Stephen Onikoro 

Life science marketing is changing. Practices which worked for the blockbuster drug era are no longer appropriate for today’s environment of specialist medicines, flattened budgets, and rising customer expectations. Today’s audiences want timely, hyper-personalized information, delivered through the channel of their choice.

In this evolving environment, optichannel marketing offers the opportunity to be precisely where it matters—when it matters—while transforming how the industry connects with healthcare professionals and patients.

What is the difference between omnichannel and optichannel?

Omnichannel marketing aims to coordinate customer engagement strategically but broadly across all channels and functions. The idea is to personalize the customer experience and reach the right audience with the information they need on the channels they prefer.

Optichannel marketing enhances performance and effectiveness by investing on the optimal channels for your specific audience based on real-world data (RWD).

A deeper understanding of customer behaviors, preferences, and platforms allows you to focus on the right channels—and avoid the ones which do not work for your audience. This maximizes campaign relevance, efficiency and spend.

What are the perceived benefits of omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing gained popularity over multichannel because it offered the opportunity to unify approaches, provide consistent customer experience, personalize content, and increase engagement by reaching audiences with the right messaging at the right time.

However, the reality is that implementation has fallen short for many organizations, and the life science industry needs to adapt its marketing approaches to meet evolving expectations.

A common pitfall of omnichannel marketing is disconnected messaging across field and digital channels. Despite significant investments, about 2 in 3 HCP engagements are still not synced across marketing and sales.

 This leads to poor customer experience and dilutes key brand messages.

The so-called “spray and pray” approach of investing across all channels also wastes resources and runs the risk of alienating audiences if messaging does not match their situation or context. Tailoring at the broad segment, rather than individual, level results in a missed opportunity for true personalization with content delivered exactly where a healthcare professional is most likely to engage.

There’s also a frequent misperception of successful omnichannel engagement being across different channels provided by one publisher, but that doesn’t automatically create an omnichannel ecosystem. Integration must span across the channels that reach a specific audience, which includes different platforms, tactics, and internal functions.

These pitfalls have major financial implications with millions of inefficient media spend on under-performing channels.

What are some of the barriers to marketing strategy evolution?

The life science industry is notoriously slow to evolve, and marketing practices are no exception. Linear marketing practices, legacy systems, conservative company cultures and partner relationships have remained the same for years. This can lead to repetitive, siloed campaigns which fail to meet customer needs. Unfortunately, what was cutting edge just two or three years ago is already outdated today.

Many marketers would love to seize new opportunities. But, in a heavily regulated space and in complex organizations, it can be difficult to pivot and adopt new technologies and approaches.

Did You Know? Optichannel vs. Omnichannel

marketing spreads resources across many platforms, but often dilutes personalization and wastes spend. Nearly 2 in 3 HCP engagements are still not aligned across marketing and sales.

Optichannel marketing invests only in the channels proven to engage a target audience, using 

Specialty drugs now dominate the market, with 70% of FDA approvals in 2024

falling into this category—driving the need for precision targeting.

What are some of the industry forces driving change?

Specialty medications now dominate the pharmaceutical landscape. Seventy percent of novel drugs approved by the FDA in 2024 were specialty drugs.

 This means marketers need to find new ways to reach niche audiences. Research

 has found 91% of consumers are more likely to engage with brands which provide relevant, personalized messaging(and HCPs are consumers, too).

Budget pressures are also forcing smarter allocation of marketing resources. A 2025 survey of CMOs revealed marketing budgets remained flat at 7.7% of overall company revenue.

 More than half of CMOs (59%) said they had insufficient budget to execute their strategy. This prompted them to look at how to use funds in a more productive way. Top actions taken include leveraging data to optimize performance and harnessing technology such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Moreover, despite investments in digital and omnichannel in recent years, launches remain challenging in the industry. Data from this year shows that about 70% of biopharma products still fail to miss launch revenue targets, partly due to cross-functional disconnections and reactive rather than proactive execution.

Combined, these changes make it imperative to shift from reactively being everywhere consistently to proactively being where it matters, when it matters.

What are the advantages of optichannel marketing?

Optichannel campaigns are grounded in a deep understanding of audiences and channels based on RWD. They are hyper-personalized, allowing you to deploy assets in individualized next-best-action sequences according to provider preferences.

