What Did The Pandemic Reveal?
Some healthy brands were more prepared than others. Why?
As the pandemic continues to improve and the economy is steadily returning to pre-COVID form, our clients ask us what lessons we learned about marketing healthy brands to and through health professionals in the last 15 months.
The most common question we get from clients is: "What has changed?" They are often surprised by our answer: "Not as much as you may think."
There is an expression that “crisis is an accelerator,” and we saw that to be the case during 2020. Brands that had already begun to evolve their health professional marketing efforts before COVID were simply better positioned to manage the change in market conditions and succeed despite the pandemic.
We saw this firsthand in our work throughout 2020, beginning with the research we conducted for the Health & Wellness Professional Marketing Benchmark Report in partnership with FoodWell Strategies.
The research benchmarked the health professional marketing activities of large and small CPG companies with an eye toward better understanding not only what drives success, but also the challenges organizations face, and how their health professional marketing efforts have evolved over recent years.
We identified several key trends that ultimately had a large impact on how companies were able to adapt during the pandemic, including
A shift away from influencers and toward practitioners
An increasing focus on relationship building versus impressions
An evolution away from more traditional tactics, such as conferences, webinars, and web-based content, toward more direct outreach
A push to enhance measurement while prioritizing quality over quantity
For brands and companies that had not made the shift to this newer health professional marketing paradigm, the pandemic left them unable to efficiently and effectively continue their health professional marketing efforts. Conferences and events that typically served as core tactics were cancelled or virtualized. Earned and social media efforts felt inappropriate or ineffective. In particular, reputational and social influencer communications and engagement was overwhelmed by the more serious and critical consumer desire for information on coronavirus.
In contrast, we saw a much different response to the crisis from those brands and companies that had already embraced these new health professional marketing trends. They were far better positioned to weather the impact of the pandemic, requiring only modest adjustments to existing plans and approaches. Typically, this included shifting dollars away from cancelled or virtualized conferences or earned/social media efforts toward more direct outreach to practitioners where marketing efforts could add value to interactions with consumers who were looking for ways to maintain or improve their health & wellness.
So, as we slowly but surely get back to a more normal health and wellness environment, what should healthy brands take away from the pandemic? Well, for those that had yet to embrace the "new," the message is clear: reshaping your health professional marketing to engage practitioners and consumers directly by adding value to counseling interactions (and earning brand recommendations) is not only a more effective means for delivering your healthy brand messages with trust and credibility, but a more flexible and adaptable approach as well.
And for those companies that had already embraced the new approach, the pandemic served to validate their efforts and underscore that health professional marketing continues to evolve in ways that enhance engagement and drive real results.
If you would like to learn more about our Health & Wellness Professional Marketing Benchmark Report or learn about what successful brands are doing in the health professional marketing space, send us an email at annieo@pulsehw.com.
About Us
Pulse Health & Wellness provides essential marketing for healthy brands through our proprietary PulseConnect network. Tens of thousands of practicing health professionals—the most trusted source of nutritional information—have opted in to PulseConnect to receive education materials, counseling tools, resources, samples, and coupons from healthy brands.
Using this model for more than 20 years, Pulse has created strategic ways to earn branded recommendations that drive trial for clients like Kellogg’s, Barilla, Sunkist, Stonyfield, a2 milk, and Egg Nutrition Center. For more information, visit our website.