Omnichannel – beyond MPUs and emails

The essence of omnichannel marketing is to ensure that your messaging is reaching your target audience where they spend most of their time – both online and offline – in formats that they prefer to engage with. The goal remains to provide the right content on the right channels at the right time.

However, to achieve this requires a good understanding of the target audience, utilising profiling and analytics to gain a deep understanding of audience preferences, behaviours and journey. For example: What challenges are they facing? What are their treatment goals? Which media and which publications, websites, conferences do they prefer? What current topics are of interest?

When looking to communicate with healthcare professionals (HCPs), it is a mistake to assume that purchasing banners and/or emails in a relevant publication will be enough to generate interest in the messaging. The same arrogance is evident when websites for HCPs are created with an ‘if we build it, they will come’ mentality.

For omnichannel marketing to be effective, once you have a solid understanding of your audience you need to ensure that your messaging is delivered where the target audience will engage with it – not just in one location but in many so that the messaging is reinforced through the various touchpoints. 30,000 impressions and an email alone aren’t going to change perceptions or practice.

As technology continues to evolve, new channels emerge that can be integrated into an omnichannel marketing strategy to enhance audience engagement and experience. These additional avenues provide innovative ways for companies to connect with their audiences and should be considered as part of a comprehensive omnichannel approach.

At 11 London, we work both with pharmaceutical companies and charities/patient groups, which gives us a window on what is being done beyond the often self-imposed restrictions of pharma. Learnings from all our activities feed into our future planning and campaign evolution.

Social media plays a key part in most of our lives and therefore also in many of the campaigns that we run. It cannot be overlooked simply because it presents challenges in terms of approval or requires different messaging. Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Facebook are essential for building awareness and engagement – even if messaging needs to be restricted to disease information or highlighting a company’s presence at a conference to be code compliant. Integrating social media data with other channels can also help provide deeper insights into audience behaviour.

The use of geo-targeting engines enables the delivery of digital banners ads not only to a target audience, but to specific target locations, thereby maximising ad effectiveness.  Banners can be delivered to mobile apps at a very granular geo-location level – for example, location targeting can be done around hospitals and clinics, while having the adverts only active during clinic hours. In fact, activity can be optimised further so that devices that are present regularly at target sites are either tagged for follow-up messaging or excluded depending on the campaign objectives.

Geo-targeted in-app ad delivery can be reinforced through a physical presence at clinics. For instance, we are looking to engage with a group of patients who we know need to visit their clinic on a weekly basis. To complement the online channels being used for this campaign, we can use physical materials such as posters, TV screens, lift wraps and leaflets to reinforce messaging. Tracking of interactions with these physical materials can be provided through QR codes.

When an in-clinic presence isn’t possible, ‘out-of-home’ (OOH) advertising options such as mobile digital billboards or ad walkers can be an effective solution in delivering messages close to specific locations. The use of OOH advertising can significantly enhance the impact of online channels.

Another opportunity worth exploring is audio advertising. This can include placing ads on live broadcast radio during programmes that attract your target audience or leveraging podcasts that your audience are likely to listen to, through partnerships and/or host-read ads. The majority of people listen to podcasts on their mobile phone – receiving the information in privacy. This means that podcasts are well-suited for intimate messaging and are also perceived as trustworthy.

The channels mentioned here represent just the tip of the iceberg of what’s out there, while to cover search would require an article of its own. By tailoring the content for each channel, they can reinforce each other and contribute to the campaign story. Analysis of performance allows a rebalancing of the channels used and tracking ROI informs both future marketing spend and strategy. At 11 London, planning, monitoring and optimisation of our omnichannel campaigns is directed by our OmniLabs approach, which through an AI-supported test-and-learn methodology ensures that hypotheses are validated, budget risks mitigated and that campaigns evolve.

By embracing and optimising new and unusual channels, businesses can stay ahead of the curve, offering innovative and engaging experiences that meet the evolving expectations of the healthcare market.