E-detailing, a.k.a. electronic detailing or remote e-detailing, has emerged as a much-needed technological innovation in the pharma industry. E-detailing enables pharma marketers to leverage various IT tools to promote their products and services.
E-detailing is also known as digital detailing because it involves virtual interactions with healthcare service providers, such as doctors, healthcare professionals, medical staff, and even patients, using various online channels.
Generally, digital detail happens through a pharmaceutical company’s official website or some specific physician’s portal. But, it may also mean sending explanatory videos and email-based promotions, so long as the primary objective is to offer the latest information about pharma products or services.
A Mariann Anderson study found that 97 out of 100 physicians prefer e-detailing over paper-based hard copies when it comes to explaining complicated matters. Hence, if you want to expand your business, taking advantage of remote e-detailing must seem like a sensible decision.
If you haven’t included remote e-detailing to improve the efficiency of your marketing campaigns, this is the best time to do so. Read on to discover the top strategies and reasons to introduce remote e-detailing in your pharmaceutical company and the best way to do it.
Remote E-detailing – 4 Strategies to Adopt Digital Technology for Pharmaceutical Marketing
Here are the top strategies to adopt digital detail for pharmaceutical marketing:
Conduct Video Visits
Video visits are the most common way of implementing remote e-detailing Pharma. Here, healthcare service providers, including doctors and physicians, interact with pharma representatives through internet-enabled computers, cameras, and microphones.
This saves a healthcare professional from setting aside time for in-person meetings. They can attend the meeting from their office, home, or even on the go.
Healthcare professionals can ask questions, seek information, and inquire about various products during a video visit. Generally, video visits are of ten (10) minute duration. However, you can increase the duration if you want.
So, video visits can be an excellent strategy to implement digital detail in pharmaceutical marketing. Although video visits are almost similar to in-person visits, they are more cost-efficient and effective.
Rely on Scripted e-Detailing Through Digital Omnichannel Content
Gone are the days when marketers had to share different content types, such as presentations, videos, audio, pictures, pdf files, documents, etc., in different ways with healthcare service providers. This is the era of digital omnichannel content.
eLearning platforms like Kytes allow pharmaceutical companies to engage with healthcare service providers using sixteen (16) different content types, including video, audio, pdf, presentations, and many more.
The primary advantage of having many different content types on the same platform is that it empowers your medical reps, thereby increasing the salesforce’s effectiveness. Your sales reps can create a coherent story using different file types to convince healthcare service providers.
Kytes lets you and your sales reps design content and explain it to healthcare service providers about your drugs’ working mechanisms, dosages, efficacy, side effects, tolerability, etc. Besides explaining directly, you can also provide platform access to healthcare service providers so that they can check the content whenever they feel like it.
Browse the Internet Jointly While Talking Over the Telephone
Novartis in France has found an ingenious way to implement remote e-detailing.
They call a healthcare service provider and request that they access the internet. Then, the medical rep explains the subject matter while the healthcare service provider checks the content using a digital device.
Usually, the medical rep has access to the healthcare professional’s computer during the meeting. This enables the medical rep to explain the subject matter in greater detail.
Send Personalized Emails
While the three remote e-detailing strategies discussed above are very impactful, you can also send emails to healthcare service providers to let them learn about your products and services.
However, ensure that you personalize the message to suit individual requirements.
Email marketing can be used separately or as part of other remote e-detailing strategies.
Now that you know the top four strategies to implement e-detailing for pharma marketing, let’s explore the benefits of doing so.
5 Benefits of Implementing Digital Detail for Pharma Marketing
Remote e-detailing or digital detail in pharma marketing enables a marketer to reduce costs, increase customer engagement, improve the marketing campaign’s impact, capture customer data, and stay consistent.
Here are the top five benefits of adopting remote e-detailing:
Cut Costs
US medical sales representatives waste about 90% of their time on waiting and traveling. This makes remote e-detailing a better and more cost-efficient option.
A study found that e-detailing can reduce pharma marketing expenses by up to 90%. Moreover, CMI observes that while the cost of a face-to-face detail can be between US$200 and $250, the cost of digital detailing can be between $100 and 150 for each physician.
So, remote e-detailing can be an excellent way to reduce costs and optimize your marketing output.
Analyze User Engagement
Modern-day content distribution platforms like Kytes provide advanced analytics to help you frame meaningful insights. The analytics provide you with a detailed overview of how much time customers spend on your digital detail.
The more time they spend on remote e-detailing, the better their chances are of buying or recommending your products and services. Moreover, you can seek feedback from healthcare service providers to improve your content or its quality.
Flexibility
You can fit the remote e-detail content into any device using Kytes, whether it’s a laptop, desktop, smartphone, or tablet. So, your target audience can check the content anytime they like.
This flexibility reduces your worries about scheduling meetings at specific times.
Update Content Quickly
E-detailing enables you to update your pharma marketing content at any time you feel like it.
Also, medical sales reps can download the content on any device to always stay updated with the latest information.
Time-Saving
As previously stated, e-detailing in Pharma allows a marketer to save time and put it to better use.
Digital detail frees your sales reps from wasting time traveling or waiting, so they can utilize the same time to arrange multiple meetings or product demo sessions.
Conclusion
Thanks to remote e-detailing, pharma marketing has undergone a paradigm change. Digital details let you use the best of technology to streamline pharmaceutical marketing. By leveraging e-detailing through Kytes, you can manage your sales processes better and expand your customer base organically.
