Content marketing strategies for pharma and medical devices: Part 2

In part 1 , we focused on some in-clinic content marketing strategies. In part 2, let us look at some ex-clinic content marketing strategies.

1. Sponsored articles in leading international journals: Some journals like Wiley, allow companies to submit sponsored articles written by KOLs of their choice. The footnote of the article mentions that the content is sponsored by XYZ company. This could be a very good channel to ask KOLs to share their experiences or case reports about the use of a particular drug. This is particularly useful for recent drug launches or drugs for rare diseases. These become as valuable as real-world evidence. Of course, other types of publications other than case reports are also accepted.
2. LinkedIn newsletters: What you are reading right now is an edition of my newsletter. Disease-specific scientific newsletters or drug-specific newsletters can be published with a weekly/fortnightly/monthly frequency and people can be invited to subscribe to them; LinkedIn also allows anyone to subscribe to them even without invitation. HCPs who treat those specific diseases and important KOLs can be invited to subscribe to them and they receive a notification whenever a new edition is put up. This way, scientific content can reach the HCPs and they can access it at a time suitable to them.
3. Patient education articles in newspapers: This is already being widely used and the main target audience here is the general public. However, on similar lines, there could be scientific articles in newsletters of local medical associations written by a local or national KOL, which will reach all members of the association including general practitioners.
4. Review articles/case reports/expert opinion papers/consensus statements in national journals: This strategy is again being widely practiced, to the extent that it has become generic. However, to stand out from the crowd and not appear generic, the topics should be carefully selected, the article should be written by a highly skilled writer with immense experience, and the aim should be to publish in journals with a high impact factor, even if they are national journals. An article with KOLs as authors and published in a journal with a high impact factor can be used as a marketing tool itself.
5. HCP surveys: I regularly see HCP surveys on various topics being conducted with the final objective being to publish the data. Unfortunately, most of them do not get published or achieve publication in journals with very poor impact factor. The reason I think is the heavy bias in the questionnaire, the lack of direction and flow. The questionnaires are often framed in-house, are very long, and are clearly biased such that one would get the answers one desires. Hence, the manuscript lacks teeth and is rejected by leading journals. However, if done professionally, and with an honest intent, this could be a useful tool for content marketing. Once published in a good journal, the insights from a survey can be a good marketing tool.
6. Emailers with call-to-action (CTA): This is also being widely used, but can only be successful if the CTA really takes the HCP to useful scientific content. Else, over a period of time, the emails will simply go from the inbox to the bin.
7. Video bytes: Short 1-2 min videos showing the key data of a study with good content as voiceover and a CTA to see the data in detail are more likely to be viewed by HCPs, given the time constraints in reading full texts. They can at least convey the key messages and the retention is likely to be better.

I hope these 2 articles on content marketing have left you with food for thought to create a difference in the market. Do share other ideas that you might have, in the comments.

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