Most popular Life Sciences marketing activities in recent years

Enterprise digital marketing efforts increased significantly in 2019-2020

SINGAPORE – As our team at MediqTrans started the year celebrating the 4th ISO re-certification of our Life Sciences Translation services, we also took the opportunity to review & understand marketing trends that have emerged or gained momentum in recent years, even as nations locked down and the global economy struggled under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As an internationalisation partner to leading Life Sciences organisations and working closely alongside their marketing departments, the most popular and over-arching theme clearly was the accelerated digitalization of marketing activities across the sector, including medical manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, service providers such as CROs, distributors, and more.

Digitalization in Marketing

While business digitalization (especially in marketing) is somewhat pervasive and matured for a select group of global leaders, majority of Life Sciences companies are relatively inexperienced in their marketing digitalization journey. Part of the reason behind this holdback is that within our regulated environment, the accepted boundaries of online marketing are still yet to be fully understood. Lack of knowledge and its perceived risks result in companies still relying heavily on traditional marketing. Unfortunately, traditional marketing’s relevancy over the years has lost some momentum due to customer preferences towards digital, exacerbated when social distancing and lockdowns made digital a more convenient and safer mode of communication.

Various initiatives have been started to help companies solve this practical challenge, including MediqTrans’ collaboration with the Asia Regulatory Professionals Association (ARPA) and Wisse Kommunikatie (part of the Worldcom agency network) to establish global communication strategies pertaining product recalls. Other efforts include an upcoming course by ARPA on compliant marketing for MedTech companies in EU, and also an association-led study on establishing a digital marketing guidance for companies in Asia.

Key marketing uptakes in 2019-2020

As we collaborated with our customers and leading MedComms agencies over the course of 2019-2020, we witnessed 4 major uptakes in marketing (no surprises that all of which happen to be digital) during the period:


•    Webinars and Video
Life Sciences companies leveraged conferencing tools such as Zoom & Microsoft Teams to expand their engagements with key stakeholders virtually across borders. Content assets developed include video interviews, digital whitepapers & case studies in local languages, as well as post-webinar video recordings accompanied by translated subtitles and voiceovers, and translated presentation decks/handouts.

•    Social Media
People love interacting with people, and social media has helped humanize businesses. Popular channels used include LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, WeChat and Facebook. Companies maintain different country pages that offer locally adapted content. Social media posts & articles, press releases, and videos, are translated to build trust & maximize local engagement with consumers, patients, physicians, distributors, and more.

•    Multilingual Sites and CRM
Content is still king, and companies developed knowledge-sharing portals to build mind-share, landing pages & microsites to drive call-to-actions, online instructional videos for 24/7 self-learning, transactional & broadcast emails, SMS & Telegram messages, etc … Companies also translate content into more languages than before (of the 45+ languages that we support, average demand has doubled versus the 3-5 languages just years ago).

•    Ecommerce
Life Sciences companies increasingly sell on global e-marketplaces and their own ecommerce sites. Store information & product listings are translated & adapted to inform and assure global customers. Customer support for inbound enquiries are promptly & succinctly responded in local languages. MediqTrans’ subsidiary Attunemen offers a comprehensive solution for companies looking to enter Indonesia’s ecommerce market.

In summary, the digitalization evolution continues to gain momentum, and in certain Life Sciences companies, digitalized marketing has already become the primary focus of the organisation. Over the years, we have witnessed the growing availability & affordability of increasingly sophisticated technology that is able to accelerate & simplify processes through automation, and these technologies continue to offer data-driven analytics that help guide business decisions. Today, human languages form a critical component of these marketing digitalization efforts as they allow companies to continually access and engage with stakeholders across geographical borders, most incredibly with heightened effectiveness during a global pandemic.

For a further discussion on how MediqTrans can drive efficiencies in your cross-border digital marketing efforts, please contact us here.

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