The new rules of engagement: how to reshape pharma marketing in 2025

Cutting through the unrelenting pressures that busy healthcare professionals (HCPs) face takes more than well-crafted messaging - it requires deep insight into their needs and robust clinical evidence to communicate medical advances effectively.

An ever-expanding range of treatment options, rising digital fatigue and a burnt-out healthcare workforce mean pharmaceutical marketers need to be armed with a full understanding of who wants what types of information, how they want it, and when - all while navigating the myriad of challenges that doctors face.

It’s important to recognise the growing discrepancy between the level of personalisation HCPs experience in their personal lives, as consumers targeted by platforms such as Uber and Netflix, and the far less tailored communication they often encounter in their professional roles. While HCPs are used to highly customised experiences as consumers, their professional interactions with pharmaceutical companies can feel generic and impersonal by comparison. Bridging this gap is crucial for engaging today’s busy and digitally fatigued healthcare audience.

Yet despite best efforts, engagement remains a critical hurdle. A 2024 study by Veeva Systems found that HCP engagement with pharma field force and online channels has fallen to just 53%, and of those still engaging, 62% interact with only three or fewer companies.

Pharma is also under strain. When M3 surveyed 400 pharma marketers in the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland, they learned that budgets are shrinking and drug sales targets are climbing resulting in increased pressure on pharma marketers.

In its The Evolving World of Pharma: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities white paper, M3’s research stated that around 90% of pharma marketers have at least 12 areas of responsibility for budget allocation. This included digital advertising and sales materials, content creation and localisation, websites, HCP engagement and market research.

The research found that more than 50% of pharma marketers require new marketing materials at least every two months. While frequent updates are common across many industries, pharma marketers face additional hurdles - such as strict compliance checkpoints and the rigorous MLR review process - that can easily delay production, increase stress, and make it even more challenging to keep pace in a fast-moving environment.

HCPs often want to see a range of comprehensive information before prescribing a new treatment. This typically includes clinical trial data on efficacy and safety, comparisons with existing therapies, prescribing guidelines, mechanisms of action, and real-world evidence. Such detailed insights enable HCPs to make informed decisions, ensuring patient safety and optimal treatment outcomes.

To address this, M3 is transforming medical communications so they reach HCPs while also helping pharma marketers meet their compliance obligations. The M3 Group operates in North and South America, Asia Pacific, and Europe with over 6 million healthcare professional members globally across its websites. Doctors.net.uk has more than 250,000 users while Data4NHS, operated by M3, holds the largest NHS personnel database with over 152,000 records and is the only database with 100% NHS email addresses, providing direct access to the NHS.

Doctors under pressure

Medics currently exist in an environment where free time to delve into what’s new in their field is hard-won due to perpetual stress. The GMC’s report, The state of medical education and practice in the UK Workplace experiences 2024, emphasises the struggles faced by doctors in the context of a depleted workforce and a burgeoning workload. Recognising these pressures isn’t just a matter of logistics — it demands empathy. Understanding what doctors are up against is essential to crafting communications that truly resonate. 

The GMC highlights how ongoing workplace pressures continue to erode doctors’ wellbeing, warning that this damaging cycle must be broken if both healthcare systems and the workforce are to recover. While plans to grow and support the medical workforce are a positive step, the report stresses that these must be backed by clear implementation and long-term development strategies to deliver real impact.

It goes on to reveal that 44% of doctors find it difficult to provide their patients with the sufficient level of care needed at least once a week. Difficulty providing patient care was linked to struggling with workload, high risk of burnout, lack of support and insufficient autonomy. In fact, M3’s 10 Data Trends report found that 75% of EU5 doctors think their workload is unsustainable and agree their peels are burnt out and have low morale. These figures denote the severity of doctor burnout across Europe, with these issues spanning much further than the UK.

On the impact of such conditions, the GMC found that sustained high workload pressures may be a factor causing many doctors to make additional self-directed changes to their ways of working as a form of mitigation. In 2023, 19% said they had reduced their contracted hours in the last 12 months, and 41% said they had refused to take on additional work. 

When M3’s researchers looked into what was contributing to a difficult working environment, a lack of clinical staff was by far the most significant challenge, selected by 75% of doctors. And, on the flip side, marketers producing content for HCPs are up against various challenges including maintaining consistency in style and tone (50%), localisation and translation of content (38%), time constraints (37%) and quality control (37%). 

