The pursuit of excellence can be like a Formula 1 Grand Prix dash to the opening bend with the power to maximum, the adrenaline even higher and the danger extreme. First mover advantage can be critical but, without a clear perspective of the rest of the course, it can be an expensive flameout.

Healthcare communications can now run on high octane omnichannel fuel and the temptation is often to open the afterburners to make the most of its options as much as to create impact.

But without the right research and a deep understanding of the target audience, social media trinkets are likely to gather mediocre returns on investment.

“There is nothing more important in communications than knowing your audience – what drives them and what their barriers are, both behaviourally and physically,” said Miranda Dini, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Healthcare Communications at the Resonant Group, which includes Anthem, Bedrock and Origins. “You also need a clear understanding of the change you want to drive in their behaviours or beliefs.

“We really encourage our clients to think deeply about the audience they want to reach and to have sharp messaging that connects, rather than throwing everything at it and seeing what sticks. An effective omnichannel approach requires a consistent – yet audience-directed – message across the communications spectrum that’s now available to us.

“Whether it is through the lens of a payer, healthcare provider, patient or caregiver, the overarching story needs to have the same strands of language, with a layer of specific focus and the nuanced considerations for each part of that audience.”

Dini also cautions against relying too strongly on channel prestige to drive strategy versus considering where your target audience is getting its information or interacting.  “It’s easy to get caught up in trends, with the latest social media, and conversely it’s also easy to stay mired in traditional ways of thinking when it comes to communications channels. In medcomms, for example, there can be an over-reliance on publishing in top-tier journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, which might reach just a small proportion of specialist physicians, despite providing great kudos. Similarly, for PR, is a campaign on Threads really going to hit where we want it to right now?”

The need to go through the communications gears and know when and where to slow down and focus is a mantra for modern connections across a sector that is increasingly fast-paced and digital. Acquiring those communication ‘driving skills’ comes with sharp attention to listening.

Dini and the Resonant Group, whose award-winning agencies have expertise that ranges across patient and healthcare professional (HCP) behaviour, and public and medical engagement, have made an active play to attend more congresses in person to immerse themselves in the discussions at the coal face.

“We’ve invested in attending five congresses over the last two months and it has been very rewarding to hear what’s happening out there,” added Dini. “Getting the buzz of what’s been talked about in the sessions and in more informal settings really helps the team understand what is important and what people want.”

Listening is also an important aspect of successfully working with industry clients.

“Communications excellence is a combination of factors and it is critical to have a breadth of understanding,” she observed. “For instance, don’t assume that a global approach will always hit the local audience appropriately; talk to local affiliates because they know those audiences the best.

“It all joins up. You can talk to patients but you also need to talk to the HCPs that are diagnosing and supporting those patients. You can push patients to see their doctors, but if you haven’t educated the doctors about timely diagnosis and potential treatments then you have missed an opportunity. We have the ability, at Resonant, to have a 360-degree view to really cut through to make a difference for patients, which is why we are all in the industry.

“It is about embedding the patient voice at every level and moment of communications. This can come from individual patient experiences, partnering with advocacy groups and also physician experiences. Our best opportunity to drive change is by telling a story through the patient’s perspective and ensuring that story reaches and resonates with the right people.”

Analysts are witnessing a sharp rise in digital activity across the pharma sector with increased use of online videos, while research from Statista forecasts that digital advertising spend in healthcare and pharma will grow to $19.66bn in 2024, up from $17.79bn this year and almost double 2020 levels.

This is a bustling arena, with physicians active on social media and willing to connect and consume digitally.

‘Without the right research and a deep understanding of the target audience, social media trinkets are likely to gather mediocre returns on investment’

“The average age of physicians is becoming lower, with around 50% of them in the UK being under the age of 44 and the World Health Organization predicting that 75% of doctors globally will be millennials by 2025. This is one of the biggest change factors when considering your audience,” said Roy Rogers, Quantitative Director at Research Partnership, an Inizio company, which is a world-leading custom and syndicated global insights agency that specialises in evidence-based, story-told insights and recommendations.

“They get technology and digital and are comfortable engaging with it, whereas you have to engage with more traditional HCP audiences in a slightly different way. Basically, you need a wider toolkit.

“You need to segment audiences and there will be a predominantly millennial group that would be happy with hybrid interactions – either face-to-face or digitally – although they probably prefer digital as it is more time efficient. Then you will have the baby boomer generation that would rather sit down with a sales rep or MSL, and there are plenty of shades of grey in between.

