Is Agile the Key to Mastering Journey Orchestration in Pharma Marketing?

 

By Justin Grossman, CEO & Partner at Meltmedia

 

Across every industry, all eyes are on the customer experience. And now, even that is being upleveled by journey orchestration – a concept that focuses on creating a seamless, deeply personalized, end-to-end customer experience – across every channel.

Journey orchestration goes beyond simply personalizing website or email content based on audience segments. Instead, it spans every interaction the customer has with your organization, from email to social and CRM to direct mail and even in-person events.

Mastering journey orchestration, however, requires a mindset shift among not just the marketing team, but your organization as a whole. It requires cross-departmental collaboration, continuous testing and measuring, and the ability to make quick pivots. But in pharma, an industry riddled with roadblocks and regulations, how can marketers deliver on the promise of journey orchestration to personalize the customer experience?

The answer may lie within a methodology that has proven tried-and-true for many teams across a variety of organizations for decades: agile.

Applying Agile in a Pharma Marketing Context

First up: Let me better explain what I mean by “agile methodology.” I’m not suggesting that pharma marketers operate like the software development teams that originated the agile process; I’m recommending that we consider adopting the iterative, nimble mindset that is the true spirit of an agile philosophy.

Why? Because it helps marketing teams become more innovative, respond to marketplace trends and customer behaviors faster, creatively experiment with new ideas in a non-siloed environment, and quickly address privacy concerns that may arise from delivering personalized content. All of which are quintessential in mastering the art of journey orchestration.

At its core, the secret behind agile success is the ability to iterate based on constant testing and measuring. Because agile promotes shorter timescales, simplicity, and regular reflection, it enables teams to more quickly adjust based on feedback, and behavior and engagement data. This approach is effective when it comes to journey orchestration, which can be a massive undertaking for marketing teams when taken on in its entirety.

And the flexibility to roll with change is a true advantage in pharma, where we are always hedging our bets against consumer trends, new healthcare policies and regulations, and the competition’s latest product announcements.

An Iterative Approach to Journey Orchestration

There’s no denying marketing has grown significantly more complex. Consumers – and even providers – are commanding better, more seamless, and more personalized experiences, from the first interaction and consistently beyond. In this new world of value-based marketing in which the consumer is king, it’s imperative we align to what they want and expect, and engage them in more meaningful and impactful ways.

Journey orchestration provides the path to achieve that. In fact, when executed properly, journey orchestration helps marketing teams:

• Guard the marketing budget from wasteful spending on low-converting tactics by utilizing real-time intent and engagement metrics to prioritize efforts.
• Create one-to-one, high-impact and high-value outreach campaigns by using prescriber, patient, and other audience behavior data.
• Gauge what tactics are working and why, and when to pivot before a customer potentially disengages.

But journey orchestration can be a big undertaking for most teams, particularly when multiple stakeholders are involved. It necessitates collaboration across the entire organization – marketing, sales, customer success, product, IT, regulatory, and the C-suite – thus gaining buy-in is mission critical. To do that, you have to demonstrate how journey orchestration will positively impact the organization with as little disruption as possible. This is where the agile methodology can support efficient execution and change management.

First, agile is about breaking complexities into simpler, more manageable processes. In the case of journey orchestration, this means starting with a pilot program – perhaps looking at one area of the customer journey, testing individual components, and seeking to quickly understand where improvements can be made, what resources will be required, how to navigate regulations, and the overall impact it will have on the business before investing too many resources.

Adopting an Agile Mindset

So, how do you effectively shift towards an agile approach to marketing? It starts with building a culture of collaboration, and committing to continuous feedback and deliberate adjustments based on data.

• Eliminate silos: Most teams, particularly in larger organizations, tend to operate in a vacuum. Agile, however, necessitates cross-departmental collaboration and communication. You might implement quick daily or weekly huddles with sales, adherence, and legal to review progress and seek feedback. Also, encourage everyone to have a voice and question processes.

• Navigate incrementally with sprints: Rather than tackling an overwhelming strategy all at once, consider embracing “sprints,” narrowing the focus to only particular tasks over the course of two to six weeks. While the long-term strategy is still at play during sprints, navigating change incrementally prevents the larger goals from derailing smaller (and necessary) actions.

• Solicit and act on real-time feedback: Actively gaining real-time feedback from customers empowers you to offer them a more personalized customer experience. Of course, you may not be able to act on every piece of feedback. Collaborate with various teams to prioritize iterations to implement based on data and what will deliver the biggest impact.

• Test, analyze, repeat: It’s imperative to test different tactics, analyze data, and pivot your approach according to what’s working, and what’s not. If you wait until the end of a project to gather customer feedback or review metrics, you’ve lost valuable time and potential conversion opportunities.

Adopting an agile mindset can prove valuable, both from an internal perspective – helping facilitate a more collaborative and productive company culture – and from a customer experience standpoint. Going through this process may uncover lessons about the importance of organizational change management, and why data-driven decision-making is key to properly facilitating transition.

Remember, agile marketing is all about iteration, and making the switch to an agile process is a study in building upon incremental steps as well. To get your team bought-in, focus on the fact that embracing an agile marketing culture will help increase productivity, implement changes with less risk, and stay ahead of the competition. Additionally, the continuous testing prepares you to see through blind spots, pivot incrementally, deliver results, and build stronger relationships with customer.

Today’s pharma marketers are often caught between two worlds: an industry that is mired in regulations and bureaucracy, and a digital transformation that is changing consumer expectations for engagement. Leveraging the agile marketing philosophies is one way to bridge these two worlds.