Most healthcare and pharmaceutical companies promote products and services to healthcare professionals using electronic detailing or e-detailing.
E-detailing is an effective way to connect with potential clients and personalize material tailored to their needs.
However, there are many security requirements and measurements that pharmaceutical and medical companies must meet to thrive in this ever-evolving field.
If you’re new to e-detailing or looking to improve your existing strategy, this guide is for you.
What is E-detailing?
Electronic detailing or e-detailing is a popular digital marketing strategy that uses a wide range of online content like mail, video, and webinars to engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) and inspire them to work with your business.
A good way to implement e-detailing in your business is to invest in a sales enablement platform that adheres to HCPs' security requirements and privacy restrictions.
Sales enablement platforms are an effective, cost-efficient way for medical sales reps to create engaging experiences for health professionals. They can leverage electronic channels to introduce medical professionals to new treatments, medical products, or initiatives that align with their audience’s needs. They also provide valuable customer and content insights that can be used to optimize your existing e-detailing strategy.
E-detailing is a powerful tool with widespread benefits. Let’s look at some of them.
Who is E-detailing for?
E-detailing is used by companies across the globe, most commonly in North America and Europe.
Pharmaceutical companies, Life Science Companies, Health Care Providers, Medicinal Product Providers, and more all leverage a wide range of e-detailing methods and interactive channels in their marketing activities plan.
The interactive content experience and easy user interface remote e-detailing platforms provide, make it easy for medical professionals, medical science liaisons, medical sales reps, health care providers, and decision-makers to connect. More specifically, this can be done with mobile devices or other electronic channels that remote e-detailing technology providers offer.
What are the Benefits of E-detailing?
E-detailing is one of the most popular marketing methods in the pharmaceutical industry, and for good reason. Conducting detailing electronically is a fast and reliable way to target and communicate with healthcare professionals in your field.
Here are a few key benefits.
Increase Engagement
When done correctly, remote e-detailing entices HCPs to actively engage with the content presented to them. Immersive content such as polls, animations, and videos invite healthcare professionals to interact with the material instead of simply watching a presentation. This will help create a lasting impression and inspire them to want to learn more.
Track Invaluable Insights
E-detailing programs track content usage and show you how sales representatives and HCPs are interacting with your material. Data is the strongest predictor of success. This information can help you determine what communication channels, marketing campaigns, and other facets of your strategy are working, and where there’s room for optimization.
Personalize Communication Efforts
By tracking analytics and leveraging customer data, sales reps can create personalized content for individual healthcare professionals.
Personalizing content to potential customers shows how your business can help meet unique challenges to specific healthcare professionals and increase your chances of making a sale.
Reduce Costs
E-detailing relies on digital technologies and resources, eliminating the need for in-person meetings or printed material. By creating effective digital channels in which pharmaceutical sales representatives can communicate with HCPs online (video conferencing, webinars, etc.), e-detailing results in substantial cost savings for pharma, medical, and drug companies.
Easily Update Content
The nature of a digital platform means content can be updated frequently to reflect changing user behavior or new information that must be included in the material. To ensure your updated content makes it to your pharmaceutical sales reps as soon as it’s ready, we recommend investing in a sales enablement solution that allows you to push content to widespread sales teams with just one click.
Store Content Securely
Traditional communication channels lack the security measures required by medical and pharmaceutical companies. E-detailing solutions are secure. They allow sales reps and healthcare professionals to access confidential or scientific documentation on pharmaceutical products in accordance with privacy standards and regulations.
Create Consistency
E-detailing offers companies control over all content delivered to medical personnel and health professionals. They can easily standardize e-detailing presentations and e-detailing scripts, provide up-to-date information, and consistently comply with regulations. Consistency helps build trust, improves brand perception, and increases the effectiveness of medical representatives' sales.
These are a few of the many benefits e-detailing offers. Next, let’s dive into some of the challenges pharmaceutical companies face with this digital marketing method.
What are the Challenges of E-detailing?
E-detailing is a popular approach to marketing in the pharmaceutical and medical industries, but it isn’t without its own set of challenges.
We’ve outlined a few important things you should be aware of when it comes to e-detailing.
