Updated on 24/01/2023
Video marketing: effective communication tool for pharmacies
Video marketing in the pharmaceutical industry is carving out an increasingly important role. What are the reasons behind this success? What are the best strategies to adopt? That’s what we’ll talk about in this post.
Pharmacies have always been a point of reference for the local areas and people who live there. They have played nn irreplaceable and fundamental role, which with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, has become even more delicate. But it’s not just about the emergency.
The face of pharmacies is also changing due to a deeper and more lasting process: Digital Transformation.
For this sector, digital transformation is a revolution that has yet to offer its ripest fruits. The margins remain wide and the opportunities to be seized are many. This is great news for those working in the industry who have a desire to look to the future.
In our previous post, we asked where digitization is in the pharmaceutical sector, how mature it is, and how to bridge the gaps. In another post, we focused our analysis on the marketing sphere, looking at how digital has revolutionized the industry’s strategies. In this post, we want to tighten the focus even more on the type of digital content that is by far the most effective and has the greatest communicative power: Video.
In the remainder of this post, we’ll tell you why video marketing in the pharmaceutical industry has become so important. Then, we’ll get right down to the operational side, and we’ll lay out 5 key points on which to build an effective video strategy, with a focus on the specifics of the pharmacy world.
Why is video the king of digital?
Why is it so effective? Because the data says so. Let’s look at that data together.
- Today, around 82% of all internet traffic is generated by video. In 2017, this percentage was 72.3% (source: Cisco Annual Internet Report).
- 5 billion: This is the number of videos viewed every day, on YouTube alone (source: Fortunelords).
- More than 500 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute (source: Statista).
- Aroundt 100 million hours of video watched every day on Facebook, a number that is steadily increasing (source: 99firms).
- On Instagram, posts containing videos have a 38% higher average engagement than those containing images (source: Mention.com).
Let’s move to the attention front:
- 55% of people pay more attention when approaching videos than any other type of content (source: omnikick)
- When viewing a video, the average user retains 95% of the message it contains; if we’re talking about text, that percentage plummets to 10% (source: wirebuzz)
And now let’s tighten the focus on marketers:
- 87% of marketers use video in their strategies (source: Wyzowl)
- And 88% of them say they are satisfied with the ROI generated by their video marketing campaigns (source: Wyzowl)
5 key points to build an effective pharma video marketing strategy
We could go on and on, but we’re convinced that these numbers speak for themselves and demonstrate very clearly why video is at the center of the digital world and the world of digital marketing as a result.
So now, let’s move on and – as promised – here are the 5 key points on which to build an effective pharma video marketing strategy (and for pharmacies in particular).
1. A good video strategy must be omnichannel and mobile first!
More than a key point, this is an essential premise; that’s why we’ll start here.
Your pharma video marketing strategy can and must be designed in an omnichannel manner, and it must be optimized and customized according to the characteristics of each individual channel. The experience of watching video is in fact different from desktop to mobile or tablet (and it’s also depending on the models used). And it’s not just a matter of resolution and size.
Ominchannel optimization is not so complicated; there are useful tools to achieve this goal, even for medium-to-small businesses like pharmacies.
One tip: Design your omnichannel strategy starting with mobile. More and more, it’s through smartphones that people connect to the internet (mobile traffic, in the last 7 years alone, has increased by 222% worldwide; source: BroadBandSearch).
Consider this other fact: the average user spends 40 minutes a day watching videos on mobile (source: Marketingdive).
2. The importance of clear and authoritative storytelling
We are increasingly looking for news about our health and well-being online, even more so in these complicated times. According to the most recent data, 83% of internet users have done an online search related to health issues this year (source: Trialfacts).
In particular, it is the youngest who have this well-established habit.
This is the challenge for the pharmacies of tomorrow: To intercept this demand, being ready in the right place (i.e. online), with the right tool (i.e. video).
Attention, however: The internet is also the realm of fake news, of “do-it-yourself remedies” that can be harmful to health, of misleading information that can reach a vast audience of people, causing enormous damage. That’s why it’s important, in pharma video marketing strategies, to first find the right tone of voice.
The key themes are: Clarity, authority, and transparency.
And there’s nothing better in this regard than explainer videos. They can be very specific and – for example – focused on how drugs are taken. But they can also have a broader informative scope and explain, with simplicity, the effectiveness of certain treatments.
An important tip: Don’t forget that behind every patient there is always a person. So, don’t stop only at the medical and scientific field. Try to be as “human” as possible, to adopt – in a small way – what the big pharmaceutical companies define as “beyond the pill optics.” Go beyond the cure, to embrace the well-being of the person, at 360 degrees.
3. Try to act as local micro-influencers
First of all, what are influencers? To put it simply, influencers are people who have a large following on social media, and who are therefore able to influence people’s lifestyle (and purchasing) choices.
There are mega-influencers (with a following that exceeds one million followers); there are macro-influencers (between 500,000 and one million followers); there are also micro- and nano-influencers, who are becoming increasingly important in marketing and video marketing, because they are perceived as more “authentic” and have a smaller but also more loyal and affectionate following. The latter is also very interesting for pharmacies.
Of course, it’s important to get specific on two points.
First, put authority as the top priority of your influencer marketing, once again. Choosing authoritative and “certified” voices is essential to communicate messages in sensitive areas such as health.
Second, always act with your target audience in mind.In the case of pharmacies, we are almost always talking about (with the exception of large chains) a strongly geolocalized target.
4. Pharmacies can be social too
The first objective of the video marketing in the pharmaceutical sector is to inform patients with a clear and authoritative voice, and to do so in an omnichannel manner. Today, there is one channel that is used more than any other: We’re talking about social networks.
A survey conducted by Mediabistro showed that more than 40% of people are influenced by social networks in their health-related choices. Once again, the phenomenon is much more significant among the younger segments of the population. People between the ages of 18 and 24 tend to discuss health and wellness issues on social networks twice as much as people in the 45-54 age range (the source is always Mediabistro).
Translated: It is also important for pharmacies to be found on social networks, to intercept this growing demand and to create a digital community around them.
What is the most effective type of content on social networks? It’s always video.
We’ve already seen it above: The data regarding views and engagement generated state to this very clearly.
However, beware of the target audience. We must learn to segment it in an increasingly surgical way, with great attention to geolocation. Today it can be done, with great precision. The frontier? Personalization. The last key point, on which we focus in the next paragraph.
5. The best video marketing in pharma? Data-driven and personalized
The engine of the digital revolution is something simple: An enormous availability of data.
This data is precious information, representing the “traces” that we all leave online, which show, with great precision how behaviors, habits, and desires are changing.
The great challenge, today, is to collect this information, analyze it, interpret it, and then address customers in a differentiated manner, as tailored as possible, adapting communication to the characteristics of the recipients. The challenges of digital technology are all won here by putting individuals at the center.
That’s why the real breakthrough of video marketing in the pharmaceutical industry comes with “personalized videos,” which combine the effectiveness of video with the boost of personalization.
With personalized video marketing, the target is the individual, and the dialog becomes truly one-to-one. This is what specialized companies like Doxee do with their Doxee Pvideo® personalized videos, built on the characteristics of individual users, with lots of space for interaction and the possibility of inserting personalized calls to action.
In short, video marketing in the pharmaceutical sector will increasingly be a question of personalization, and here’s where the circle closes: from digital, we return to individuals. To take care of them.
