If you’ve decided to get up to speed with digital marketing by using videos – excellent news. Video is by far the most effective digital marketing strategy for pharma brands wanting to dive deep into multichannel. Explainer videos especially have become increasingly popular as a way to get great results with large numbers of physicians in a short time. But what makes the best explainer videos work?
Here are some of the characteristics of the best explainer videos for pharma and how you can replicate them to create a successful digital marketing campaign of your own.
The best medical explainer videos are short
You’re probably well aware, but physicians have to read, quite a lot. With scientific publications coming out at a rapid pace, they have to dedicate hours to reading every week just to stay up to date with advancements in their therapeutic area. There are just two problems, though:
– They don’t have the time for this
– They only read abstracts because this fact
The best explainer videos are based precisely on this data. According to research, the best-performing videos in pharma are less than two minutes long. We’ve also seen this from our own experience.
A short explainer video draws the physician in from the start, unlike a reprint of a scientific publication. Within a dozen seconds, they know what kind of information they can expect. As an added bonus, they can watch it in less than two minutes, instead of putting aside 20 minutes of their day to read and understand a scientific publication.
At the same time, it’s useful to know that 70% of physicians read medical journal reprints published on pharma company websites. As they’re already on the website, they could spend 15 minutes reading it – or simply watch an explainer video in 90 seconds. Seeing how the human brain retains 95% of information from video, compared to 10% from text, a short explainer video is a much better option instead of the text.
The best explainer videos put focus on the physician
Do you know one of the most common complaints that doctors have about the current pharma marketing methods? It’s that too much stress is put on the product, with sales reps presenting canned data, often repeating what a physician already knows. Physicians demand fresh data – and if you have an upcoming product launch, it’s best to have fresh data in the first place.
By making your explainer video short, you’ve already made sure you’re catering to the HCP audience. Second, use the opportunity to present your scientific publication in full. Physicians want to be familiar with the latest advancements, so don’t give them abstract-sized bits of information – you can easily fit a 15-page publication into a 90-second explainer video. We know because we’ve done it.
Finally, if your explainer video focuses on a product, tell a story of what it brings to the table for the physician. How does the product help improve patient outcomes? What makes it superior to generics and alternatives on the market? By providing this information, you’re centering the content around the physician and creating the best explainer video you can.
The best explainer videos have an excellent script
The script is the backbone of every good explainer video, and great scripts don’t just happen. They require a dedicated, talented expert behind them.
Here’s the problem. Life science professionals aren’t really good at writing video scripts. On the other hand, video scriptwriters don’t have medical expertise and can’t effectively single out the most important information from a scientific publication.
The solution is somewhere in the middle – you need a dedicated medical writer if you want the best explainer video. This person needs experience writing medical content, as well as creating engaging video scripts. This is a rather unique skill set that not many pharma marketing experts know how to fill.
So, what kind of script does the trick? It needs to start strong and encourage physicians to keep watching, to stress the most important bits of data, and leave out the boring ones, while bringing value to the physician.
The best explainer videos make physicians take action
If you’ve gone through the trouble of creating and promoting a great explainer video, there are probably thousands of physicians watching it at any given time. While that’s a great success on its own, it’s not enough. What are those physicians doing after watching?
The best explainer videos make physicians do something right after watching. Whether it’s leaving their email, asking for more information, requesting a reprint, or going to your pharma brand website – the choice is yours. Once the physician is familiar with your scientific publication or product, it’s time to get them to act.
You can use this with aptly titled calls to action. Whether you put them at the beginning, middle, or the end of the video, they’re a great video to maximize the use of an explainer video and reach out directly to physicians, using their preferred channels of communication.
Can you create the best explainer videos on your own?
Since their shift to digital, pharma companies of today have established excellent digital marketing departments. However, they often lack the know-how to create amazing explainer videos. Although they know the product and the audience, they don’t have the possibility to create the best explainer videos for their brand.
At BlueNovius, we’ve recognized this gap and came up with a solution called PubExplainer. Using this medical explainer video solution, we help pharma companies across the world tell the story about their scientific publications – and we turn them into engaging 90-second explainer videos.
Do you want to know how we helped more than 50 pharma companies use PubExplainer to reach more physicians? Reach out to us – we’d love to talk with you.
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