Real-time optimization, rooted in real-world and dynamic analytics, offers the ability to adapt to evolving preferences and audience engagement and the flexibility to adjust immediately as audience behavior changes. This allows you to seize opportunities when something is working and quickly adapt when it isn’t, rather than waiting 6 or 12 months like in the traditional media buying cycle.

Optichannel marketing also proactively makes the most of the channels which truly engage your target audience, resulting in cost savings. Unlike conventional buying models which incentivize broader, costlier campaign, optichannel approaches prioritize precision and efficiency using dynamic and granular audience preference and behavior data, ensuring you make the most of every dollar spent.

Adopting optichannel marketing allowed the marketing team for one mature oncology drug to reduce media spend by 35% while increasing HCP engagement by 10% and market share by 3%.

How can I choose the right optichannel solution for my brand or portfolio?

When evaluating potential optichannel platforms, consider which will allow you to create a truly personalized customer engagement experience across the right channels for your stakeholders. Must-have capabilities include:

Holistic and dynamic affinity data which provides deep and actionable insights into individualized audience preferences for your target HCPs.

The ability to match client target lists to AI-driven profiles and create journeys on the specific channel, vendor, format, and message type that will resonate most with each provider.

Hyper-targeted media buying based on a range of real-world clinical signals and triggers, including those related to HCPs not on the match list.

Effective deployment across field, endemic, and non-endemic platforms and websites.

Dynamic adjustment of the next best action for channel and vendor media selection to optimize engagement without locking in specific channel buys.

What would you say to marketers thinking about switching to optichannel marketing?

The life sciences industry cannot afford to keep pouring resources into channels which do not perform. Optichannel marketing offers the opportunity for marketers to easily unlock new capabilities to maximize personalization, effectiveness and resource allocation by investing in the set of channels that make the most sense for your audience.

To truly seize the opportunities on offer, look for a dedicated partner who can harness real-time preferences and behavioral insights and provide strategic customization at every step.

Stephen Onikoro is a member of the founding team and now serves as Chief Operating Officer at PharmaForceIQ, an optichannel engagement solutions provider. He oversees operational functions and client relationships with medical and marketing teams at small to large pharmaceutical companies.

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https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/life-sciences-health-care/us-life-sciences-marketing-reimagined.pdf

2. Veeva Pulse Data Shows New Science Calls for More Connected Engagement. Veeva. November 14, 2024. 

https://www.veeva.com/resources/veeva-pulse-data-shows-new-science-calls-for-more-connected-engagement/

3. In 2024, FDA Approved Innovative Treatments for Several Complex Diseases. Ascella Health. January 9, 2025. 

https://ascellahealth.com/in-the-news/in-2024-fda-approved-innovative-treatments-for-several-complex-diseases

4. Widening Gap Between Consumer Expectations and Reality in Personalization Signals Warning for Brands, Accenture Interactive Research Finds. Accenture. May 3, 2018. 

https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2018/widening-gap-between-consumer-expectations-and-reality-in-personalization-signals-warning-for-brands-accenture-interactive-research-finds

5. Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined at 7.7% of Overall Company Revenue. Gartner. May 12, 2025. 

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue

6. Mathews D, Chalmers, M. Gar How Biopharma Can Get the Right Mix of People and Tech For Launch Success. EY. March 4, 2025. 

https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/life-sciences/how-biopharma-can-get-the-right-mix-of-people-and-tech-for-launch-success

7. How Biopharma Can Get the Right Mix of People and Tech For Launch Success. PharmaForceIQ. June 19, 2025. 

https://pharmaforceiq.com/reduce-media-spend-but-increase-engagement-and-market-share-heres-how-we-achieved-it/

Articles

The shift from omnichannel to optichannel marketing in the life sciences sector is driven by the need for more precise, personalized engagement with healthcare professionals and patients. Optichannel marketing focuses on using real-world data to identify the most effective channels for specific audiences, enhancing campaign relevance and efficiency. This approach addresses the pitfalls of traditional omnichannel strategies, such as disconnected messaging and inefficient resource allocation. As specialty medications dominate the market, optichannel marketing offers a cost-effective solution to meet evolving customer expectations and budget constraints.

Why the life science industry needs to move away from omnichannel marketing strategies and toward optichannel approaches that boost personalization and ROI in an era of shrinking budgets.