For a long time, pharma marketers have been asked by their management superiors to be more creative and use technology more, but the ROI was always a challenge to implement many of those digital initiatives.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, underestimating digital channels was not optional anymore!
Changes brought by COVID-19 included strict restrictions on access to clinics and hospitals where sales reps no longer have casual access to physicians and are forced to make online appointments.
Also, the growth of telehealth and other services that have been advanced in how healthcare is delivered.
The struggle to react to the pandemic and to this new norm represented a challenge to deliver promotional activities that are still compliant especially with the shift to digital promotion and detailing and video meetings and webinars where a quick mouse-click can record and document interactions.
Many questions popped up:
What should be the new plan?
How to ensure compliance with much clear direction on what is allowed and what is not?
How to ensure proper reach without getting our messaging much exposed to the competition?
How to drive traffic to our online events with plenty happening out there?
And many other questions kept coming up with each new initiative but the learning has definitely progressed significantly during the last year and all these changes presented an opportunity to reset the boundaries and norms for physician-industry interactions.