Did you know that 82 percent of online traffic is generated by online video viewership? The average American watches 16 hours of video every week, and this rising trend presents a golden opportunity for pharma marketers. Studies show that 84 percent of users purchase a product or service after watching an ad video, and even if they don’t immediately act, the video’s initial impression lasts. Messages conveyed through video see a 95 percent retention rate, compared to only 10 percent with text-based content.
To spread brand awareness, heighten conversion rates, and increase consumer interactions, pharma marketers must take advantage of video marketing. However, the timing, context, and placement of videos is just as important as the content itself. Here’s what you need to know to effectively curate and distribute compelling video content that will elevate your pharma marketing strategy and drive NRx.
The Advantages of Video Content Marketing in Pharma
Patients today are more proactive than ever when managing their healthcare needs. They’re willing to do the research, comb through reviews, dig into physician track records, and read the fine print until they feel assured that they’re choosing the best provider or have found the answers to their burning questions.
However, medical jargon and complicated explanations can leave patients more confused than when they started. This is especially true for pharma companies. Even though all relevant medical and safety information about a drug is broken down in pamphlets, brochures, and physical ads, many prospective patients find the data hard to absorb. Videos, on the other hand, strike the perfect balance between conveying information and grabbing attention, all in a short and digestible format.
Video impressions within the pharma space are expected to increase in the near future after seeing an overall 56 percent upswing in user engagement from April 2020 to April 2021. Around 85 percent of video marketers have already enjoyed improvements in lead generation, sales, and overall ROI with video content marketing. From fostering an emotional connection with prospects to educating consumers on the details of a medication, videos create a crystal clear picture of your brand and effectively illustrate what your company can offer.
Seven Best Practices for Leveraging Pharma Video Content
To wow both current consumers and indecisive prospects with your pharma videos, you must first place them strategically. Following these seven best practices will help your videos resonate with potential patients:
- Humanize Your Brand: For almost 40 percent of consumers, brand connection drives them to engagement. Place your ads around videos that show real patients, like a pre-roll before patient testimonials or physician interviews, to forge a stronger connection between your brand and the people who use it.
- Aim for 30-60 Seconds of Footage: In a joint study by Google and Unskippable Labs, a 30-second video had the highest view-through rate compared to its 15-second and 2-minute counterparts. It bears noting that the ideal length of a video varies depending on brand placement, messaging, and context. When planning for pharma video ad placement, videos between 30-60 are ideal because they hold the viewer’s attention and increase available reach. Longer ads limit available inventory. Make every second count and keep videos short to increase your retention rate and reach!
- Reach the Right Audience: While broad branding efforts are essential for driving awareness, narrowing your reach to target low-funnel consumers is a more effective way of driving conversions. You need to find and advertise to qualified patients who are very close to making an appointment with their doctor to have an impact. Maximize the effectiveness of your ads by partnering with a third-party site like Healthgrades, where 67 percent of consumers who visit profile pages book an appointment within a week of visiting the site, and doctor search is integrated into the video viewing experience.1
- Focus on Contextual Placement: Ensuring that your video makes contextual sense wherever it’s placed is just as important as the messaging it conveys. A 30-second psoriasis ad running before a video about treating psoriasis will be more persuasive than a psoriasis ad running before unrelated TikTok content. Place your ads adjacent to relevant condition and category content to ensure your message is reaching prospects when they’re on the cusp of making a health-related decision.
- Diversify Your Content and Publishing Channels: Don’t be afraid to switch up your video content! Create a video marketing strategy that features a mix of in-context educational and promotional brand content, human interest stories, and physician interviews. Interactive videos that rely on viewer input work particularly well for brand awareness, and typically receive completion rates of around 90 percent. Also, post your video on a variety of different social media and advertising platforms — not just your website — to maximize reach and engagement. Diversification of publishing channels lends to the goals of reaching the right audience and placing ads in context, mentioned above.
- Keep Accessibility in Mind: You’ll want your organic and paid videos to reach as wide an audience as possible, so it’s critical that your videos are accessible to everyone. You can help people who are deaf or hard of hearing consume your brand’s video content by including closed or open captions and giving them the option to view a transcript of the video. To accommodate people with visual impairments, build audio descriptions into the video or make a separate cut of your video that features longer pauses to make room for audio description segments. Also, make sure your website features an accessible video player. Accessible video players don’t automatically play videos when the page loads, have clear player controls in contrasting colors to enhance visibility, and are controllable via a keyboard or screen reader.
- Don’t Forget About Your Website: About 75 percent of users confess that they judge a company’s credibility by the aesthetics of its website and how well it functions. Make sure your videos are housed on a clean, fast, and user-friendly site outfitted with a digital front door. A digital front door offers patients 24/7 omnichannel access to their healthcare needs. Having helpful informational videos on the same site that consumers use to research treatment or find a provider offers the convenience that will win patients over. Also, make sure your site gives prospective patients the ability to find the right provider after they’ve been swayed by one of your ads.
Maximize the Advantages of Video Marketing with Healthgrades
High-quality video content boosts awareness of your pharma brand, but you need to combine the power of video with targeted advertising to draw in high-value leads and acquire more patients. Healthgrades can help!
The Healthgrades PatientConnect Video solution provides a dedicated video center where prospective patients can find information about a specific condition, view physician perspectives, and dig into patient testimonials. At the end of a video, patients have the option to connect with a doctor for said condition and make an appointment directly from the video center. Healthgrades offers unique advertising opportunities through pre-roll ads, companion banner ads, native content integration, and more. Plus, with our proprietary data models and intelligence, you can trust that your ads will find the right high-value patients.
When prospective patients are ready to make a decision about their health after seeing video ads, Healthgrades can help close the loop. Our Brand Guided Physician Search (GPS) solution ensures patients can make an appointment after viewing videos by integrating Healthgrades’ GPS feature into your website. Healthgrades research shows that Brand GPS users are twice as likely to visit a doctor and three times more likely to fill a brand prescription.
With the Healthgrades PatientConnect Video solution, visitors are just one video clip away from becoming your next loyal patient. Contact us today to get started.
1Healthgrades.com site survey, n=1,896
