Healthcare Trends
Healthcare marketing developments B2B healthcare marketing: measuring, evaluating and optimising performance
The trend towards digitalisation in healthcare marketing is gaining steam in the B2B sector as well. There are two key aspects for making the push to digitalisation a boost for success. Firstly, the flood of data must be analysed and leveraged efficiently and, secondly, there needs to be the right balance between a company’s online appeal to users and its offline one. The chatbot ChatGPT represents an opportunity and a challenge simultaneously. In a context like this, agencies above all are demanded to integrate artificial intelligence into their implementation of measures and into their maintenance of client relationships, in a way that delivers returns while not losing control, especially when it comes to content marketing.
A key benefit of the greater relocation of B2B healthcare marketing activities to the internet is the vast volume of data generated. Be it a newsletter, e-paper, advertorial or social media campaign, users constantly leave digital impressions when they receive such content. These impressions, underpinned by the providers’ benchmarks, give information about the penetration of a measure taken. They make it able to measure success distinctly, and the return on investment (ROI) contribution can be worked out clearly. The classic key performance indicators (KPIs) of visibility, penetration, preference and traffic have a key role in this as well as more recent key figures for social media, such as the engagement rate. Clients also frequently demand a qualitative comparison of media invest in alternative channels, media or providers. ‘The ability to measure the success of digital services is a strong argument,’ says Sabine Richter, member of the Management Board of WEFRA LIFE MEDIA GmbH, ‘This ensures increasingly rising demand.’
Automation picking up speed
To analyse the data efficiently and quickly and give it as much utility as possible, automated processes and also AI are increasingly being used. The insights gained from the data evaluation and the performance of different implementation formats are already adapted continuously in the course of the year. ‘In this context, it should be borne in mind that data from different sources will need to be analysed at other times during the customer journey to draw the right conclusions,’ Richter explains. Something that is also vital is a comparison of media KPIs with client KPIs to find the channels and media that will deliver the optimal returns for the objective in following campaigns and to filter out the rest. To optimise media invest, it is becoming increasingly relevant to appeal to the target audience as precisely as possible, something that is ensured with the exclusive, data-driven Healthy Programmatic (HP) media buying offering from WEFRA LIFE, for example.Although automated processes and the use of AI are growing in the field of data evaluation, it will not replace the human factor, at least not right now. Rather, automated data analysis serves as the foundation for human decision-making.1
ChatGPT a game changer?
Yet does this also apply to one of the most groundbreaking innovations of recent years, ChatGPT? The speech- and text-based chatbot (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) can converse with users through artificial intelligence, based on text or speech input, and has so far been provided to those interested on the Chat Open AI platform free of charge.2 Because the bot is underpinned by machine learning technology, it is capable of learning from enormous volumes of data and generating contextual answers on this basis. Consequently, it can conceivably be used for a number of applications – when writing technical texts, newsletters, landing pages or social media posts and as a tool for customer support.
Despite the chatbot’s astounding abilities, humans remain decisive as a fellow player. For starters, humans need to verify the facts that ChatGPT is working from and check compliance with legal requirements. Moreover, humans can also do something that machines cannot: create something new. This is because ChatGPT rehashes existing knowledge of the world but does not come up with or develop its own thoughts.3 As a result, humans remain responsible for things that are actually creative and original, and for making an empathetic appeal to customers. ChatGPT can therefore act as a partner, idea generator and source of inspiration for healthcare marketing, though not as a sufficient substitute for a content creator.
All under one roof
Another effect of the digitalisation drive in the B2B sector is that the various implementation formats add more and smaller components to media campaigns, both in relation to the channels used and the target audiences as well as the time frame. A stronger connection between B2B and B2C activities can also be seen as healthcare companies are increasingly including the end consumer in the communication mix. This mix of many and small components in a campaign can often lead to a large number of agency specialists being involved in the implementation, which makes it more challenging to coordinate various activities. That is why there has been a visible swing against this recently, with a return to campaign solutions where all services – or at least many of them – are done under one roof to increase efficiency.
Hybrid is the new normal
Although the pandemic era was driven by purely digital offerings, the desire for physical exchange and ‘formats to touch’ has not abated in HCP and B2B environments because of it. For example, there is currently a returning trend towards in-person events. ‘Overall, there remains a demand for a mix of digital and print advertisements based on the client’s objective,’ says Sebastian Schmitt, member of the Management Board of WEFRA LIFE MEDIA GmbH.The digitalisation trend unlocks many opportunities in healthcare marketing – and is nonetheless bound to come with a risk or two as well. Whether B2B activities find lasting success will depend on how companies and agencies address the challenge of bringing new possibilities into harmony with proven formulas for success. Or, as award-winning author George Westerman, lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology put it, ‘When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.’