Healthcare brands are facing pressure to digitally transform their marketing ecosystems today. Hyper-personalization, data and creativity are critical if they want to crack-open more growth opportunity and treat patients remotely.  

Meet the speakers:  

Ed Howarth (host), Managing Director of Global Clients, OLIVER 

Paul Reynolds, consultant for the pharmaceutical industry 

Julian Hecker, Digital and Content Strategy Lead, Bayer AG 

Eva Youngman, Business Director, OLIVER 

Creativity in healthcare has shifted a gear 

After the pandemic hit, digital health ideas once thought of as fringe were suddenly given serious consideration and digital transformation projects were implemented virtually overnight. But the rapid overnight change required even faster change in how brands reengage with customers online. 

The pandemic forced brands to reassess their approach to creativity and shorten their development timelines, leading to more agile test-and-learn processes and ideas going live at a much faster rate.  

It meant that digital creativity and customer engagement were even more important, and that the best performing brands were data-orientated and could pull an audience on social media.  

Social media is now leading channel for brand-to-customer engagement, with competition for attention becoming fierce. Getting customers to engage with your brand’s content, so that it becomes a trusted hub of information or entertainment, is a hugely important part of effective digital marketing today – and especially for health brands who rely on customers having trust in them.  

Despite this shift in gear creating a more complex ecosystem for brands to navigate, it has also led to a much wider audience for them to test their new customer journeys on. 

Key takeaway:  The pandemic shortened implementation timeline for creative projects and forced brands to embrace digital platforms in far greater depth than before. Social media platforms become particularly important.  

AI and Big Tech’s role in CX 

As Big Tech integrates with pharma, brands are looking into the external expertise that focus AI and creative partnerships can bring as they pursue hyper-personalized customers experiences (CX).  

Building new CX capabilities is a complex and expensive process that requires specific skillsets, so partnering with creative and marketing experts can offset high recurring costs in the creation of new content.  

Quick and agile action is hampered by a lack of knowledge. But creative partners can bring their own marketing expertise to your brand and sure-up vulnerabilities. Analysing your brand’s customer data, for example, is a specialist role a partner can bring to direct creative engagement. Your brand is an expert is a specific field, it doesn’t have to be an expert in all things. 

It’s a good first step to ask fundamental questions: Does this solve a genuine problem for the brand and its customers? Does your brand have the expertise to insert hyper-personalization into CX effectively? (For example, Biofourmis’ AI platform, which provides predictive insights into health, from monitoring oncology patients to patient rehospitalization risk, partnered with the University of Hong Kong to discover research physiological signals in Covid-19 patients.) 

Key takeaway: Understanding your brand’s strengths and vulnerabilities before deciding where and how you need to improve your creativity. 

How can brands achieve better customer journeys? 

Personalized customer experiences require relevant and engaging customer journeys. And this comes from incentives, which come from understanding what customers value.  

Understanding what your customers value most about your brand will help to create your customer journey. Is your brand incentivizing customer engagement, not only with a desirable value-offer but also a frictionless experience? Be that social media, web content or customer service, simplifying complexity in the customer journey is essential.  

Similarly, when market disruptions arrive, don’t immediately assume they’ll affect your brand. Understand if these developments effect your brand’s core value offer and your customer’s consumption habits. This is what subsequent needs to determine the direction of your engagement strategies.  

Key takeaway: Understanding your brand’s audience is essential, both in determining what technology you need and developing a successful customer journey.  

Innovation through talent 

Finding great talent is essential, but so is building teams capable of producing innovative work that can drive your brand’s growth.  

Great leadership at all levels is crucial. Managers who know how to train and assess their teams’ capabilities are a brand’s lynchpin. By leveraging the creative skills of your talent, effective managers can transform complex brand offerings into tangible results.  

Brands are prioritizing diversity to attain greater insight. diversity of thought is invaluable, especially when exploring international opportunities. 

Lastly, avoid isolated silos. Sharing knowledge between your brand’s teams is key, especially in when brands need to produce personalized and engaging content. Research and development teams, marketing and sales teams, for example, must work closely when devising customer journeys. Poor communication can cause serious damage to the end journey.  

Key takeaway: Talent requires great management to combine talented individuals into great teams by directing customer-focused creative.  

Final thoughts  

• Creativity and customer engagement requires risk-taking. Similarly, shortened implementation timelines can drive your brand into new opportunities. The pandemic taught brands that innovation doesn’t always need to wait. 

• Effective partnerships are great for bringing technology and AI closer to your brand by expanding your in-house capabilities and reinforcing vulnerabilities.  

• Effective customer journeys incentivize greater customer engagement. Brands can achieve this by simplifying complex processes and removing friction in the customer experience.    

• To drive innovation at scale, brands need managerial leadership that can combine individual talent into effective, future-orientated teams. Similarly, inter-departmental cooperation is essential to avoid inflexible silos.  

Watch OLIVER’s full webinar here