Jan 1, 1970 - Jan 1, 1970,

Dr. Bates’ Talkback: Pharma marketing and cross-channel analytics

Dr. Andree K. Bates argues the case for analyzing the impact of all sales and marketing channels, both traditional and e-marketing



Measuring e-marketing activities, such as e-detailing or social media marketing, is fine, since analyzing one channel in isolation is certainly better than not measuring any. But far greater gains can be made from cross channel analytics—analyzing the impact of all sales and marketing channels, both traditional and e-marketing.

Cross-channel analytics enables a marketer to measure the impact from various channels in isolation and to compare the relative impacts of each, as well as measuring their impact in combination as part of your overall marketing mix.  Various channels—such as websites, social media initiatives, e-detailing, customer service, phone support, journal write-ups, advertising, PR, meetings, congresses, patient support programs, investigator-sponsored studies, sales force activities and programs and print media, to name a few—can be identified to understand how those channels relate to one another and affect customer behavior.

Making the most of multiple channels

The most effective cross-channel analytics enables one to predict the impact of varying levels and content of different channels together to see the impact these have synergistically rather than simply boosting the impact from one channel alone. This facilitates scenario planning across a brand or portfolio of brands.

Pharmaceutical marketers utilize multiple channels of marketing communications simultaneously and need to be able to analyze the relationship between changes in different channels on the end result. For example, when a marketer implements a multichannel campaign, they will want to analyze the relationship of the different marketing channels on prescribing behavior. By using cross-channel analytics, one can adjust aspects and frequency and spend on different sales and marketing activities to see what the impact would be on overall sales and profit if we move X% effort into e-detailing and take Y% of effort away from rep calls at the same time as decreasing our advertising and increasing our PR activities.

Identifying cross-channel synergies requires looking at how different elements of the communication mix work together to move someone to prescribing or using your product. This does gain a greater level of complexity when a marketer implements a multichannel campaign designed to affect both online and offline impact and then wants to analyze the relationship between online and offline behavior across all the traditional and e-channels.

Beyond Web and social media analytics

However, with data in so many locations, doing cross-channel analytics can be tricky without a system for measuring like with like. You'll need models that go beyond Web and social media analytics, models that tie neatly into traditional sales and marketing analytics but move well beyond the control and study group ROI approaches and even beyond the traditional response curve approaches. Web marketing teams utilize analytics that focuses on visitors' behavior, whereas cross-channel analytics tracks behavior across all channels to understand your customers’ experiences, their driver channels, and actions as well as the resulting impact on your sales and profit.

By using algorithms from both digital and traditional channels, you will be able to understand sales (and profit) impact based on changing sales and marketing activities on different channels simultaneously. You will be able to predict revenue impact associated with changes in the communication mix, which can be used, for example, to make adjustments to the content of an e-detailing campaign or spend in advertising.

Because customers today can move across several channels in the process of making a single prescribing decision, marketers are deploying cross-channel marketing and leveraging every communication channel. As the need for whole-business analysis (and cross-country whole-business analysis) increases, marketers will need tools and models that bridge online and offline data with ease.

The ability to overlay many complex layers of data to generate a holistic view of customer behavior and campaign effectiveness has numerous implications for marketing professionals, from improving analytical skills to improving data quality to investing in better tools. Marketers are going to need to embrace statistics, modeling, and predictive analytics in order to generate returns.

Dr. Andree K. Bates, a regular contributor to eyeforpharma, is CEO of Eularis, which applies analytics to determine the sales impact of marketing programs.

For more Dr. Bates’ Talkback, see How to get more value from existing products, Sales force effectiveness in the Japanese market, Building brands and boosting sales with Twitter, How to mount an effective defense against generics, and How corporate social responsibility boosts business.

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Jan 1, 1970 - Jan 1, 1970,