Advancing Digital Engagement in Life Sciences: Elevating HCP Engagement at UCB

Healthcare organizations must provide better, faster and more accurate information to patients and HCPs to win business in an increasingly competitive industry. It’s especially true when it comes to successfully running marketing programs.  

That’s because both HCPs and patients have come to expect personalized digital experiences. To meet this challenge, life sciences companies must elevate the experiences they provide. 

Here’s how. 

Assessing Digital Marketing Maturity in Life Sciences

To successfully meet expectations, life sciences organizations need to assess and understand how mature their digital marketing programs are. The maturity of marketing programs can be boiled down to four main stages: 

1. 1. Beginner: HCPs and patient engagement is driven primarily through physical events, with limited digital follow-up. 
   2. Novice: Companies use basic digital event tools that are typically limited in interactivity and deliver only slides and audio to audiences. Additionally, follow-up strategies are limited, with no alignment between sales and marketing on HCP engagement goals.
   3. Intermediate: This stage implements multimedia and immersive branding in webinars, along with integrating webinar technology into sales and marketing tech stacks, such as CRM systems, for efficient data tracking. Enhanced follow-up strategies across webinars are established. 
   4. Expert: Virtual events, from webinars to virtual symposiums, are aligned with awareness goals. Comprehensive on-demand strategies are established and personalized CTAs are generated based on audience engagement. 

But what does a mature digital marketing program look like in practice?  

Let’s look at how UCB, a leading pharmaceutical company headquartered in Belgium, went from the novice stage to the expert level using digital experiences powered by ON24. 

Delivering Outstanding Healthcare Practitioner Engagement at UCB

To transform its marketing program, UCB started with goals. In particular, it wanted its program to connect with and effectively engage HCPs and prescribers. To achieve this and build its digital maturity,  the company focused on a two-pronged approach: building internal capabilities and driving adoption. 

Streamlined Approach

UCB lacked a unified strategy for its webinars. Form-fills slowed down both registration and the customer journey and follow-ups after the event weren’t in sync with the overall program. 

UCB solved this by implementing an omnichannel approach. Data from webinars were shared with Salesforce and Veeva, one-click registration delivered a frictionless experience and, with its unified strategy, UCB could then easily guide participants from one experience to additional related content and continue conversations. 

Boosted Engagement 

Understanding where participants are in the buying journey is essential for any marketing operation. For UCB, that meant empowering HCPs to talk with the brand through its digital experiences. To do this, UCB used engagement tools in its ON24-powered webinars. 

Tools like polling, related content and surveys helped break the virtual ice with attendees. UCB also included CTAs in its events so participants can register for the next webinar in the series. 

Branded Journey

To top off its omnichannel strategy, UCB reinvented its online presentation. The company established a branded content hub and events platform as part of a cohesive digital engagement plan to streamline the customer journey.

Results

With a renewed and matured marketing program, UCB enhanced the customer experience across its digital channels. With its new approach, UCB was able to: 

Drive scalable personalization

By integrating ON24-powered webinars and content hubs with Veeva and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, UCB ensured a seamless flow of first-party data into its internal systems. UCB then used these insights to personalized engagements — providing its audience and customers with a true white-glove experience. 

Agile Decision-Making

Thanks to its new data-driven approach, UCB could quickly adjust campaigns on the fly based on real-time insights. This both empowered UCB’s sales team and facilitated more agile and data-driven decision-making.

UCB’s journey illustrates how they transitioned to a multichannel approach, improved engagement with HCPs and streamlined operations all with one platform. Leveraging data and interactive features, they enhanced customer experiences and achieved greater efficiency and scalability in their digital engagement efforts.