3 Trends I’m Watching in Pharmaceutical Marketing and Digital

Patients, healthcare professionals, and pharmacists are empowered, tech savvy consumers. They expect products and services to smoothly integrate into their busy lives − just like a streamed film or subscription pet food order. 01 And they are increasingly interested in the ethics and sustainability of businesses they buy from.

Here’s how artificial intelligence, augmented & virtual reality, and sustainability trends are altering how pharmaceutical companies engage with their customers.

1. Hyper-personalized and connected experiences

Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are changing healthcare by creating seamless “omnichannel” customer experiences across physical and digital touch points, whether in a pharmacy or smartphone healthcare app.

It’s not all about new tech though. For the content to resonate, pharma marketers need to be curious about their customers - for example, a neurologist working in mental health. What are the challenges in their healthcare provider journey? What are they thinking and feeling at those moments? How can we create a personalized experience which addresses critical moments in our neurologist’s journey?

To enable this, AI tools will facilitate cost-effective personalization of content to scale and generate insights, leading to smarter decision-making, deeper customer engagement, and trust building.

While pharmaceutical companies are still evolving in this area, online marketing content and social media are becoming increasingly important to their reputation 02 and revenue.

2. Immersive digital experiences through augmented reality and virtual reality

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) aren’t just for gamers. These technologies offer tremendous potential to captivate human attention and increase knowledge retention when educating patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers on health conditions and treatments.

Imagine you’re a trainee doctor. Instead of reading an article or logging into a webinar, you utilize AR or VR technologies to gain a deeper understanding of what it may be like for a patient to, for instance, be in a depressive state, or to hear their negative cycle of thoughts.

VR technology is already being applied to train surgeons. 03 I believe there is tremendous potential to harness both technologies for a wide variety of healthcare use cases.

3. Sustainability and purpose-driven brand building

Today’s consumers crave authenticity and responsibility from the brands and companies they engage with. Pharmaceutical brands can also craft their own brand purposes by defining WHY their brand exists in the world - at Teva, for example, our purpose is “we are all in for better health.”

Pharmaceutical marketers have a powerful role to play in sustainability, starting by understanding their and their agency partners’ carbon footprint, especially Scope 3 emissions. For example, choosing biodegradable packaging materials and instituting standards to monitor and reduce emissions in content production and programmatic media.

NPS-ALL-NP-01397-OCTOBER-2024

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Find out more

• Discover more about the latest trends in sustainability
• From AI to drug development, Teva experts discuss the latest trends in the sector
• Want to get involved in the inspiring work we do? Check out our Careers pages

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Footnotes

1. Back to contents.

   McKinsey, ‘Consumers rule: Driving healthcare growth with a consumer-led strategy’, April 15, 2024, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/consumers-rule-driving-healthcare-growth-with-a-consumer-led-strategy (Accessed September 2024)

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   Fierce Pharma, ‘Roche rises and Sanofi slips in ranking of Big Pharmas' online activities’, July 10, 2024, https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/roche-rises-and-sanofi-slips-ranking-big-pharmas-online-activities (Accessed September 2024)

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   Siemens website, https://www.vrowl.io/siemens-healthineers-virtual-reality-training/. (Accessed September 2024)