Healthcare advertising B2B: Doctors are only human.

Five things healthcare advertising can learn from other industries or why you shouldn't necessarily stew in your own category juice.

What should healthcare advertising for physicians and professionals actually achieve? In addition to conveying information, it is of course also about preference formation for brands, whether for product or corporate brands, whether for OTC or RX. In this market, too, a strong brand is indispensable in the face of competition from more and more products offering similar services. Brands provide orientation and usually stand for clear promises and for reliability. This is not new, but essential.

In order to successfully achieve this goal, healthcare advertising actually only needs to understand and address its professional target groups like "normal" people, in their role as recipients, with largely the same perception mechanics and also perception problems as any other person as a customer and consumer in a world of supply overload and MeToo's, communication overstimulation and dynamically changing media usage behavior.

Why, then, are elementary basic rules in addressing customers and communicating brands sometimes interpreted so differently or even completely disregarded, especially in this field? This is where healthcare advertising can learn from other markets for successful brand communication.

Profiling instead of just informing

Brands have to convince and inspire people (please always both, head and gut!), also B2B. Building sustainable brand preference therefore also means presenting brands as strong, powerful, likeable, and ideally even superior personalities and equipping them with a relevant and attractive profile. This then requires the willingness and sometimes the courage to stage brands and not merely to depict them factually via performance features. Emotionality is a highly relevant decision-making factor here as well. Long-term successful and stable relationships between customers and brands are predominantly emotional relationships. Doctors and professionals are no exception. And even in the pharmaceutical world, there is a whole range of highly decision-relevant emotions such as trust, recognition, and respect. These need to be built up and used - all within the legal framework, of course.

Simplify and focus

"Say what you stand for, what you offer me, what I get from you. And please say it simply and clearly, and please get to the point quickly!" Simplicity, not complexity, is also required in healthcare advertising. The message should have the chance to assert itself in the competitive environment, to be understood, to arouse interest and to be able to anchor itself. Therefore, it is important to reduce the effect, the mechanics, the benefit in as simple a way as possible and to emphasize and stage the central point that distinguishes the product and the brand with all its power. For brand profiling, "less is more and usually more successful". Detailed information and facts are often indispensable in healthcare communication. Doctors need and want to know more about indications, scientific background, etc. in individual cases. There are numerous tools and stages for this. You can still do one without having to leave the other.

Personality and face

Brands need a profile and a face. And people think in pictures, including medical professionals. Then it's almost compelling logic to give brands a "face" that people can identify, use as a guide, and decide whether to enter into and maintain a relationship with that personality. Key visuals can be such an identity-creating brand face, preferably in the form of a strikingly visualized product benefit. In the tool box, which is becoming increasingly complex, not least due to digitization, such images and messages make it easier and more economical to build synergies, to play creative and identity-creating ideas and brand profiling in an interdisciplinary and consistent manner. This is also something that can be learned and transferred very well from other markets.

Customer view instead of supplier view

The temptation is great to present brands and products from the manufacturer's and supplier's point of view: "We are, we offer, we can ...". Brands and companies then quickly become scientific speakers, not winning personalities who are willingly trusted. Medical professionals also have to answer the eternal and central question: "What do I get out of this? How and why does this product make my work and life easier and more pleasant? Why should I like and trust you?" The magic word in building brand preferences and customer relationships today is "customer centricity." You have to know what moves your target group, adopt their perspective in finding solutions and building relationships, and align your performance and communication accordingly. If you do this, you will be able to build a relationship of trust, or perhaps even a love affair, much more quickly and effectively.

Creativity is not automatically unserious

A field with the greatest fear of contact. The cliché: healthcare advertising must be factual and serious, otherwise it is untrustworthy to repulsive. Really? Creative staging does not automatically mean loud advertising. Creative ideas offer the great opportunity of greater conspicuousness, better communication performance, better profile building because it is more pointed, and stronger sympathy acquisition. In healthcare advertising, of course, it is important to be careful with advertising staging and exaggeration, to take into account particularly tight legal guard rails, not to create overpromise, and not to take doctors and patients for fools. However, clever and intelligent creativity always has a good chance of generating positive attention and a high level of acceptance, even in healthcare. It has a positive effect on the image, because creativity always signals special spirit, smartness and performance. And it should always be based on real, relevant and verifiable benefits and characteristics. Creatively positioned companies or brands are perceived as strong and modern and thus attractive. Especially in a competitive environment with restrained to zero creativity, brands with truly creative appearances have the great advantage of standing out even more clearly in the advertising environment and distinguishing themselves even more strongly against the competition.

Conclusion: Successful healthcare advertising requires not only the necessary expertise in the subject matter, but also the knowledge of how to position and stage brands, and how to get people excited about them and build trust in them. That's why I dare you!