You’ve been there before. Everybody has.

At an industry event that has “Future” somewhere in its title, you listen as speaker after speaker outlines a vision for the next decade of pharma marketing. One after the other, they rhapsodize about next-generation technologies that will forever change the business for the better.

They predict that all marketing content will be automated by AI. They envision the creation of digital twins designed to drive efficiencies in treatment and patient care. They sketch out a future rich with promise, and buzzwords.

But for all their pie-in-the-sky ideas, how many actually get implemented? Despite the optimism inherent in these conversations, few of them articulate foundational ideas for a path forward. The discourse is long on shiny objects but short on essential historical context.

Our view is if you want to see pharma marketing’s future, you must gaze into the broader consumer world’s past. No crystal balls are needed; soothsayers can remain on the sidelines. Only by examining the strategic and tactical trends of recent years can digital strategists gain the insight that will fuel the evolution of pharma brand marketing.

Common sense would say marketing’s evolution has followed a similar path across all industries. But any comparison of the progression of pharma marketing vis-a-vis other verticals makes it clear just how much it has lagged the broader consumer world.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the digital realm. When search engine optimization emerged as a marketing vehicle during the later half of the 1990s, pharma was still new to the established medium of television. The first prescription drug ad, after all, didn’t air until 1983.

That set a precedent: In every phase of the internet marketing revolution, pharma started a few steps behind most other customer-facing industries. When mainstream marketers began to tap their treasure trove of consumer data to create email campaigns and analyze web traffic to generate consumer insights, pharma firms remained focused on a traditional channel approach, with TV ads and sales reps at its core. Furthermore, campaigns were still focused on the therapies themselves, eschewing the customer-centric tactics that pharma would come to favor in subsequent years.

As they gaze back at the last decade-and-a-half of digital marketing, pharma marketers can learn from the successes and disappointments of their more consumer-oriented (and less regulatorily constrained) peers.

Mainstream brands have taken such advantage of opportunities created by the astronomical growth of the smartphone, for instance, that it’s challenging to remember marketing before it. The new devices afforded marketers intimate access to a plugged-in population, not to mention the data that came with their engagement.

This coincided with the arrival of short-form video platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, during the 2010s. In turn, this gave rise to the phenomenon of influencer marketing: With a phone in every pocket and its camera perpetually at the ready, anyone could become a kind of celebrity.

The content created by influencers is designed to engage any number of consumers who have tuned out traditional marketing. Whether deployed officially or unofficially by mainstream brands, influencers have committed to the challenging task of rebuilding the bond between companies and otherwise hard-to-reach audiences.

Not surprisingly, savvy brand marketers embraced the trend, creating departments devoted entirely to influencer and social media marketing. In so doing, they enabled online conversations with brand advocates and newbies alike, facilitating the ability to receive quick, informal feedback from them. These efforts were backed by large data analysis for an even more in-depth level of consumer insight.

Historically inclined to observe the adoption of new marketing technology by other verticals before it acted, pharma largely sat out the first wave of mobile and influencer marketing. It wasn’t until the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020 that pharma marketers started to seriously reevaluate their approaches.

That reevaluation was borne out of necessity. Lockdowns meant the industry’s armies of in-person sales reps were deprived of their in-person access to healthcare providers (and more than four years later, only a fraction of that access has been restored). Meanwhile, the industry’s longstanding reliance on awareness-generating TV ads started to look increasingly wasteful, with large-scale DTC efforts generating diminishing returns with each passing year.

Which is why pharma marketing teams have finally – and far from reluctantly – turned to strategies that proved successful in the consumer sector years earlier. Indeed, life science marketing is now undergoing the same shift the consumer side saw in the late 2000s, with pharma allocating a greater percentage of its marketing budget toward digital channels and tactics.

And there’s more to come, especially as pharma- and health-adjacent brand teams embrace everything that comes with the digital-first reality of post-pandemic marketing. The industry is on board with patient demands for instant access to reliable information and highly customized online experiences. It’s also well aware of the impact of broader trends on HCP receptivity to marketing.

“HCP behaviors are almost identical to those of normal consumers, in that they want bite-sized and easy-to-access information in an instant,” noted Faizan Farukh, director of U.S. marketing at Madrigal Pharmaceuticals. “Pharma companies will have to adapt to these behavioral changes or be left behind.”

Robert Schildt, a marketing and commercialization leader who has held senior roles at Pfizer, Biohaven and Boehringer Ingelheim, agrees. “Because pharma is such a highly regulated environment, it’s often easier to focus on the reason why things can’t be done differently. But there is increasing value in observing digital trends and strategies in other industries and determining ways that they can be applied within pharma,” he said. “By studying these out-of-market trends and novel approaches, we can unlock ways to responsibly engage and connect with our audiences while meeting the necessary standards.”

That’s why pharma has upped its presence on the user-friendly digital platforms favored by HCPs and patients alike, as well as set about creating the highly personalized and relevant content they’ve been conditioned to expect. Customized email campaigns, interactive social media accounts and influencer partnerships with HCPs and other industry figureheads have helped pharma companies connect to audiences in relatable and reliable ways.

Examples abound, especially in consumer-facing efforts. Take Hims’ avoidance of overly clinical and regulatory verbiage in its outreach to men who might seek treatment for thinning hair or erectile dysfunction), or Insmed’s pairing of patients and artists to create visual representations of the experience of living with nontuberculous mycobacteria. The goal: To connect audiences with a brand through authentic stories and interaction, as opposed to merely touting product benefits using regulatory-centric verbiage.

If the immediate past is a reliable indicator (and history suggests that it is), pharma marketing will follow a trajectory similar to the one traveled by mainstream consumer companies during the 2010s. The industry’s reps-and-TV mix will shift toward an omnichannel outlook, with pharma marketers more effectively leveraging patient and HCP data to craft customized campaigns and experiences. Partnerships with influencers in the medical industry will help pharma build trust with a range of audiences.

Pharma may have been reluctant to join the digital marketing revolution in its earliest days, but that reluctance has long since faded. The industry, and the myriad audiences it serves, are better for it.

How do you see pharma marketing evolving over the next half-decade? Drop us a note at [email protected], join the conversation on X (@KinaraBio) and subscribe on the website to receive Kinara content.