How to Scale Content Output Without Sacrificing Quality

The rise in digital engagement across pharma has put marketing teams are under growing pressure to deliver more personalized omnichannel experiences. This requires the development of more relevant compliant content, and at a faster pace and scale than ever before. In fact, according to our Veeva Pulse data, the volume of digital and email content being managed in Veeva Vault PromoMats has doubled since 2019.

Such a rapid expansion of any organization’s content development and output can introduce compliance risk in medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) review. But it doesn’t need to be a trade-off between speed versus risk. Here are four ways to accelerate the content lifecycle while maintaining quality, accuracy, and compliance.

1. Streamline your MLR review

Version control is a significant challenge for marketing teams that want to quickly scale up their content programs and produce high-quality content at a faster pace. This can be hard enough for in-house teams, and there is often an extra layer of complexity added when content creation is outsourced to external agencies. Marketing teams need a “single source of truth” for all their content assets so they can be confident everyone is working with the correct, most current version.

This is why a digital asset management (DAM) system is an essential tool to help teams share, edit, approve, and reuse content without the risk of working with an outdated or incorrect version of an asset. A DAM stores all types of content assets (email templates, videos, wireframes, etc.), keeps track of all associated files, and provides an audit trail of collected comments and approvals. With every team member having access to this single source of truth, your MLR reviews can increase in speed while remaining efficient and accurate.

2. Adopt a modular approach to content creation

Modular content refers to the process of assembling pre-approved content components (content “modules”) into any number of new assets for use across different regions and channels. This approach allows teams to quickly reuse and adapt different pieces of existing approved content for whatever needs they might have.

Unlike traditional content development, which requires every new asset to be built from scratch, companies that follow a modular approach to content make it easier for brand teams, marketing team, sales reps—anyone who needs a specific content asset—to quickly build a customized asset that is accurate, on brand, and personalized for the customer.

This strategy can also help organizations by further accelerating MLR review cycles. With pre-approved modular content, reviewers can move more quickly knowing that the content has already been used before and the references are as they should be.

As Morten Kruse-Jacobsen, global director of multichannel excellence and operations at Novo Nordisk, explains: “Modular content answers our three biggest content requirements: it stays true to the brand, ensures local market fit, and unleashes creativity.”

3. Maintain better control over asset distribution

Commercial teams today need to deliver customer content via different platforms, in different formats, and to different target audiences—and the growth of digital has only added even more channels to the mix. All of this complexity can be challenging to manage. But a compliant, cloud-based content management system allows users to develop, approve, and distribute content using one system, which helps to tame this complexity.

Using a single system for content management also helps organizations to remove content quickly when needed, such as in the case of label changes or new drug studies that require all promotional and medical content to be quickly updated (typically within three to six months to avoid penalties). Organizations can ensure that only approved materials have made it out to the market, and can maintain more control over assets with features such as instant asset withdrawal, controlled asset updates, and automatic asset expiration.

4. Measure content performance and adjust your strategy as needed

Simply creating and distributing content assets is only half the story. In order to help marketing teams engage more meaningfully with customers in the future, it is important to understand which materials are resonating the most with HCPs, and through which platforms. Use tools such as tracking links, social metrics, and content sentiment to gain greater visibility into customer engagement with the assets you are producing. Reps should also ask for direct feedback from HCPs, especially when meeting with customers in person.

Such continuous tracking and measurement of customer content consumption and reaction is essential to honing your future content strategy so that your organization will remain relevant in today’s competitive landscape.

The recipe for digital excellence

While following these approaches can help you to accelerate the content lifecycle—from planning and creation to distribution and measurement—content is just one pillar of an effective digital strategy. You must also tailor engagement based on customer preferences, maximize field impact through analytics, and learn how to operationalize digital excellence across the organization.

To learn more about all this, download our new ebook, The Commercial Leader’s Guide to Digital Excellence.