Healthcare professional engagement, also known as HCP engagement, is a critical aspect of the success of any pharmaceutical company.
With the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape and increasing competition, it's becoming more important to find innovative ways to engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) and build lasting relationships with them.
While traditional methods such as face-to-face interactions and events can still be effective, digital channels have become an increasingly important tool for HCP engagement.
In this blog post, we'll be exploring five proven HCP engagement strategies that can help you boost your performance and build strong and lasting relationships with your healthcare provider partners:
Benefits of HCP engagement
What is an HCP engagement strategy?
5 Proven HCP engagement strategies:
1. Utilise targeting
2. Provide on-demand content
3. Offer virtual communication options
4. Host webinars and virtual events
5. Pick software with CRM integration
Engaging HCPs brings many benefits to a healthcare organisation. With effective engagement, you're able to:
When a company's brand is well-known and respected, it can lead to increased customer loyalty and trust. Having a strong brand presence also sets you apart from your competitors, making it easier for you to differentiate and position yourself as a leader in your field. It can also help to attract and retain top talent, as well as secure partnerships and collaborations with key stakeholders in the industry.
In short, any efforts that help you increase your brand awareness will be key to improving your reputation, driving business growth, and ultimately, achieving long-term success.
Having a deep understanding of the market, including HCP needs and trends, can help you make informed business decisions and develop effective strategies for product development, marketing, and sales.
By staying up-to-date on market trends and user preferences, you can better meet the needs of HCPs, which can lead to increased product uptake and higher sales. Furthermore, market insights can also help you identify new business opportunities and develop innovative products that better serve the needs of patients and healthcare professionals.
By engaging with HCPs and building strong relationships, you can gain valuable insights into the healthcare market and better understand the needs of this target audience.
In short, investing in HCP engagement can help build a strong reputation, foster customer loyalty, and drive business success. Strong HCP relationships also result in more participation and faster product adoption.
Each of these benefits is a key driver for increased sales, better product performance, and improved patient outcomes.
HCP engagement strategy is a comprehensive plan for building and maintaining positive relationships between a pharmaceutical company and HCPs.
The goal of an HCP engagement strategy is to effectively communicate with HCPs, understand their needs and concerns, and provide them with the information and resources they need to effectively promote and prescribe products to their patients.
So whether it's through in-person events, digital campaigns, or educational programs, building and implementing an effective HCP engagement strategy is essential for driving success in the pharmaceutical industry.
HCP engagement used to occur largely through face-to-face sessions between pharma reps and HCPs. However, nowadays it has also taken on the benefits of digital channels that oftentimes are more cost and time efficient.
In fact, a case study found that digital engagement lowered their total cost of interaction and improved the cost efficiency of the hybrid reps by 80%.
So, although digital practices are becoming more common, in-person interactions remain valuable for maintaining these relationships. In a survey during the pandemic, experts found that over 87% of healthcare providers prefer virtual or a combination of in-person and virtual meetings when engaging with pharmaceutical companies.
To get you started with the best practices, here's a list of some of the proven ways you can build and execute an efficient HCP engagement strategy:
Targeting refers to the process of delivering specific content to specific users based on their characteristics or behaviours.
For example, using demographic information, such as speciality or geographic location, to present HCPs with content that is relevant to their specific needs and interests. This type of targeting can increase the relevance and usefulness of the content, as well as improve the HCPs' overall experience within your portal.
For instance, if a neurologist logs into the portal, they would be presented with resources, updates, and product information related to neurology, rather than information that is not relevant to their speciality. By qualifying your visitors and following that with targeted content, your portal becomes a more valuable resource for HCPs.
This requires evaluating the HCP portal experience to ensure a smooth and satisfying interaction. However, some HCP engagement platforms like giosg, can help you with this by providing processes with interactions that guide HCPs through your portal and encounter only the information that is relevant to them.
One way to provide product recommendations for HCPs is by using conversational and interactive elements, like chatbots. For example, you can programme a chatbot to provide personalised recommendations based on the HCP's previous interactions, preferences, and needs.
For example, if an HCP frequently asks about a specific product category, the chatbot can offer relevant products and resources in that area. This type of personalised recommendation system can improve the HCP's experience and streamline the process of finding the right products for their patients.
Tailoring content based on customer preferences is just one factor of an effective strategy. Having the right content is equally important for developing your approach.
