Pharma is delving deep into digital marketing and exploring various types of content that works with all stakeholders. Video is currently the hottest content marketing format, for a whole variety of reasons. It’s short, engaging, easy to share and it’s the easiest for tracking ROI of all content formats.
Explainer videos have been wildly successful across industries in the past few years – and pharma is now catching up. However, how do you even create a successful marketing video for pharma, let alone an explainer video? Here are some basics to creating an engaging explainer video that attracts HCPs and patients.
Why medical explainer videos?
Video is currently the most powerful marketing format out there. In fact, video consumption has risen by over 800% in the past 5 years. Most importantly, they make sense in terms of ROI. Explainer videos are a subgenre of online marketing videos that are proven to work extremely well. Put short, a medical explainer video is a short video that explains to your patients or physicians a certain concept. This can be your business, the values you stand for, the services you offer, a breakdown of the processes you use, etc. For the purposes of pharma, explainer videos are exceptional if you want to present your scientific publication, lay out the effects of your latest product, show the basics behind a certain disease, etc.
Keep the explainer video short
Our attention spans have become alarmingly short over time. In fact, the average attention span is currently just 8 seconds. With physicians as your target audience, you also have to bear in mind that they have very little time to spare for watching videos. This means that you need to keep your explainer video brief and grab physicians’ attention from the very start.
However, there’s some good news. The average time viewers spend on explainer videos is 2.7 minutes. At BlueNovius, most of our medical explainer videos are 90 seconds. Through careful research and split testing, we found this to be the best length that conveys the most crucial information and keeps HCPs engaged at the same time. Furthermore, 90 seconds is just enough to make your key scientific data memorable.
The script is of utmost importance
What makes physicians stick around and finish watching your medical explainer videos? It’s not the animation (although that is high on the list of priorities) – it’s the medical script. Even the highest quality medical explainer videos just won’t get any views if the script is poor. Likewise, a mediocre animation with an excellent medical script will knock HCPs off their feet.
Here’s the hard part. Most video marketing agencies know very little about the life sciences landscape. On the other hand, very few pharma marketing professionals are familiar with creating explainer videos.
Creating an explainer video script from a scientific publication is no easy feat. You have to select the most important data, summarize it and put together an engaging script that flows well and is easy to narrate in video form.
Knowing the struggles of modern pharma companies, our medical team at BlueNovius is tackling the scripts, while a crew of experienced animators covers all other aspects of video creation. Bear in mind that if you write the script on your own, it will usually take several tries to get it right.
Quality voiceover
A script is of no good use if it just stays on paper. A quality voiceover is a cherry on top of your medical explainer video and it will give it that final touch of class.
However, bear these facts in mind:
– You need someone with knowledge of medical terms
– This person has to have impeccable English (or your desired language)
– They need to have previous experience doing voiceover for medical videos
Finding someone matching your ideal profile is a painstakingly long task. This is why BlueNovius works with professional voiceover actors experienced in doing medical explainer videos.
Take care of the animation
Finally, once you have the script and the voiceover, it’s time to make the video come to life. This is where the animation comes in place. In our experience providing video marketing services to over 50 pharma companies worldwide, 2D animated videos have proven to be the best for medical explainer videos. They offer the best balance between quality, price, and the time necessary to finish a complete explainer video project.
On top of that 2D animation seems to be the best for displaying medical types of animation. While 3D can be too busy and clunky for physicians to visualize and whiteboard and stop motion don’t provide enough detail, 2D simply works. With a skilled 2D motion designer, even the most complex of medical animations can be made simple and easy to understand.
Once you’ve created your explainer video…
It’s all about the promotion to get the best return on investment. Having the best medical explainer video out there simply won’t cut it if nobody sees it.
One of the top channels for promoting to HCPs has been and currently is email. As many studies have shown, it’s the preferred channel for communication for HCPs across the globe, regardless of therapeutic area.
Some other possible channels include pharma company websites, LinkedIn, HCP portals, and booths at conferences – the sky’s the limit.
Once you’ve engaged all your available channels, you can track success using a variety of metrics, such as number of viewers, time spent viewing, number of email optins, the most engaging part of the video, etc.
You don’t have to create medical explainer videos on your own
No matter how big and skilled your marketing department is, oftentimes they simply do not have the necessary know-how to do video marketing right. This is why BlueNovius has established a team of professionals for video marketing and we’ve been serving pharma companies worldwide for years. If you’d like to get started with video marketing for your pharma company, contact us today!
