Lower prices, discounts, convenience of ordering and home delivery are some of the benefits for consumers with e-pharmacies. The anonymity of the internet encourages patients to seek information about medicines that they would otherwise avoid. Mental health is one area where the consumers wish to maintain confidentiality and opt for online consultation and medication.
Marketers often think that everything is new in the digital world. They have simply forgotten the first principle, which is to serve the customers – to have a customer-centric view and not a product-centric one.
With the Second Wave hitting India, customers (patients and physicians) will continue to socially distance themselves in the foreseeable future. Pharma must use the field force for reach and relationship and digital for frequency and personalised content for better customer experience.
The pandemic has made doctors adopt Telehealth in a substantial way to shore up their revenues and this will continue to be one of their channels to engage patients. Telehealth along with EMR/EHR, digital therapeutics and wearables is enabling doctors to better care for their patients. There are many ways in which pharma can support the digital evolution of doctors.
To be able to measure the RoI on digital in pharma, it is necessary to understand customers as individuals and create newer segmentation based on these needs and interests. This calls for the NextGen RCPA of data collection and personalized communications that engage customers, based on which pharma must create customer experiences that matter to them.
If your content does not scratch, where it itches the customers, digital or phygital, customers will not feel at home (comfortable, delighted, and wants more), which is what matters. Not a digital euphoria, which will soon die down as customers simply ignore it as they did when pharma launched a plethora of webinars.
Addressing the media at a roundtable this morning, Vani Manja, Managing Director, Boehringer Ingelheim India said, “Boehringer Ingelheim India aspires to be amongst the top five multinational pharmaceutical companies in India over the next few years. We have been enabling access to our innovator products to patients across India and the neighbouring markets in the diabetes, cardiovascular, stroke and respiratory diseases segments. Our plan in these therapy areas is to build sustainable partnerships to ensure an ecosystem of access and care for patients. We have initiated action in that direction.”