Everything To Know About Crafting Content Marketing for Pharmaceutical Industry

It’s not too far-fetched to say that content marketing is changing the way we see the world. If you want an answer to a question or want to find out something, where do you look it up? (Hint: It’s not the library!). No, you look it up online. You use Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or another search engine to find the answer.

So, how do these search engines find this answer for you? From the content posted online on relevant websites, and the strategy behind this is content marketing.

Like every other industry, the pharmaceutical industry also places significant importance on content marketing. Patients and healthcare professionals are turning to online mediums to collect information about medication and disease treatment. Hence, it’s time for pharmaceutical companies to up their game and invest in content marketing.

Why Creating A Content Marketing Strategy Significant For Pharmaceutical Marketers?

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the industries that faces extensive global regulations. This signifies that marketers need to be extra cautious about creating and distributing content via multiple channels. They must ensure the credibility of the content and conduct thorough fact-checking. This makes the entire process quite challenging and time-consuming to discuss industry trends or the latest developments in the pharmaceutical field.

The pharmaceutical industry is tremendously important because even a simple pharma product can change a person’s life forever. Given how important and revenue-generating the industry is, there are many, many competitors. Pharma companies must seize every opportunity to stand out, and this also means developing a content marketing strategy.

Because pharmaceutical content must adhere to stringent guidelines, you can’t just publish anything. Every single sentence needs to be supported by data. So, while it’ll take a marketing team from the furnishing industry to pitch an idea, create content, and run the campaign, for a pharma marketing team, it might take 3-4 weeks, or longer! Therefore, strategy is everything.

So, which types of content should pharma companies focus on?

Content Types Pharma Needs to Focus On

If you work in the pharmaceutical sector, you understand the crucial role marketing plays in meeting sales goals! However, determining the most effective content for your pharmaceutical marketing strategy is the key to unlocking various opportunities. Here's a summary of the most impactful types of content that resonate well with patients and HCPs!

a) Patient Guides:

Patient guides are primarily educational content. They aim to inform the patient about diseases, treatments, pharmaceutical products, and medicine adherence. These include medication guides, disease-specific guides, treatment guides, and patient journey guides. While these do not directly promote a product, they help companies establish a relationship with patients, who trust the company to provide accurate information.

b) Articles/Blog Posts:

Articles serve as a powerful tool for raising awareness and engaging with consumers who are close to making a decision. They offer an effective means of imparting valuable insights about your pharmaceutical offerings and services.

c) Newsletters:

This is a great way to keep your target audience updated about the latest industry trends, news, discoveries or more. Newsletters serve as a means to communicate internal updates and events within your pharmaceutical company.

d) Case Studies:

Highlights real-world success stories from your pharmaceutical company to establish trust and credibility! Case studies help in demonstrating how your products and services have effectively addressed unique challenges faced by other organizations. These illustrations provide prospective customers with proven evidence of the value your pharmaceutical solutions bring.

d) Infographics:

The next most popular & attractive way to foster credibility with your customers is to utilize infographics in order to break down complex subjects. Infographics, being succinct and visually engaging, offer an ideal means for pharmaceutical firms to convey complex information effectively.

e) Videos:

Compelling and educational, videos tend to be a powerful resource for pharmaceutical firms to establish deeper connections with their clients or prospective consumers. They represent a growingly favoured approach for accessing information, showcasing brand ethos, and fostering trust.

f) Whitepapers (for HCP education):

Whitepapers are another excellent opportunity to build relationships with HCPs. Pharma companies can develop detailed whitepapers to educate HCPs on their products and treatment modalities. These can include research data, clinical trials results, etc., which will help HCPs better understand the product.

These are the types of pharmaceutical marketing content that can be utilized to engage with and reach out to the target audience. These are effective in terms of connecting with your consumers directly and driving profitable action by developing and distributing case studies, articles, videos, newsletters, infographics, etc.

How To Get Started With Creating A Pharmaceutical Content Marketing Strategy?

Your business can enjoy several content marketing perks which includes creating awareness, establishing your business as a thought leader, providing relevant information to your audience, generating leads and beyond! Additionally, crafting content tailored to address the challenges and expectations of your target audience enables you to assist them along their path to making informed decisions.

So, now the question is: What steps can you take to begin your pharmaceutical content marketing strategy? We have listed some of the fundamental steps to commence with your content marketing strategy effectively!

1.  Have Clear Goals & KPIs

It's important to know what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategies and therefore, the first thing you need to do is to define your goals and KPS. For instance, do you want to generate more leads? Create brand awareness? Educate your audience? Once you have the right understanding of your marketing objectives, you will be in a better position to create a robust strategy that perfectly aligns with everything.

2. Know About Your Target Audience

Next most important step in creating content marketing strategies for pharma companies is to learn about their target audience. You need to know who your consumers are, their pain points, demographics, and much more. By doing this, you will be able to come up with content ideas that completely resonate with your audience.

