What Can Consumer Healthcare Manufacturers Do to Drive Online Sales? 

Complications in coordination across traditional, new, and digital channels will arise as sales and marketing teams seek harder to integrate digital growth strategy in order to take advantage of digital buying trends. One of the keys to ensuring the successful online expansion of your business is to optimize your digital assortment in order to meet both the needs of long-term planning strategies for online and, ultimately, omnichannel category management, as well as the current shopping demand.

A highly sophisticated data and analytics platform can even be used to replenish your products before they run out of stock by forecasting stock depletion and trends.

b. Showcase your products with top-notch images

Invest in a professional photographer to take stunning photos that highlight the attributes of your products since they are essential. Additionally, ensure the product images are realistic, because 22% of online product returns occur when the actual product differs from the image. Also, make sure to post multiple product pictures, as digital consumers generally require an average  of three to four photos when making a purchase online.

Cambridge University has actually developed several guidelinesto design optimized eCommerce images for mobile, to better communicate the 4Ws:

• Who is the brand?
• What is the product?
• Which variety is it?
• HoW much of it is there?

c. Improve discoverability on ePharmacies

To increase the likelihood that customers will select your brand over competitors, make sure to keep the information about your items organized  and updated in all of the online pharmacies, where they appear. Additionally, as consumers tend to not scroll past the first page of results, the top 5 products on the first page of each category receive almost 67% of all product page views. This will make it simpler for customers to find the product they need to satisfy their needs and make online shopping easier and hence more preferable for them.

d. Win the top digital shelf positions

The digital shelf gives marketers the chance to present their goods and interact with customers at precisely the correct time in the customer journey, which is when they are doing their research or considering making a purchase. While two-thirds of click-throughs occur on the first page of search results, just under half of shoppers claim they don’t scroll past it. This means that appearing in the top notch of the digital shelf, in search results is crucial for your business. There are a few ways to increase your chances of ranking at the top, including creating thorough product listings, making sure products show up when relevant search filters are used, promoting recently launched products through paid advertising, avoiding stock outs, providing detailed product descriptions and considering your delivery options compared to your competitors.

Adjusting your digital shelf optimization strategy for each platform will take some time. As these platforms evolve and search results change, you’ll need to continuously review your listings too. Consider using an AI-powered tool that can help you track and measure your digital shelf performance.

e. Earn good product reviews

Since 67%of buyers are affected by internet reviews, according to Moz, adding customer feedback can help boost your online sales. Additionally, if a product receives negative feedback frequently, you should either address the issues or stop selling it. Make it as simple as you can for customers to contribute reviews by allowing them to give both a star rating and a comment when adding reviews.

 

One of the most important factors for success in the current eCommerce ecosystem is collaboration. Consequently, if you want your organization to grow and expand in online sales, be sure to sign up for joint business plans with three or more of the leading ePharmacies in your country. For this plan to be successful, it is essential to agree on a marketing budget, have a data sharing mentality, and be transparent with the data and information you share with them.

Your customer retention approach should be centered on a manufacturer-retailer partnership. You can pool your customer intelligence data to find conversion bottlenecks, consumer trends, and benchmark data to help you create a successful strategy by using a special data sharing platform like Convert Group’s eRetail Suite.

Loyal consumers are unquestionably your company’s most valuable asset. Therefore, it is imperative that you concentrate your efforts on customer retention techniques that could foster brand loyalty and increase revenue for your company in both online and offline channels. Offering them a loyalty program, providing a first-class customer service, proactively meeting their needs, interacting with them on online platforms, and rewarding your most devoted customers with extra gifts or services are all excellent ways to ensure that they will remain loyal to you and serve as your brand’s first ambassadors, spreading good word about your business to their friends and family, whether you are still a small company or an established enterprise.

Additionally, as positive online customer evaluations and word-of-mouth advertising can boost your brand’s credibility and assist in bringing in more new clients, you can save up your marketing budget for other activities to boost your online sales growth.

The use of two or more channels that operate mostly independently of one another, known as multichannel engagement, is growing in popularity; nevertheless, because the omnichannel engagement model is more dynamic and sophisticated, pharma has yet to fully adopt it. The customer experience is simply much better with omnichannel. By putting the consumer at the center of the strategy, it achieves this. To deliver what the consumer needs, manufacturers first need to take into account the demands of the audience before orchestrating channels and content.

An “adoption ladder” is a common method for organizing an omnichannel marketing plan. This illustrates a customer’s knowledge of the subject or problem you’re trying to solve, like prescribing your product. You need individuals to pass through the three stages of awareness, belief, and support. The type of communication each individual requires depends on where they are on the adoption ladder. Someone who is unfamiliar with your product, for instance, needs more fundamental, introductory information than someone who is familiar with it.

Manufacturers of consumer healthcare products are moving toward omnichannel because it offers definite advantages over multichannel. By incorporating greater customer insights into their marketing and customer journey planning, businesses become more effective and efficient marketers and can create a system that is always evolving.

The emergence of technologies and mobile connectivity, rapidly increasing experience with digital engagement, boosting price pressure and the need to ramp up the cost-effectiveness of engagement, and limited access for sales reps are forcing pharmaceutical companies to rethink how they interact with customers. Along with this, customers’ demands for tailored and on-demand material are expanding, and they have a growing preference for non-personal and digital modes of engagement.

Businesses that haven’t added selling directly to end customers (DTC) on their strategic agenda yet need to be careful not to get left behind their competition. Among the many benefits this strategy has for both consumers and manufacturers, with the second ones experiencing higher margin potential, greater control over brand, assortment, and prices, better access to consumer data to improve direct consumer interaction, stronger resilience due to a reduction in reliance on offline channels, and less dependence on market leaders.

There are a few things your business needs to consider when designing your DTC strategy. First of all, you need to establish a clear vision and unique selling proposition (USP) of your organization. By putting yourself in your customers’ shoes , and then using the information you gather to distinctly define their DTC USP. It’s important to keep in mind that different DTC channels may focus on distinct customer profiles and that a USP for your own shop does not always transfer into a USP for your marketplace proposition.

Don’t forget that the game plan may be constantly shifting as new technologies enter the eCommerce market, but building successful relationships with customers and manufacturers is now a little more direct.

Quick commerce, also known as Q-Commerce or “on-demand delivery”, is the newest and quickest iteration of eCommerce. It brings together the advantages of conventional eCommerce with advancements in last-mile delivery. Quick Commerce is one of the trendiest topics in groceries right now and is becoming more and more significant to all of our CPG customers. It is also increasingly playing a bigger role in other industries, including the pharmaceutical one.

Especially after the coronavirus outbreak, on-demand and immediate delivery in eCommerce became one of the most in-demand logistics services internationally. As it becomes clear, in order to succeed you need to make sure to invest in the brand-new Q-commerce technologies, as with eCommerce constantly gaining more ground, the volume of orders is constantly rising bringing even more tension to the problem.