Creating tailored content adds to the challenge. Pharma marketers are constantly balancing the need to produce engaging, audience-specific materials with the pressure to stay on-brand and be compliant. But with tight budgets and limited resources, creativity can end up taking a back seat. The challenge lies in meeting rising expectations for personalisation without sacrificing consistency or overextending already stretched teams.

Understanding your customers

Tim Russell, executive vice-president at M3 EU, explains that pharma marketers must “do more with less.” He says: “Gone are the days where you’ve got a £3m promotional spend and plenty of resources. Today, companies are more focused on what they’re trying to achieve. M3 has European coverage with very distinct offerings in terms of how to communicate with doctors in a digital setting. A big part of that is creating quality content. We are experts in developing peer-reviewed, peer-driven, co-created content as appropriate – we work with pharma to do just that.”

M3’s 10 Data Trends research underlines this need for high-quality content, where digital communications are personal, relevant and arrive in the right place, at the right time and in the right format for the HCP. To this end, medeConnect, M3’s market research division, routinely conducts primary research on target audiences to build a robust foundation for a campaign’s content, and to track its subsequent trajectory. 

Equipped with medeConnect’s qualitative and quantitative findings, the business crafts content and disseminates it via trusted channels as a single end-to-end process for its clients. Content is repurposed for use across multiple channels, be that for a conference or other uses, helping marketers to reach as many HCPs as possible, in the most appropriate way.

Generic information, perhaps unsurprisingly, does not make the cut. M3’s report, Tailored and Targeted Pharmaceutical Marketing at Scale, explains how the business uses personas to understand its audience and tailor communications as a result. These fictional but recognisable descriptions of a persona embody the characteristics of a segment, such as product adoption, and an individual’s professional motivation and communication preferences. 

“Where we come in is very much about understanding doctors, what they do, where they go, and how they want to receive information. And creating tailored campaigns to fit with this. That’s what we are experts in,” says Russell. 

“Through our market research, we gather extensive information that allows us to track and evaluate the impact of our work across M3 channels. This data not only measures effectiveness, but also guides our collaboration with pharmaceutical companies to refine messaging and determine the best course of action. What are doctors doing? What is the patient pathway? We look at all those different elements to really help pharma understand the depths of the therapeutic area that they’re working in.”

He adds that the company takes an agile approach to ensure content is optimised on an ongoing basis so it is fit for purpose, not just for doctors in general, but for many different types of doctor, in an ever-changing environment. 

Looking ahead, Russell shares his perspective on what pharma marketing needs to meet its goals. “Pharma needs to ask, what am I trying to achieve? And will this project help me, the business, the company, achieve our commercial objectives?”

At the heart of this approach is a deeper question about purpose — not just achieving commercial outcomes, but making a real difference to patients’ lives. He adds: “The real measure of success is whether it helps get the right patients, and more of them, onto the right treatments. If it does, that’s when we start to see genuine improvements in how people live and manage their conditions. That kind of impact is driven just as much by ethics as it is by strategy — because ultimately, this is about helping people live longer and better lives.”

In an increasingly complex landscape, pharma marketers must strike a balance between scale, precision and empathy. By understanding doctors’ needs through data-driven insights, the industry can deliver content that brings positive and lasting impact.

Pharmaceutical companies are on the verge of an AI-driven transformation. The technology offers a potential solution to a growing problem. In recent years, firms have struggled to engage healthcare professionals, making it increasingly difficult to share clinical data, provide education and obtain feedback on their existing solutions. 

A 2024 study by Veeva Systems, a provider of cloud software for the life sciences industry, revealed that healthcare professional (HCP) engagement with pharma field force and online channels has fallen to 53%. Of those HCPs that are communicating with pharma companies, 62% meet with three or fewer firms. The problem is the result of changing wants and needs.

Data from the Digital Health Coalition shows that just 27% of HCPs feel pharma companies communicate with them in a relevant and personalised way. There is also a greater demand for convenience to enable them to access information almost instantly on an ongoing basis. Alexander Alex, head of CRM and engagement channels at Bayer AG, said: “HCPs want quick information. They’re not willing to wait for the rep’s next visit or phone call.”

