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5 Pharmaceutical Marketing Webinars That Drive HCP Engagement

October 26th, 2023 Michael Mayday

There are a wide range of options when it comes to marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. For example, social media marketing, pharmaceutical webinars, direct mail and a plethora of tactics and strategies designed to connect a sales rep with healthcare professionals are all effective marketing tactics.

 

But pharmaceutical marketing continues to be more challenging than ever — but this fact was true even before the COVID 19 pandemic related lockdowns and restrictions. After all, the HCP audience is a notoriously challenging demographic to connect with. But that’s because today’s healthcare professionals are busy — extremely busy.

That’s why pharmaceutical companies have — for years now — turned to digital channels to pitch a medical device, launch marketing campaigns and drive their sales. And a part of that marketing mix is, of course, the humble webinar. In fact, according to a survey of CPhI attendees, webinars are rated by pharma marketers as one of the most effective marketing channels.

ON24 Life Sciences Benchmarks Report, 2023

So what do HCP engagement programs look like? We’ve scoured our customer’s pharmaceutical industry webinars to find out what webinar programs they’re running and why. Here are the five most popular hcp marketing webinar programs we found.

Five Webinar Formats to Boost HCP Marketing Efforts

1. Key Opinion Leader Events

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When it comes to healthcare marketing, the most valuable brand asset to have is expert, scientific information from key opinion leaders in specialized fields. With a great KOL, a company can position itself as an expert and thought leader and draw in physicians seeking the latest information on their specialty.

So what does this mean for your webinars? To take advantage of this webinar strategy, ask your preferred KOLs to participate in an event as a webinar presenter, panellist or moderator. The webinar should focus on a core topic your experts can speak to, such as clinical research, outcomes, cases, medical best practices or current trends in the field.

Be sure to ask your speakers to share news of the event on their social media platforms, which can help drive registrations and encourage physicians to attend.

2. Digital Symposiums and Congresses

Deliver a clear message to your audience.

The healthcare industry is no stranger to symposiums. But 2020 changed the nature of large, in-person gatherings in remote locales. In fact, due to the pandemic, most physical gatherings were largely canceled across the globe.

Still, 2020 didn’t put an end to symposiums and congresses. Instead, HCP marketing went digital. Webinars, digital experiences and virtual events in general became a core part of any pharmaceutical brand’s marketing strategy. These digital tools also gave any enterprising pharmaceutical company an opportunity to run their big events online, massively saving costs.

There are a few benefits to this digital-first strategy. Brands can target more HCPs across more regions, provide more healthcare professionals with more on-demand marketing materials and do so both safely and on the HCP’s time.

The trend towards using virtual event platforms will likely continue even as in-person events are reintroduced to the market. After all, big in-person conferences are expensive to host and difficult to accurately scale. A virtual event platform — with hybrid event strategies in place — can help to maximize the reach of an in-person event and drive better return on investment.

As a final note, symposiums provide brands with great informative content. If you do run an in-person event, take the time to record sessions and break them into on-demand webinars. With a digital, on-demand symposium in hand, you can enable participants (both those who attended and those who missed the event) to watch later and maximizse your viewership, well after the event is over.

3. Product Launches

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Marketing at speed is one of the biggest challenges in a healthcare product launch. But a lot of pharma marketing material is passive — like product brochures and portfolios. Webinars and virtual events change this dynamic with high-production value, interactive environments that capture audience attention for 20-30 minutes or more.

During this captive time, educate your audience at a deeper level about your new treatment and showcase your product videos and internal experts. Use webinar analytics to discover who amongst your target audience is the most interested based on their active engagement during the presentation. You can also include a “contact us” form in your webinar for interested physicians to raise their hand and instantly request a meeting with a sales representative.

ON24 Life Sciences Benchmarks Report, 2023

4. Peer-to-Peer Education and Networking

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HCPs love to engage with people. They want to learn from peers and other subject matter experts in their field. But pandemic-related lockdowns — in addition to simple issues with travel and budget — have limited HCP engagement opportunities.

But there is a way to overcome typical peer-to-peer hurdles: host virtual events that are built for them. By creating a digital environment built to educate and facilitate networking, a brand can easily cultivate P2P education, provide related content to download and use group chat to collect data on these conversations.

And, if a group of virtual event attendees have a particular topic they want to dive deeply into, HCPs can use webinar features like ON24 Breakouts to jump into a breakout room for a personalizsed one-to-one discussion.

Launching into a breakout room from a virtual environment is a useful tactic for sales representatives as well. That’s because, if an HCP has questions during a presentation or event, a rep can open a direct 1:1 channel — over both video and audio — and directly answer any questions that participants may have in real time.

5. Sales Training

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irtual events empower brands to go in-depth with internal education. Some webinar platforms even provide real-time and certification — ensuring reps meet a brand’s standard. Reps are able to ask and get questions answered in real-time, download additional related content and access this training anytime, anywhere.

According to Docplexus’ ” Pharma’s Guide to a Kickass Marketing Webinar,” 72% of physicians source drug-related information online, and 78% of physicians favor learning through videos or digital media. Because of this shift, it’s increasingly important for marketers to create a diverse digital program that attracts HCPs, educates them, and keeps them coming back for industry-leading medical information.

To see peer examples and hear a deeper explanation into these pharmaceutical marketing programs, check out the webinar Marketing Playbook: Digital Engagement for Pharma Marketers.

ON24 Life Sciences Benchmarks Report, 2023