Doctor engagement has become a tricky field to navigate, which, with a little understanding of doctors’ pain points and needs, can be addressed with the use of technology.
Not only are doctors and HCPs short on time today but they are also looking for a lot more validated information on drugs, medical studies and success rates, with an end goal to deliver superior care to patients. Doctors are engaging with brands that offer valuable inputs and answers, not necessarily all of which can be provided by an MR during a sales call.
In this regard, e-detailing has made certain strides in improving engagement. With marketing automation you add exponential value to your e-detailing, ensuring you’re delivering on doctor expectations and increasing doctor engagement.
The first step to this approach would be to use virtual e-detailing – a process that allows your reps to present doctors with information and research digitally, without the need for an in-person meeting.
What is virtual e-detailing?
Virtual e-detailing allows you to schedule virtual meetings with doctors, taking them through all the required material seamlessly with virtual chat functionalities, as effectively as you would in person.
The Benefits of
Virtual e-Detailing
Virtual meetings allow you to be present at the doctor’s convenience, and can be easily scheduled in and around his practice hours.
Virtual tools allow reps to involve experts and medical professionals from within your company to the call as needed, thus increasing the value of the meeting to the doctor.
You’re saving on time and travel costs, and with an increase in the quality of communication, you’ll see better returns on your investment.
As the interaction is taking place digitally, analytical tools will seamlessly crunch the interaction data to create automated reports on the doctor’s engagement, helping you track your KPIs.
Marketing automation helps derive even more value from virtual e-detailing, by means of creating and tracking even more touchpoints.
What is marketing automation in healthcare?
Marketing automation is the usage of a software product to market to your TG across channels while automating a significant number of marketing tasks. Combined with e-detailing, it seamlessly merges marketing and sales so your reps are empowered to deliver significant value additions to doctors, maximise the number of interactions and derive long-term value from them.
The benefits of
marketing automation
Track interactions with doctors
Every call, e-detailing interaction and materials shared can be marked and tracked, giving you greater insight into each doctor’s level of engagement.
Engage the right doctors effectively
With the user data that the marketing automation platform is constantly crunching for you, you can identify interested doctors and re-engage them with webinars, landing pages, videos and email marketing. Disengaged doctors can be gently encouraged back into the loop.
Drive constant interactions with engaged doctors
Move beyond calls. Marketing automation allows you to configure emails and SMSes to be automatically sent to doctors at pre-determined touchpoints – say if, after a virtual e-detailing session with your rep, they can be emailed the detailed to a relevant webinar – thus keeping your brand top of mind.
Measure and optimise your marketing activities
Get real-time reports on doctors’ user behaviour across all platforms – e-detailing, landing page, events, etc. – so you can better plan your future interactions and spends.
Reach out to all affiliated doctors with a single click
Email & SMS marketing can be automated in bulk, saving hours of time and effort. Seemingly personalised communication ensures your brand is maintaining top-of-the-mind recall with doctors.
How this ties into your current doctor engagement
Your company may or may not be ready to move to a completely virtual form of e-detailing or sales meetings. In that case, virtual e-detailing & marketing automation could be planned around your MR’s face-to-face meeting, allowing him/her to drive greater value.
Theoretically, this could be your doctor interaction:
- You begin by sharing introductory collaterals with the doctor via virtual e-detailing and track how they’ve engaged with those, to be prepared before going in for a face-to-face meeting.
- Based on the success of the meeting, you could automate certain emails or SMSes to be sent to the doctor right away, leading them to a landing page built into the virtual e-detailing portal, customised with information of particular interest to them.
- The landing page can drive further interaction in multiple ways – by offering relevant presentations, research papers, webinars, etc. The automation platform would track the doctor’s engagement with all of these, giving you deep insights into his/her engagement level.
- These interactions can be supplemented by emails from your representative, consistently providing the doctor with informative resources that will help them make decisions and improve their quality of care, using your approved content and your products.
What you need to get started:
A solution that offers virtual e-detailing with a layer of marketing automation, seamlessly combining your sales and marketing to drive effectiveness.
An understanding of your doctors’ requirements that drives an effective plan of communication and interaction, designed to meet each doctor’s needs.
Extensive content-creation capabilities to constantly publish up-to-date, attractive communication that adds value to doctors.
- The Technology
- Strategy
- Creative capabilities
Combining e-detailing and marketing automation allows you to deliver cohesive brand experiences to doctors, in the right place (wherever they are) at the right time (whenever they want) using highly valuable, personalised information. The approach is designed to blend in with and add value to their every day, keeping your brand – and products – front and centre in their mind.
Get Started: To know how to increase doctor and patient engagement digitally, get in touch with our pharma marketing experts.