Four Ways to Engage External Stakeholders in the Post-Pandemic World

The piece you’re about to read is from Klick Health’s Life (Sciences) After COVID-19 series, a collection of expert perspectives designed to inform and inspire the life sciences community for the coming changes and opportunities we anticipate as a result of this global health crisis.

It’s been over a year since the start of the global pandemic and we all went into lockdown. For pharma and biotech healthcare marketers, we have been working from home and living on Zoom to support our daily professional lives and in some cases, our personal lives too. We don’t need a research study to know that virtual engagements have become the norm with conferences and conventions. But according to 2020 data from Medical Affairs Professional Society, a projected 40% of interactions will remain virtual following the pandemic.

As summer quickly approaches for healthcare marketers, so does our engagement strategy and planning for 2022. Pharma and biotech depend on a wide range of stakeholders across commercial, medical and research-development. The successful engagement of these stakeholders requires an effective plan to maximize the impact of these relationships. An integrated approach with stakeholders, such as Key Opinion Leaders, Digital Opinion Leaders, Professional Medical Societies, Patient Advocacy Group and C-Suite Executives, can help unlock new opportunities and positively impact goals and objectives. So, what is the future of stakeholder engagement post-pandemic?

With the confluence of organizational and brand goals as well as the virtual engagement environment, now is the optimal time to come together with an integrated approach. The need for a strategic Stakeholder Engagement Plan to achieve mutually beneficial partnerships is critical. What was once all too often considered a nice-to-have component of our overall strategy has become essential to building the basis of a plan.