We’ll never tire of pointing out the importance of implementing media monitoring into your business activities no matter the industry you’re in. From financial institutions, marketing agencies, politics, and all the way over to NGOs, media monitoring proves to be quite effective in helping you achieve better business results. Pharma marketing is no exception.

💡 Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide

Pharma marketers can use media monitoring to continuously make improvements in their marketing strategy efforts. In fact, media monitoring tools can be that one additional push that’s going to boost your pharma marketing results.

In this blog, we’ll cover 5 ways pharma marketing experts can improve their strategy with media monitoring:

#1 Detecting misinformation 

Pharmaceutical companies often battle with a myriad of misinformation floating around the internet. 

When one gets debunked, another one emerges. It’s like a never-ending cycle. 

Some of the misinformation can attract a lot of attention and become a recipe for disaster. 

With media monitoring, you can easily detect all kinds of misinformation connected to your brand and provide the public with truthful and reliable information.

That way you can take control of your brand narrative. Fake news may be the newest buzzword, but it holds weight. Incorrect information can seriously harm your brand reputation, and skewer the way your customers perceive your products.

However, if you take control of the flow of information, you also take control of your brand image.

We’ve actually defined a 4-step process that can help you detect and battle misinformation using media monitoring. In this blog we explain everything from platforms you need to focus on to analyzing the sentiment and correcting the wrongly published data – so be sure to check it out!

detecting misinformation in pharma 4 steps
Detecting misinformation in 4 steps

Another important benefit media monitoring tools provide are alerts. They ensure you’re notified about new brand mentions in real-time, and they are highly customizable – so you can make sure you receive all the information when and where it best suits you.

If it’s bad…well, you might have a crisis on your hands. This brings us to our next point.

#2 Managing a crisis

Misinformation can sometimes even lead to a crisis. To be fair though, misinformation is just one drop in the sea of all the possible events that can cause a PR crisis. Still, it’s one drop less if successfully managed.

One thing is for sure when crisis situations arise, you better be prepared with a plan.

By detecting the crisis early on, you have a better chance of dealing with it more efficiently because you’ll have more time to prepare a high-quality response.

Media monitoring tools can really come in handy in this type of situation because you’ll get notified every time mentions of your brand start to rise fastly and unexpectedly.

So, media monitoring can help you detect spikes in the number of mentions. If your brand suddenly gathers a lot more mentions than is usual, that can be cause for alarm and you’ll be alerted.

Something got people talking about your brand in a much higher frequency than before? You’d want to know it and investigate.

Luckily, media monitoring tools offer a great overview of the situation and necessary information for discovering the cause for the higher number of mentions.

Now, it’s true that the spike in mentions doesn’t necessarily mean a looming crisis. It can mean one of your posts went viral for being a great, relatable piece of content that made people want to share it in a positive light.

However, it’s often the case that you’ve got a budding PR crisis on your hand. Be it due to misinformation, improper employee behavior, or product defect – you’ll have insight into the exact reason and reach it’s had thus far.

Keep in mind that the sooner you react the better are your chances you’ll get the crisis under control.

#3 Finding pharma influencers relevant to your brand

The pharma marketing industry is no stranger to using influencers in their campaigns. But, pharma marketers have it a bit harder than others because of all of the rules and regulations. 

Usually, finding the right influencers for your brand involves a lot of time and research. With media monitoring, the amount of time spent on research can be cut in half. 

Here’s how it goes.

When you monitor mentions of your brand and/or industry, the tool provides you with lists of influencers sorted by the number of mentions, sources, and reach. Now, you won’t have to aimlessly search for people who can potentially be the right fit for your brand because the tool will do that for you. The only thing left for you to do is check which potential influencers could be the best for you and inviting them to collaborate.

pharma marketing influencers
Media Monitoring helps us find perfect influencers for our product, source: Determ

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily have to aim for celebrities. Sometimes, micro-influencers could be an even better option for you because of their extremely engaged and loyal audiences.

#4 Choosing the right social media channels for your pharma marketing efforts

Find the channels that your consumers are using to discuss your or similar products, services, or brands. 

That way you’ll get a first-hand insight into “people’s minds” which will allow you to make informed decisions and develop better marketing strategies. By knowing what channels your customers use, you’ll be able to reach them more easily.

Also, that’s a great opportunity for you to join the conversation and give additional information about your products. That way you can spark interest in people who may not have heard of your brand or product before, and present yourself as a brand that’s approachable, informative, and engaging.

What’s going on with your competitors and in the pharma marketing industry, in general, affects you as well. That’s why you need to be aware of your surroundings.

Using media monitoring saves you from endlessly googling each competitor in order to find out what they’ve been up to. Simply set up topics with relevant keywords regarding your competitors into your media monitoring tool and track away!

You can learn a lot by monitoring their product launches or campaign efforts, for instance. Also, with competitive analysis, you’ll be able to see how your brand is performing compared to your competitors which will help you improve your marketing strategy.

When it comes to industry trends, you’ll be able to spot emerging trends and topics easily. You can use that information to improve your product or service, create content, reach bigger audiences…

To Sum Up

If you’re currently getting information about the things mentioned above by googling them every day, this is a great opportunity for you to move on to faster practices. 

Instead of using your time and energy on manually tracking and collecting data, you can save your resources by automating your processes.

It’s time to try new things. Book a demo with one of our experts and find out how Determ can speed up your business processes.

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