Whitepaper
Omnichannel marketing
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Whitepaper Omnichannel marketing
Dedicated people
MEDICAL C
Omnichannel marketing
The concept of omnichannel marketing has been
around for a while, and retail are still trying to refine
their communications accordingly. So how can the
pharmaceutical industry make use of omnichannel
marketing and learn from the retail sector?
A dictionary definition states ‘omni’ means ‘of all things’,
whilst ‘multi’ means ‘many’. The literal translation of
‘omnichannel’ would therefore mean to communicate
across all channels, rather than just many. However,
this is inaccurate and misses the fundamental principle
behind omnichannel.
Omnichannel is actually more about customer-centricity
than anything else. It looks at the various touchpoints an
audience uses and aims to interconnect them in order to
create a seamless experience.
How does omnichannel work?
A successful omnichannel experience provides a
customer with the same functionality and experience
across any channel or touchpoint and so facilitates the
opportunity to purchase a product whether on a mobile
app, a social channel, website or in-store.
Omnichannel marketing would additionally make use of
data across all touchpoints to build a customer profile to
enable the use of contextual marketing, i.e. if you know
a customer has been viewing a specific product, when
they next interact with you, they should continue their
journey, not start from the beginning.
Dedicated people
Using retail as an example, if a customer views a
M A R K E
product on social media on their smartphone and later
that day they then use their tablet to visit the brands
website – they can continue their shopping experience
and be immediately taken to the product they previously
viewed, when they then go in-store they should be
guided to the product they viewed online through instore signage and the sales rep will already know what
they are looking for.
An omnichannel future
Omnichannel is still in its infancy and has yet to be truly
delivered by anyone. It is hugely complex and requires
the interoperability between multiple data sources and
systems, which simply isn‘t available in 2016.
However, there are signs that this is on the horizon with
improved data integration across social media (through
open APIs), contextual advertising that Google supports
and dedicated ‘omnichannel’ software solutions
reaching the market.
Companies should be preparing for this future and
adopting some of the underlying principles to their
multichannel strategy.
Whitepaper Omnichannel marketing
Dedicated people delivering inspiring results
Dedicated people delivering inspiring results
MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS
INTELLIGENT INSIGHTS
Dedicated people delivering inspiring results
Dedicated people delivering inspiring results
The
M A opportunity
R K E T A C for
C Epharma
S S
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• Enable users to continue their journeys across
L T I M E D I A
individual channels. For example, ensuring an
Whilst retail is the sector driving omnichannel marketing,
eLearning tool recalls where you were, enabling you
pharma can also start to put in place foundations for the
to start from where you left off
future.
U
Closed loop marketing tools are already widely used
within the life sciences industry and provide an excellent
starting point to develop a true omnichannel experience.
Whilst current closed loop systems are able to identify
engagement levels of some individuals, this is generally
across a limited number of channels. Additionally,
wider closed loop marketing systems gather data ‘enmasse’, so fail to identify individuals, meaning a truly
personalised user journey is not possible.
Pharma should therefore focus on the omnichannel
tactics that can be delivered today including:
• Understand the digital landscape and change in
audience behaviour to refine user journeys across
multiple channels and define future communication
strategy
• Ensure the multichannel experience is as
consistent as possible through design, content and
functionality
• Start connecting channels such as embedding
social media data into CRM systems and call centers
– enabling personalised follow ups
• Explore which technological platform will be
the most appropriate to support an omnichannel
approach, e.g. Adobe Marketing Cloud, Sitecore etc.
• Know where you want to get to and work your
tactics back from there
Bedrock’s services
Bedrock’s team has experience in omnichannel
marketing across the retail, banking and healthcare
sectors. Bedrock is therefore able to utilise the best
practice concepts from other business sectors that have
led the way in excellent customer experiences across
multiple channels.
We can help with audience insight and behaviour,
communication strategy, user interface refinement,
integration of multiple data systems and the
implementation and roll out of an omnichannel-focused
solution.
To find out more, please contact
a member of the Bedrock team
on 01252 240200 or email
[email protected]
Bedrock Healthcare Communications
One Fleet Ancells Road Fleet Hampshire GU51 2UN UK
T
E
+44 (0)1252 240 200
[email protected]
www.bedrock-health.com
© Bedrock Healthcare Communications 2016.
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