3. Brainstorm Diverse Content Ideas

The third step is all about brainstorming ideas for creating content! Try to do your research and know what type of content is being consumed by the target audience and how you can bring a fresh perspective to the table! What content formats should you use to build a strong connection with them? Understanding all these things will help you to come up with content ideas for infographics, blog posts, videos and beyond.

4. Develop An Editorial Calendar 

Once you are done with all the above steps, it's time for you to develop an editorial calendar for content marketing. This will definitely make sure that the content is being developed on a regular basis. In addition, having an editorial calendar also helps in being organized and doesn't let you go off-track.

 5. Create & Distribute Your Content

Lastly, create your content and distribute it through different online platforms! You also need to have a content plan in the right place that will define job roles for people. For example, who is responsible for creating the content and how it is going to be distributed! 

Of course, after publishing you’ll have to compete with thousands of articles by different companies. So, how do you stand out? Our recommendation: storytelling.

The Role of Storytelling in Pharma

Most people are daunted by pharmaceutical content. Not because of the writing style, the length, or the medium, but because of the language, or should we say, jargon. Let’s do an exercise: open any article on a pharma product/service/company, and count how many technical terms are present in it. 

To an average person, this is 10 too many. Most people outside the pharmaceutical industry aren’t familiar with these technical terms, which makes it difficult to understand these articles–hence, they’re tagged as boring, and skipped by many.

A solution? Storytelling.

Storytelling is a difficult skill to integrate into pharma content, but one that can make a significant difference. Here’s how:

1. Storytelling humanizes the content, putting in it situations a person can easily understand or interpret.
2. Storytelling makes the content relatable, allowing you to create a deeper bond with the patient.
3. Storytelling makes the content memorable. 

If I read a leaflet on paracetamol and then tell you a funny story about my colleague, which are you likely to remember? 

That’s your answer.

BONUS: 3 Regulatory Tips for Pharma Content

Tip 1: The message should be the priority

Pharma content should focus on providing accurate information to patients rather than conversion. All content should have a clear aim and messaging. All information should be appropriately cited.

Tip 2: Don’t skip guidelines

Always follow all regulatory guidelines regarding pharma content. When in doubt, clarify, not assume. That’s how content ends up rejected. 

Tip 3: Have other teams review it

Even if you think you’ve followed all guidelines, you should get your content reviewed from the compliance and legal team. This will help you identify problems beforehand.

Challenges Faced By The Pharmaceutical Companies!

However, it's important to consider various significant challenges as mentioned below when creating a content strategy! 

1) Privacy Concerns 

A lot of customers are really anxious about how their data can be utilized & distributed! This is one of the most common challenges when you are looking forward to craft personalize content. Therefore, you must consider privacy concerns to convince skeptical consumers. Pharmaceutical firms can do this by not violating the trust of their customers. They must create a perfect balance between providing personalized content and showing respect to their privacy. This means you need to prioritize trust & privacy in content marketing.

2) Reputation & Integrity

In the pharmaceutical sector, maintaining a strong reputation is paramount. Consumers place significant importance on the companies they buy from, which forms the basis of reputation! Hence, pharmaceutical firms need to be extra careful in their content marketing strategies. Leveraging content marketing can serve as a potent tool for pharmaceutical companies aiming to establish connections with consumers and bolster their reputation.

3) Misleading Information 

In a time marked by widespread misinformation, differentiating between truth and falsehood can pose a significant challenge for consumers! Numerous individuals are being exposed to misleading information regarding health matters through different channels. Although delivering information perceived as unbiased by consumers can be difficult, pharmaceutical firms need to guarantee the accuracy and reliability of their content to effectively engage with their audience and foster trust.

Final Thoughts 

Content marketing for pharmaceutical industries has come to be an invaluable tool to educate & engage with the consumers and promote their products or services. However, it may be a little difficult to draft factual and dependable scientific content for highly regulated disciplines such as Pharma and Biotech. 

As a consequence, it's important to keep in mind that not every piece of content can be created equally! Therefore, you may need to connect & work with a reputable as well as experienced content marketing company to make sure that your content is effective and content marketing strategies are on point!

FAQs

1. How is pharma content marketing is different?

Content marketing in pharma is different from other industries because the content must meet stringent regulatory guidelines, must comply with ethical standards, and must provide research-backed information to patients and healthcare patients. Most importantly, the content cannot make any claims not supported by data.

2. How to ensure pharma content is compliant?

To ensure the content is compliant, focus on creating a clear message and using words that adhere to legal and regulatory guidelines. Legal and compliance teams should be involved in the content curation phase to ensure the content is usable.

3. Is SEO important in pharma content marketing?

Yes, SEO is relevant in pharma content marketing. However, the primary focus isn't SEO, rather it is providing clear, research-backed information to healthcare professionals and patients to ensure they get accurate information about the pharmaceutical product.