Are you gearing up for the next oncology conference? Promoting your services and products can be a competitive sport in the field of oncology.
The growing incidence of cancer all over the world has precipitated a renewed focus on oncology products within the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, there are over a thousand drugs in development just in this one category. When attending any number of oncology conferences, how can you get your message to stand out to stakeholders? Here are some tips on how to improve your company’s visibility.
Partner with the Right Marketing Experts
Partner with the right event-marketing experts. Look for an agency that specializes in medical communications with experience in marketing oncology products. The right agency will have a panel of clinical experts as well as team members who are well versed in the different sectors of the pharma industry. In fact, the top 20 pharma companies all partner with specialized marketing agencies to ensure an impactful presence and support at oncology conferences. The right communications agency not only offers proven experience in event marketing, but also has a host of other programs that enable continued engagement with stakeholders. These agencies understand that engagement begins before meeting at the oncology conferences, and continues long after. In fact, your stakeholder relationships should shape your marketing messages.
A Message That Meets Stakeholder Needs
Your presence at an oncology conference should communicate how you will meet the needs of the stakeholder, specifically stakeholders in products to eradicate cancer. This means you need to project your scientific, clinical, and commercial acumen about the marketplace and how your product fits in. Stakeholders demand a certain level of confidence that your product not only does what it is supposed to, but that it performs on multiple levels. Is your product amenable to good marketing strategies? Will it stand up under scrutiny of scientific communications and allow for continued clinical development? Will it find favor within medical affairs, including hospital consultants and key opinion leaders (KOLs)? When you engage stakeholders throughout your drug development and commercialization processes, you will receive specific insight that informs a more robust marketing strategy, benefiting both the product and stakeholders.
Be Business-Facing
For oncology conferences, your marketing message should be business-facing. The language and marketing approach should look to establish or grow a relationship based on shared business interests. It’s important to convey not only your knowledge of current market trends, but also your view of the market based on experience. The ability to look forward and know what makes good business sense, as well as what propels good medicine, is vital to attracting stakeholders. This is where an agency provider of medical insights provides a valuable leg up on the competition. An agency can fortify you with its full team of scientific, clinical, research, marketing, sales, and communications experts, all with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry and background in oncology.
Determine a Conference-Specific Message
Decide on a conference-specific goal for your messaging strategy. What are you trying to achieve by attending the oncology conference? While your strategy should first and foremost inspire stakeholder engagement, the specific message may change depending on the conference audience, location, and content. Your message may be to increase brand awareness, to build future relationships, or to establish your company as highly innovative or as an authority in your specific sector. Whatever the goal, your message should be consistent and focused. This will allow you to maximize the time and resources you spend at a conference. Consistency in marketing materials should include all of your print collateral, social media activity, and talking points used by all company attendees. To get the most out of your marketing strategy, you should recycle content for pre-conference marketing and post-conference follow-up. Remember, a stellar marketing strategy will strengthen your presence at any conference.
Maximize Visibility With Innovative Communications
Communication and education are crucial to your presence at oncology conferences. These can establish your expertise and educate stakeholders on your company’s proficiency at branding strategies. Make use of non-traditional and interactive approaches to communicate your message. Consider hosting a roundtable lunch or breakfast for conference attendees to drive a dialogue that supports your message. Project multimedia visuals at your booth: videos with 3D graphics and animation will draw attention to your finely-curated message. More and more, communication efforts are relying on technology-driven media to engage stakeholders, payers, care providers, and even patients. A dynamic tool that can be used to engage stakeholders at your booth is an e-book developed for an iPad. Using appealing graphic design, an e-book can visually represent data from a recent study that supports your message. A PDF of the e-book can then be emailed to the stakeholders, allowing you to capture their email for future engagement.
Use Social Media to Increase Your Presence
Using social media is a way to get your message out before the oncology conference and enables you to amplify your message during the conference. Getting involved in the conversation is vital to establishing your presence at oncology conferences. For one, you can use social media to literally announce your presence at the conference and the location of your booth. Using the official conference hashtag connects you to important conversations involving potential stakeholders. Pre-planning your social media content can be invaluable. You can schedule specific posts to be broadcast throughout the conference, and supplement these posts with live tweets that announce your involvement in conference events.
Affirm Your Commitment to Cancer Research
Your presence at the next oncology conference can be enhanced with a compelling booth presentation and social media skills, but it’s just as important to affirm your commitment to cancer research. Ask yourself why the stakeholders you engage are interested in your product specifically. Stakeholders attending oncology conferences have a deep interest in cancer research and are looking to fund products to eradicate cancer. Inspire confidence by expressing your company’s commitment to cancer research. You can do this by elucidating your expertise on the stages of drug development, evidence of supporting data on the clinical effects of your drug, the impact of pricing and its commercial potential, and consideration of how the drug will be made accessible to patients.