“Understanding how HCPs want the pharma industry to communicate with them and which channels they prefer to use is vitally important and that is where research comes in.”

There is also a core need, Rogers observed, to recognise that there is a new generation of key opinion leaders (KOLs) that inhabits the digital arena whose influence is as weighty as the KOLs from traditional spheres of congresses, symposia, academic events and in-person engagement.

“As the age profile of HCPs becomes younger, we move away from KOLs being seasoned HCPs in their 50s or 60s, who may spend a lot less time on the wards and more time on ad boards and consulting, to a younger cohort who may be less experienced but who are extremely well connected in the digital sense,” he said. “What they lack in experience, they make up for in their followers on social media platforms and they are clearly playing a far more influential role than was the case maybe five years ago.

“The other growing sector is patient influencers and research suggests that when one of them or a ‘digital’ KOL mentions a medication, up to 85% of their followers will raise that with their physician.”

Rogers, who has more than 20 years’ experience in healthcare research and consulting, believes investment in research across segmentation, targeting, profiling and creative development can boost campaign impact by 15-20%.

“Companies make a lot of effort with their creative elements, but if you don’t have targeted research then you are really in the realms of a scattergun approach, sending your content out and hoping it lands in the right place at the right time,” he said.

“Organisations invest too much time, effort and capital in their content for it to be delivered in hope, but I believe that most of them are awake to the fact that a large proportion of their audience are millennials, and that they need to be engaged with in a millennial way.”

Aaron Hall, Associate Creative Director, Copy, at Purple Agency, believes a fundamental fracture often emerges when not enough time and consideration is given to how communications are received.

“Pharmaceutical companies and agencies are very good at crafting messages and ensuring everything, every last dot and comma, is exactly right but there is a disconnect between putting all that effort into things you can control without thinking much about how it lands out there in the Wild West where you are not the only voice,” he said.

“It’s not that companies are bad at putting together good stories – although sometimes you are limited by how good your drug is – but it is at the reception end where the communications excellence often breaks down.

“Good communications become excellent, not when they are created, but when they are read.”

Purple Agency works across the full healthcare marketing spectrum, providing insight to develop B2B communications and advising clients how to navigate the busy omnichannel shipping lanes to make the best of digital.

“There are obvious challenges in that HCPs are very time-poor and pharmaceutical companies are fairly low down on the pecking order of who they want to listen to about drugs because by default the companies have a vested interest,” added Hall.

‘If you use social media for education and awareness, it becomes promotional excellence, so that the community understands what the company is doing and is encouraged to look because you are creating useful content’

“People are trying to learn from some of the consumer side a bit more, which is probably a good thing; it’s how doctors consume their non-medical information, so why wouldn’t they want to consume their medical information in a similar way?

“But you can’t just jump into using everything that the omnichannel approach offers. It has to be staged and considered and we are helping inject realism into planning and selecting the routes that work best and most effectively.”

Social media moves at hyper speed and issues flare and subside before the gears of compliance and approval grind round to allow response. But Hall believes there is a wealth of reputational kudos to be gained from using digital platforms to provide educational information that builds awareness and, in time, trust.

“There’s a tendency to think, right, we’ve got to put our message out there, we will add on some interesting, useful stuff,” he said. “I think if you flipped it around and said, actually, as a company, we are just going to get a reputation providing interesting, useful, relevant, timely information then people might click through to our website and engage with us there.

“Concentrating on your expertise seems more effective than trying to say something about everything. Rather, if you use social media for education and awareness it becomes promotional excellence so that the community understands what the company is doing and is encouraged to look because you are creating useful content.”

He cites the example of the reputational boost Merck gets from the Merck Manual, a long-established medical information book that is now digital, which is one of the most widely used medical resources in the world but is free from product promotion.

“What pharma companies do have is vast amounts of knowledge, data and global perspectives that could be leveraged to frame their role as unique and trusted sources,” added Hall, who believes emerging tools used to measure the impact of digital output will help companies refine their use of social media and omnichannel.

“There’s an adage that 50% of advertising works; you just don’t know which 50% that is. At least with digital, there’s more opportunity to track, measure and assess where to invest. We are learning a lot from the consumer sector, which is data rich and applies it to their customer base. We are getting there but we are not that sophisticated in its use yet.”