Technological Costs
E-detailing is a marketing strategy that relies on digital communication technology, which can be a huge investment. Sales representatives must have the appropriate hardware and software necessary to connect with healthcare representatives. E-detailing is incredibly effective, but the costs can add up when it comes to equipping your team with the tools they need to succeed.
Privacy Regulations
Companies must ensure that all patient data remains confidential and is stored securely. E-detailing sessions often take place remotely, which means data breaches are possible. To combat these concerns, we recommend investing in a sales enablement platform designed to comply with the data privacy and security needed in the medical and pharmaceutical industries. This will help give you peace of mind.
No Personal Interaction
Due to the remote nature of e-detailing sessions, pharma, and medical sales representatives do not interact with HCPs face-to-face. This can make building meaningful relationships difficult. Sales reps must overcome this barrier and find creative ways to connect with healthcare professionals online via video conferences or other online resources to build their trust.
Training and Support
Companies must properly train medical sales representatives on how to conduct e-detailing sessions. This training helps bolster their knowledge levels and helps medical sales reps feel more comfortable using the technology. Preparing medical sales reps with the information they need to answer health professionals' questions will help them create a more engaging experience.
These are some of the challenges you may face when implementing e-detailing-based marketing campaigns. Being prepared to overcome them is the best way to set your business up for success.
Speaking of success, let’s take a look at a few best practices to keep in mind when rolling out your e-detailing strategy.
Essential E-detailing Best Practices for Maximum Impact
If you're planning on implementing e-detailing or remote detailing in your marketing or sales strategy, be sure to follow these best practices.
Set Clear Goals
Goals will vary from business to business, but it is important to outline what you want to achieve before implementing your e-detailing strategy. These goals will serve as your north star as you navigate the e-detailing landscape and give you an idea of the metrics you should be tracking.
For example, set goals to decrease marketing spending, increase meetings with sales reps and medical personnel, or boost engagement by producing creative digital content to introduce your product to market.
Invest in the Right Technology
There are many e-detailing platforms on the market. We recommend finding a solution that adheres to your specific needs and meets the following criteria. The application interface should be easy to use, offer customization, and seamlessly integrate with your existing systems. It is also crucial that the platform complies with the necessary privacy and security regulations.
To be sure your solution is compliant, it is best to choose a provider that specializes in e-detailing platforms specifically.
Train your Team
Your sales representatives are the ones that will be using your e-detailing platform to interact with healthcare professionals and customers, so they must receive the proper training.
All-on-one e-detailing platforms like vablet are designed to help facilitate the training process. They enable companies to provide sales reps with the necessary materials, courses, and information needed to understand and make the most of your platform.
Create Engaging Content
E-detailing platforms are a cost-efficient way to share marketing content with potential customers. However, it is crucial to ensure that your e-detailing content is high quality.
Engaging content that educates and inspires your target audience is more likely to resonate with them. Do not upload and send random content without thinking through how it can best serve the healthcare professionals in your network.
Measure and Optimize
Once you incorporate e-detailing into your marketing strategy, you must track the appropriate metrics to determine if you're accomplishing desired results. In addition to tracking engagement rate, conversions, and customer satisfaction, you should look into content usage and individual sales rep platform usage too.
This will give you a clear picture of how and when sales reps are using e-detailing content and tools so you can pinpoint room for improvement and make necessary optimizations.
These best practices will help pharmaceutical and medical companies successfully implement electronic detailing into their businesses. However, keep in mind that e-detailing is one small part of a complete marketing and sales strategy. For maximum impact, it should be used in conjunction with other marketing activities and electronic channels.
Conclusion
E-detailing is a popular and effective method used by a wide range of companies to engage healthcare professionals, share their medical knowledge, and introduce their medical products to the market.
There are many benefits to pharmaceutical e-detailing such as increased engagement, valuable data insights, lower marketing expenses, secure content storage, and more. However, keep in mind there are challenges too.
To set your company up for success with e-detailing, make sure you consider the best practices during the decision-making process. Set clear goals, invest in the right technology, train your team, and create engaging content to ensure your e-detailing efforts achieve your desired results.
To learn more about e-detailing, pharmaceutical e-detailing, or the necessary compliance measures required for this method of digital marketing – reach out to an expert at vablet to help guide you through your decision process.
vablet is a sales enablement platform designed specifically for e-detailing. To learn more about vablet or how their easy-to-use application interface can best support your business, click the Get a Demo Button
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