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:

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.