AI-powered digital engagement 

Pharma companies must innovate and do so at speed or risk greater customer engagement with competitors. Many are turning to AI to enhance engagement – from improving content creation to gaining sharper audience insights.

In fact, Veeva’s research revealed there has been a 20% increase in the creation of digital educational content by pharmaceutical companies, and for good reason. Firms that create this content see a 2.5 x increase in doctors using treatments compared to phone calls or other methods that don’t provide the same value. 

Now, AI provides marketers with an opportunity to create content at scale. But in order to engage HCPs ahead of their rivals, it must be superior in quality, tailored to the needs of individuals and delivered to market faster. 

The first step to achieving this is to understand the information HCPs need and create it in the right formats in line with their preferences. AI helps firms to collect data about competitors' actions and their marketing activities. Marketers can choose topics in high demand for their target audiences and then create content in the preferred formats of individual professionals.

Harnessing the power of AI-agents

Once marketers have this data, they must then decide on their channels of distribution. Inbound channels are becoming increasingly popular. Data from Veeva shows that when pharma companies make a compliant instant messaging channel available, doctors initiate conversation 30% of the time. Pharma reps respond rapidly to their queries (on average, in just five minutes), with their replies yielding twice the open rate compared to emails.

Once companies begin conversations with HCPs, this level of personalisation can be enhanced further by using AI to store and analyse insights from previous interactions. This enables medical reps to ensure each new interaction with a doctor evolves off the last one. The technology can also help to automate routine tasks, such as follow-up emails with conversation summaries, meeting reminders and updated content and product info.  

But some pharmaceutical companies are going one step further. Edward Morris is the Lead Prompt Engineer at Enigmatica. The company helps pharma firms to harness the power of Gen AI, but also create their own miniature AI agents. These are software systems trained using specific information designed for specific audiences in individual industries. “These agents hold information about a particular product or service,” says Morris. “Doctors can ask the agent questions about potential side effects of treatments and compare them to existing products without speaking to a medical rep.”

Unlocking MLR with AI

Information created by pharmaceutical companies must undergo Medical Legal Regulatory (MLR) review. This is a critical process, ensuring all promotional and non-promotional materials are accurate, fair, balanced and comply with applicable laws and regulations. This review involves medical experts, legal professionals, and regulatory affairs personnel to scrutinise content for accuracy, safety and compliance.

This process is often lengthy and can require multiple review stages before information is considered compliant and approved for publication. Delays can cause frustration for pharmaceutical companies as they race to keep HCPs informed and do so ahead of their competitors. But AI could be used to accelerate the speed of approvals. 

Emma Hyland, VP of strategy and commercial content at Veeva, explains. “We really believe that if the quality of the content that is entering this review and approval process is better, then it'll mean there are fewer review stages. It’s common sense. We can use AI to take care of simple, time consuming tasks, like spelling and grammar checks and making sure formatting is compliant with regulations in different regions.”

Hyland says this would empower pharmaceutical marketers to spend their time on high value tasks. “Marketers should be focused on asking critical questions, like: ‘Is this claim really representing what we want to be able to say to our customers? Are we really representing this data in a safe and effective way for the HCPs?’ That's where they provide really high value. That's the step that needs to happen. AI can really help with it.”

Human x AI

However, on all steps of the journey, human insight and input remain critical. Maxim Polyakov, SVP of business intelligence and research at M3, says: “There are two themes that really resonate for me when people talk about AI. The first is that, right now, AI is being positioned as a tool that makes an expert better at their job. It does not make a non-expert into an expert, and that distinction is key. The second is about the steps that need to be taken in deploying AI well, such as ensuring it is used within a clear set of guardrails that enable appropriate risk management, and by team members who are properly trained and are aware of AI’s limitations.”

Ultimately, if deployed well, AI can help pharmaceutical companies step up their game in how well they can engage HCPs. By contrast, companies that fail to innovate will fall further and further behind.

Capturing the attention of healthcare professionals (HCPs), who are under constant pressure to manage time and patient care, is no small feat. Pharma marketers must navigate a complex landscape of tighter regulation, economic constraints, technological disruption, and rising competition to engage effectively.

This article explores key strategies pharma marketers can leverage to strengthen digital engagement with doctors and other HCPs — aligning content, channels and timing to deliver greater impact.