Objective information
Customers are not persuaded to buy a certain product, but are helped to make the right decision, based on objective information – one of the rules of thumb of content marketing. Much of this education is set up together with doctors and patient organizations. An example of this is the spots about erectile dysfunction, in which no specific medicines are mentioned – this campaign is a joint initiative of manufacturers.
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In addition to patients, doctors and specialists are also an important target group: for example, the results of academic research are often processed in online content to inform doctors. This way of informing has become commonplace so quickly that it is no longer quickly accepted when a drug product wants to increase awareness of a condition by promoting its own remedy. Just think of the athlete's foot campaign with Schimpie as the centerpiece, which has received a lot of criticism .
Choice of target group
The target group of pharmaceutical companies consists of different layers: from patient, to general practitioner and specialist. Because each target group has a very different need and level of knowledge, producers of medicines are forced to make a very clear choice in their content marketing.
In some sectors, target group segmentation is not the most important thing, but for pharmaceutical companies, this is the beginning of all communication. It makes quite a difference whether you focus information about lung cancer, for example, on the patient, the general practitioner, lung specialist or oncologist. A general practitioner is mainly interested in recognising a disease, while specialists are concerned with the treatment and guidance of the patient and his or her environment.
Thinking in interests
A third reason why the pharmaceutical industry is a leader in content marketing is that this sector is used to thinking about the interests of those they want to reach. And they have to: if you are not allowed to communicate about how your product (the medicine) solves a problem (a condition), then you are dependent on information that is tailored as much as possible. There are plenty of examples of this: there are many websites where patients and their loved ones can find information about a disease, its active ingredients and its side effects.
Creative ways are also being devised to better draw attention to the information in package leaflets. It is known that the information in package leaflets is not always understood well. AstraZeneca has therefore chosen to make an online video uae telegram data for a number of medicines, in addition to the traditional package leaflet. In the videos, a doctor and nurse explain how the medicine works, how to take it, what side effects can occur and how to best deal with these side effects.
Online video for specialists
But also for medical specialists a lot is invested in online content. One example of this is a manufacturer of medicines for the treatment of hemophilia, for which my colleagues and I made a live online video broadcast, intended for doctors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Although there are no more than 95 hermatologists in this area, the video was watched by 86 of them – representing 90 percent of the target group.
Join forces
A final example that shows that other sectors can learn from the pharmaceutical industry is the willingness to educate the target group together. Of course, each company has its own interests and unique approach, but there is a willingness among pharmaceutical companies to share knowledge together, which you do not always see in other sectors.
For example, several pharmaceutical companies collaborate in the online video platform Oncology TV (set up by me and my colleagues), in which doctors are kept informed of the latest developments in this field. In order to ensure that the content of the programs is as closely aligned as possible with the target group, an editorial board of doctors has been set up, who provide solicited and unsolicited advice on the content. This is paying off: the broadcasts of Oncology TV are also published on the website of the professional association Dutch Society for Medical Oncology (NVMO).