Omnichannel marketing is a big picture approach to reaching an audience — coordinating brand messaging across multiple channels — that provides a clear, consistent message at each step of that audience’s journey.

It’s a much more thoughtful approach. While it can certainly include a mix of any online or offline channels and mediums, one of the most important aspects is the audience-first approach, i.e., Pharma needs to ask itself: ‘Who do we want to reach?’ and then focus on where that particular audience is actually spending their time engaging, so the messaging placed on that channel gets a chance to sink in.

There are three main areas companies need to take into consideration to be successful when developing a strategic omnichannel approach:

1. Quality Data

Quality data ensures that the communication piece or program is actually reaching its target audience regardless of the channel. One of the main benefits of omnichannel is it gives the ability to combine offline data with online activity, allowing to integrate HCP information, medical claims data and anonymized patient data. It can be tough to validate results and justify budgets without a quality starting point, especially for pharma audiences, which can be very niche and often hard for advertisers to reach.

2. Content creation

Pharma needs to start thinking about creative as early as possible, given the many regulatory and legal barriers that often come into play with pharma campaigns. Creative development and approval are not always something that can be done quickly or easily — it takes time, effort, and investment to make sure the final product will resonate with audiences and will still be ready in time for launch. Also, to differentiate themselves from the noise and the tendency to blast the same message repeatedly, Pharma now has to adapt strategies such as omnichannel that will help them engage with those HCPs or patients across every single touchpoint. Rather than just focusing on one kind of search or one social and dedicating x amount of their annual budgets, Pharma needs to look to capitalize on those channels where their target audience is showing historical engagement. Having real-time insights into how a campaign is performing can be invaluable to a company, especially those trying to reach more elusive audiences such as pharma or HCPs, who often work long, intense hours and have only a small time window for engagement. An omnichannel approach can be especially effective, as it focuses on ways to reach HCPs during business hours while they’re actually in the point of care, seeing and treating patients.

3. A clear understanding of your overall goals.

Pharma needs to go beyond traditional campaign metrics goals such as clicks or site visits. The goals should rather reflect a vision of the Pharma company’s long-term business goals and the timeframe they have to work within. It is critical for Pharma marketers to understand all the potential areas where audiences will consume information, whether it be online format, social SEM display, video or even things such as out-of-home and connected or linear television. After that, the content needs to be adapted to each specific channel, ensuring a consistently strong message throughout.