in the years to come. Here are some of the trends that will likely skyrocket soon:
- Virtual Reality (VR) videos;
- Videos created by AI;
- Silent videos;
- Interactive videos;
- User-generated videos;
- PersonaliSed video content.
92.3% of internet users, including healthcare professionals, watch videos every week. For a marketing campaign to succeed, it’s crucial to incorporate at least some video elements. And thanks to the constant improvement of the means to generate them, everyone can now create a high-quality video quickly and without unjustified expenditures.
It’s best to join this trend (if you haven’t already) to stay ahead of competitors.
Trend #3: Omnichannel marketing
In our fast-paced world, the opportunity to reach a potential customer is becoming more elusive every year. What can help us tackle this issue is omnichannel marketing, making it possible to reach the best audience for a certain product via the right channel at the right time.
Omnichannel marketing is all about making sure that every customer’s interaction with a brand is consistent and creating a smooth transition between channels. The reason omnichannel marketing is gaining greater popularity is linked to another trend that is currently garnering more attention: personalisation. Omnichannel can help create a unified experience, filled with improved recommendations and personalised offers, and every time a customer interacts with a brand, they receive valuable content, rather than encountering repetitive messages.
For that matter, I’m proud to mention that my company has a solution to foster trust-based relationships and personalise communications with customers: eWizard, an innovative content experience platform. In the future, tools like eWizard will become a foundation for many campaigns, and it will be possible to sustain a unique and cohesive brand identity across all channels. From an improved return on investment to increased volume of customers, omnichannel marketing already offers numerous benefits, and the list will continue to grow.
Trend #4: Patient-centricity
A patient-centric approach is a way to build relationships with patients that align with their needs and preferences. In other words, it is about building the marketing strategies bottom-to-top, seeing patients as human individuals, and as sources of the most valuable and reliable input for marketers.
In 2022, 61% of patients wanted better engagement with their healthcare providers. In 2023, this number only kept growing. Patients want to be heard, and they are ready to collaborate with their doctors to find the best solutions. And patient-centric marketing is what can help increase patient trust and strengthen brand image; all it takes is creating messages that are more personalised and relevant.
Even though many pharma companies would like to claim the status of being “patient-centric”, unfortunately, this is not the case, unless the companies in question have the right means to collect and analyse patient feedback. It seems like the situation might take a different turn in the next few years, as more businesses recognise the long-term benefits of patient-centricity.
Trend #5: Generative AI
When Generative AI (GenAI) was first introduced to a wide audience, almost everyone believed that sooner or later it would wipe out the career market and be the last “content creator” standing. However, at this point, it’s obvious that GenAI can only augment the work of a human, not take it on fully. GenAI can enhance many marketing campaigns in pharma, making it much easier to deliver great content fast.
Generative AI takes care of repetitive and tedious tasks, allowing marketers to focus on more important and creative ones. In its current state, GenAI can automate up to 70% of an average worker’s workload, and many experts believe that this is just the beginning. Artificial intelligence is also capable of making content more personalised by analysing the available data and extracting key information from it. And, as a result, it takes only a little bit of time to create a marketing campaign tailored to a specific audience.
Pharma marketers can leverage GenAI’s content creation, data analysis, and automation capabilities to create exceptional campaigns from scratch in a remarkably short time, all without sacrificing quality. From generating ideas for the next blog post to conducting a full analysis of current pharma industry trends, Generative AI can aid pharma marketers in many tasks, and it will keep evolving and reshaping pharma marketing in 2024.
Navigating the change in the evolving pharmaceutical marketing landscape
The pharmaceutical marketing landscape in 2024 is destined for rapid digital transformation, marked by the emergence of various other technologies as well.
No doubt, keeping pace with these changes necessitates cultivating a culture of continuous learning. While new technologies and approaches to pharmaceutical marketing are emerging, it's crucial to take the time to ensure that our focus shifts toward their improvement.
About the author
Nataliya Andreychuk is the CEO and co-founder of Viseven, a global MarTech services provider for life sciences and pharma industries. She is one of the top experts in digital pharma marketing and digital content implementation and has more than 14 years of solid leadership behind her belt. Andreychuk is among the strongest female leaders in the marketing technology world. She has been contributing her vast expertise to developing smart digital solutions and software, which are now serving clients in over 70 global markets, delivering intelligent, personalised content across channels, platforms, and countries.
About Viseven
Visevenis a future-inspired global MarTech Services Provider for Pharma and Life Sciences industries with more than a decade of experience. Viseven's digital transformation centre offers innovative solutions for companies of different sizes and digital maturity levels by merging marketing and digital technology expertise with innovation and strategic capabilities. The company's solutions, products, and services are actively used by the TOP 100 Pharma and Life Sciences companies in more than 50 countries around the globe.
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