Four Pillars for Better Pharma Advertising: Omnichannel Integration

Next-best-action (NBA) marketing is the future of pharma advertising – capitalizing on today’s ample data resources and technology advancements to deliver more targeted, relevant, and impactful brand information to physician and patient audiences. But the road to NBA isn’t always clear for pharmaceutical brand teams – or their agency partners. Even though brand and marketing planning initiatives often contain detailed patient journeys, intervention points, and engagement opportunity maps, translating those strategies into executable programs feels easier said than done.

But executing next-best action doesn’t have to be hard. OptimizeRx has broken down the NBA must-haves into Four Pillars of Success: 

1. Omnichannel Integration 
2. Patient-First Data and Message Delivery 
3. Robust Audience Intelligence 
4. Digital and Offline Integration 

Join us as we explore each of these pillars via both an infographic and a blog, starting with Pillar 1: Omnichannel Integration. 

Omnichannel Pharma Advertising Across the Marketing Funnel 

In a 2023 survey, OptimizeRx found that there were over ten channels where a majority of physicians regularly encountered life science brand information. Given these results, it’s no surprise that omnichannel integration is key to NBA success. But it’s critical to optimize channel balance, exposure frequency, and message sequencing across the full marketing funnel – from building awareness, to prompting consideration, to converting brand prescriptions. And the secret to that optimization? Increasing the value of brand information as the point-of-prescribe grows closer. 

Here's how it works: 

• Dynamic Exposure at the Top of the Funnel: Conferences, journals, programmatic display, and/or social media are great ways to build general brand awareness and mindshare – but are farther from the point-of-prescribe. Therefore, the focus at this stage should be on achieving an optimal level of exposures per month by incorporating physician-level engagement data into channel delivery strategies. 

• Filling Information Gaps in the Middle of the Funnel: Despite the best efforts of brand teams, physicians still struggle to stay on top of clinical and non-clinical differentiators in saturated markets. Filling these information gaps with sources closer to the point-of-prescribe – like sales reps, specialty-specific websites, or the EHR – reduces potential barriers and keeps your brand top-of-mind as HCPs consider treatment options for their patients. 

• Converting at the Bottom of the Funnel: The ubiquitous practice of e-prescribing means that the EHR advertising is the closest of all channels to the point-of-prescribe – and one of the most important places to communicate formulary, copay, patient support and other key brand information. Even without an omnichannel component, placing brand messages in the patient chart delivers a 15% average script lift (based on studies conducted by OptimizeRx). 

And when omnichannel programs align content and messaging to all these funnel stages? Brands see an average 28% script lift – nearly double the EHR alone. But there’s one more key component to omnichannel integration and next-best action…

Dynamic, Predictive AI Targeting and Privacy-Safe Data 

The ability to identify the physicians treating your brand-eligible patients and reach them with appropriate content at each stage of the funnel requires both HIPAA-compliant data and predictive technology tools. We’ll explore these in more detail later in these series, so stay tuned for our next installments.