Maximising HCP engagement relies on the pharmaceutical's ability to effectively offer healthcare professionals the information they want on the channels they prefer and in the format they like.
So to ensure your content meets the needs of HCPs, make sure it is:
You should research and identify the content your target HCPs like. This content should be distributed through various channels so that HCPs are able to engage with you at any time and at any place. The most efficient way to tailor to your audience is by trying to balance traditional and digital channels. All this should be done while considering the features and formats when it comes to the user experience.
HCPs go to pharmaceutical companies for trustworthy and accurate information about their products. However, the challenge they are often facing with this is locating the relevant information at the moment it's needed, usually during patient consultations. So being able to reach the information they need is crucial as HCPs are searching for product information like they would with any other digital content as a standard practice in their day-to-day tasks.
Providing high-quality content on your HCP engagement platform is crucial for building trust and credibility with healthcare professionals. The portal should be a source of information that is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant to the needs of HCPs. This content can range from product information and educational resources to industry news and best practices.
By delivering value through the content, HCPs will view your platform as a trusted resource and be more likely to engage with it on a regular basis. It's important to continuously review and improve this to keep up with the changing needs of HCPs and maintain their interest and engagement.
Expert tip:
"The key to efficient HCP engagement is to try out different ways to engage with them and improve these using data."
Christian Lelo, giosg Customer Engagement Manager
Providers need the information and education required to perform their jobs and serve patients who demand more targeted, complex, and personalised treatments.
One example of how you can provide relevant, timely, high-quality information for HCPs is by creating targeted resource centres.
This resource centre can include a range of materials such as product manuals, clinical studies, and instructional videos relevant to the person visiting your site.
These can also provide HCPs with access to product updates and news, as well as educational resources like webinars, presentations, and infographics. By organising all of these resources in one centralised location, HCPs can easily access the information they need and quickly find answers to their questions.
This not only improves the HCPs' experience on your portal but also demonstrates your company's commitment to providing high-quality resources and support for healthcare professionals.
If you want to really stand out, you can also host different kinds of online quizzes and other interactions on your portal. This can be a great way to offer valuable content for HCPs for example using the quizzes as ways to upkeep their existing accreditations and certificates.
Including virtual communication options in your HCP marketing strategy can help HCPs to connect quickly and efficiently with your experts.
With effective targeting and qualification tools, like giosg's, you can schedule only meaningful meetings, ensuring that each one-to-one call or video call is as productive as possible. You can also integrate the booking system with your calendar to make the process as easy as possible for HCPs.
This helps ensure that booking an appointment with the right person is simple and straightforward, saving time and effort for both parties.
With these virtual communication options, it's easy to tailor the process to each HCP's individual needs, ensuring that they get the most out of their experience and leave feeling like they got what they were looking for. All without extra unnecessary steps.
With the increasing popularity of remote work and digital communication options, video calls, webinars and virtual events have become important tools for HCP engagement.
Altogether by hosting webinars and virtual events or one-to-one calls, you can provide HCPs with educational content and opportunities to interact with your company and other HCPs in a virtual setting. With this, you can cater and accommodate to your audience's needs who may not be able to attend in person or perhaps have other limitations and prefer virtual alternatives.
By integrating with a CRM system, HCP engagement software can provide a more comprehensive view of the customer's interactions and history with the company. This information can then be used to create more targeted and personalised engagement strategies, improving the overall effectiveness of your portal.
This will help you with the adoption and ease of use of your engagement tool while streamlining the documentation of interactions and remote engagements while providing a compliant trail of data and sources.
For example, if an HCP has shown interest in a specific product line in the past, you can use this information to offer related resources and updates, increasing the relevance of the engagement. This type of integration can also help to streamline sales and marketing efforts, allowing for more efficient use of resources and improved customer relationships.
In conclusion, HCP engagement strategies offer a wealth of opportunities to engage healthcare providers and build lasting relationships with them.
By incorporating these strategies into your overall HCP engagement plan, you can ensure that you’re effectively reaching and engaging with HCPs in today's rapidly evolving healthcare industry.
Whether it's through virtual events or online educational content, these strategies provide a convenient and effective way to connect with HCPs and keep them informed about your products and services. Begin boosting your HCP engagement and take your strategy to the next level with the best HCP engagement tools in 2023.
You can also book a demo directly with one of our experts to start discussing the right solutions and features for you!