How educational programmes can provide ROI for pharma

Including valuable educational content as part of a phased programme of activities in a therapeutic area helps doctors improve their clinical practice whilst enabling pharma companies to understand doctors and pinpoint doctors' knowledge gaps.

Having identified these needs, both promotional and educational content and services can be tailored to address those needs, build trust with the target audience and achieve deeper engagement. 

Adopting a multi-wave approach, that focuses on the relevant use of educational and promotional content to move the audience's knowledge on to the next level, enables pharma companies to measure change in knowledge as well as value to the customer. 

Of course, this content needs to be carefully commissioned to ensure that it is fully transparent and compliant with the ABPI Code in the UK. Independent accredited education has the highest value for doctors, but there is significant value in well constructed “promotional education”.

This approach can be taken to support a brand soon after launch in the early stage of its lifecycle or for one in late stage maturity that has a little or soon to be diminished sales force focus; since evidence from programmes run in this manner shows they can extend the productive sales life. 

This can be adapted for new brands by providing deeper and more valuable engagement to the customer base, at launch whilst also extending the “long tail” of the sales life for commercial or mature brands.

It is essential to continually optimise the customer engagement, based on what they respond to as well as using a research-led approach to understanding perceptions of the brand and the competitive landscape from the start, especially for a commercial brand. 

This ensures messaging is tailored to address current perceptions of efficacy or differentiation of a brand (especially in a crowded and/or a price sensitive environment) and enables pharma companies to measure how this can be changed, aligning with objectives and KPIs, during the course of the programme.

For more information on Doctors.net.uk, please call Simon Grime on +44 (0)1235 828400, or email Simon.Grime@mess.doctors.org.uk. You can also follow Doctors.net.uk on twitter: doctors_net_uk

Digital inspiration for pharma on mobile, social media, strategy, best practice, regulations and more