Taking it offline: e-pharmacy and online health

Transition to online self-service is growing in many industries and pharma is no exception. While digital pharmacy revenue accounts for only 6% of total pharmacy sales in the UK, and 4.5% in the US, it is still big money - £2.1bn and $24bn of revenue respectively. This digitisation of pharma is not limited to the ways we obtain medication, but how and where we receive medical advice. More than 40% if consumers in the US say that information found via social media affects the way they deal with their health. Underpinning this is a growing distrust of the pharma industries and healthcare professionals. This is a trend we’ve seen grow over the past few years working with our own pharma clients. At first more prevalent in our work with consumers in the US, we’re now seeing it more and more in the countries like the UK, Germany, Canada and Japan.

The challenge for the industry is in the removal of the professional in the treatment of medical conditions, whether that’s at the counter of a pharmacy or the doctors office. This trajectory obviously has a number of major concerns for health. If a person perceives a positive outcome to a minor medical issue through a combination of a social media diagnosis and digitally sourced medication, it can create a change in behavioural mindsets. But online medication and diagnosis is fraught with risks; ‘Dr Google’ causing increased anxiety as people are presented with worse case scenarios; increased exposure to anti-medication sentiment potentially playing into confirmation bias that you don’t have an illness and your condition can be managed using natural remedies; targeted digital marketing is suggestive and can encourage people to explore alternative options either generic brands or options that don’t need to be regulated; awareness and purchase journeys can be facilitated through social media and as millions of shares demonstrate, people will jump on that bad wagon and follow the crowd.

So what can the pharma industry do? From a behavioural perspective setting the industry up in opposition to social media trends and trying to wrest control away would be a mistake. This would just lead to a further entrenchment of distrust in “big pharma”, and it’s the “big” narrative the industry should trying to change. Pharma, and in particular OTC brands,need to be seen as working alongside the more natural side of healthcare. When a weight-loss drug is always promoted, purchased or prescribed with the caveat that you will get better results if you lead an active lifestyle and healthy diet. Extending this type of messaging and creating content and promotional campaigns that tap into overall health as opposed to selling medications, will help brands appear more trustworthy and help remove the “big” from “big pharma”.

In terms of “fake” health advice pharma also needs to try and control the narrative and position yourselves as experts. For decades the only real competitors for pharma brands were other pharma brands, now the environment is a little more foggy and a little more competitive. To cut through you need to position yourself as experts not just in drug discovery and manufacturing but in a broader sense of health. By providing more access to professional advice online, perhaps through creating online communities or through digital consults you can ensure professional advice and give people control of their environment by allowing them to feel safe.

Brands need to compete in the same way that other sectors do. Offer different pack sizes, different flavours, different colours. In the same that personalisation of diets is becoming a big thing because we are all different, pharma needs to look at these trends and realise that people are being told that one size does not fit all. These messages translate to anything we put in our bodies including medication. Pharma needs to start thinking about how people use online information and how medication fits in that. They need to realise that their brand trust is probably lower than it has ever been, people also don’t trust HCPs as much as they used to either, so they need to build that relationship in other ways.

Brands and product managers will need research to understand the new customer journeys towards purchasing online and the new ways people make decisions between categories, products and brands. Consideration can be higher and growing awareness can be considerably cheaper online, but brands will miss the POS advantages that packaging and display offer in traditional bricks and mortar settings. However, by linking it to reputable brands such as Boots or Walgreens, there is a sense of reassurance that the brand can be trusted. Online allows people to ultimately save time and money which contains within it the opportunity to build brand relationships because with the right online placement you can manage less exposure to alternative brands than in store.

The online space is a growing challenge for the pharma and healthcare industry. There are tactics to improve brand resonance and create value and trust online. However ultimately it requires a different marketing strategy. Long gone are the days of a monopoly of health held in the hands of healthcare professionals. This new era requires content strategies that pharma have not had to approach before. They need to meet the consumer where they are, online, and make sure that they provide an alternative narrative to amateurs by providing expert advice and content as a marketing strategy instead of waiting for the consumer to approach them.