Developing good medicine is not enough to stay ahead of the competition these days — you also need to launch your marketing campaigns quickly, effectively, and following regulations. Imagine that your company has just launched an innovative new treatment. You’ve got compelling data, patient testimonials, and sleek visuals ready to go. But how do you ensure your sales reps in Boston use the same approved messaging as your digital marketers in Berlin? How do you update your global campaign fast when new efficacy data rolls in? And how can you reuse your already-approved content to make the most value out of it?
Content lifecycle management (CLM) allows you to achieve these and many other goals. With the right content lifecycle management solution, you can streamline your approval processes, ensure brand consistency across all channels, and pivot your content strategy and messaging on a dime when market conditions change. So today let’s dive into how CLM can help you cut your time-to-market, reduce compliance risks, optimize content management, and make collaboration between teams a cakewalk.
What is Content Lifecycle Management?
Content lifecycle management refers to a comprehensive approach for overseeing content from creation to archival or deletion.
In the pharmaceutical industry, this critical process encompasses content planning, creation, review, approval, publishing, distribution, maintenance, reuse, and eventual retirement of content. Content lifecycle management aims to ensure accuracy, consistency, and regulatory compliance while making processes more well-run and improving content findability and reusability across multiple channels.
At its core, CLM in pharma is about managing the entire journey of content to maximize efficiency and support organizational goals. It often involves specialized content lifecycle management software that provides version control, facilitates collaborative editing, manages approval workflows, and offers analytics on content usage.
Benefits of Content Lifecycle Management
Pharmaceutical companies can derive numerous benefits from implementing content lifecycle management. Let’s review the key areas where CLM brings positive impact.
- Cost savings: By reducing duplication of efforts and minimizing errors, CLM can lead to significant cost savings. Instead of each regional marketing team creating its own materials from scratch, CLM allows for the efficient localization and adaptation of centrally created content, saving both time and resources.
- Faster time to market: Effective content lifecycle management streamlines content operations, from content creation to approval and dissemination. This efficiency can significantly reduce the time required to bring new products to market. By facilitating quicker collaboration among teams, CLM systems enable faster decision-making and help pharmaceutical companies respond promptly to market demands.
- Better content quality: With built-in review and approval workflows, CLM systems help maintain high standards for content quality. This is particularly important in the pharmaceutical industry, where accuracy and scientific integrity are crucial. By ensuring that all content is thoroughly vetted, companies can enhance their credibility and build trust with healthcare professionals and patients.
- Enhanced content organization: CLM provides a single, central location for all marketing content. Instead of having brochures stored on one system, digital assets on another, and regulatory documents somewhere else, everything is accessible from one place. For example, all materials related to a specific drug campaign — from the initial research reports to the final advertisement designs — can be stored and easily retrieved from a single platform.
- Data security: CLM solutions improve data security by controlling access to sensitive information and ensuring that only authorized personnel can edit or approve content. This protection is vital in safeguarding proprietary information and maintaining the integrity of marketing materials.
Who Should Invest in It?
Companies that need to invest in CLM typically share certain characteristics or face specific challenges related to content creation, management, and distribution. These organizations often operate in highly regulated environments, managing large volumes of content with complex approval processes. They frequently operate across multiple markets or channels, necessitating a strong focus on brand consistency. Such companies also tend to face rapid changes in product information or marketing messages, requiring agile content management systems.
While larger companies might have more obvious needs for CLM due to the sheer volume of content they manage, even smaller or growing companies in the pharma and healthcare space can benefit significantly from implementing CLM early. It can provide a scalable foundation for content management as the company grows and faces increasingly complex content challenges.
Key Stages of Content Lifecycle Management
Implementing content lifecycle management is a significant undertaking that requires time, resources, and organizational change. It’s often best approached as a phased implementation, allowing for learning and adjustment along the way. The key is to maintain a clear vision of the end goal — streamlined, compliant, and efficient content management process that supports the company’s broader objectives.
Lay the groundwork
Before diving into implementation, it’s crucial to set a solid foundation. Begin by assessing your current state and defining clear marketing goals. Conduct a thorough audit of existing content marketing processes and systems, identifying pain points such as lengthy approval times or inconsistent messaging across markets. Set clear, measurable objectives, for instance, aiming to reduce medical, legal, and regulatory reviews (MLR) approval time by 50%.
With this assessment in hand, secure leadership buy-in by presenting a compelling business case. Highlight potential ROI and risk reduction.
Build your CLM framework
With leadership support secured, it’s time to create the structure for your content lifecycle management initiative. Design the CLM process by mapping out the entire content lifecycle. A typical workflow might include stages like Ideation, Creation, Review, Approval, Distribution, Monitoring, and Update or Retire. Establish clear governance policies, defining who can approve what types of content assets.
Selecting and implementing CLM technology is a critical step. Further below, we discuss the best practices in picking the best content lifecycle management software for you.
Develop content standards and content teams’ capabilities
With your framework in place, focus on creating standards and building your content marketers’ capabilities. Develop a consistent brand voice and messaging framework. Create reusable templates for standard formats like product brochures, social media posts, and sales presentations.
Invest in your team by providing comprehensive training on new content lifecycle management process and tools. Consider developing new roles for content team members such as content strategists or metadata specialists to support your CLM initiative.
Execute and optimize
Now it’s time to put your CLM system into action. Start by migrating and organizing existing content. Clean up and tag content with appropriate metadata. Some specialized pharma-focused software has special auto-tagging engines that can help you significantly speed up this step. This stage is crucial as it will increase your content reusability rates by a long shot in the future.
Roll out the CLM system across the organization and closely monitor key performance indicators. Track metrics like content production time, compliance rates, and content reuse percentages.
Remember that content lifecycle management is not a “set it and forget it” solution. Commit to continuous improvement by regularly reviewing and optimizing your content lifecycle management processes.
Best Practices in Choosing CLM Solutions
For pharmaceutical companies, a robust CLM solution for content marketing efforts should encompass several crucial features to address the unique challenges of the industry. Let’s outline them.
Regulatory compliance management
At the heart of any pharma CLM solution should be strong regulatory compliance features. The two most helpful features for this function are automated compliance checks against current regulations and version control with detailed audit trails.
Automated compliance checks can catch potential issues in your content, allowing you to correct them before sending the file for MLR.
Version control and audit trails are real heavy hitters in CLM software. They help in managing global content, where different versions might be needed for different markets due to varying regulatory requirements. They also provide a clear history of how content has evolved over time, which is crucial for understanding why certain changes were made.
Global content localization
Given the international nature of many pharma companies, global content localization can be essential. The CLM system should support multi-language content management, region-specific approval workflows, and centralized brand assets with localization capabilities. This allows for consistent global messaging while accommodating local regulatory requirements and cultural nuances.
Omnichannel content distribution
Omnichannel content distribution is crucial in modern pharma marketing. The content lifecycle management system should facilitate seamless distribution across digital channels, content adaptation for different platforms, and performance tracking across all channels.
It allows companies to meet their audience where they are, with consistent, compliant, and optimized content, while also providing the data and insights necessary for ongoing improvement of marketing strategies.
Digital asset management
Digital asset management (DAM) is paramount for consistent branding. The CLM should include centralized storage for all digital assets, digital rights management for licensed media, and easy asset discovery and reuse capabilities. A centralized DAM system ensures that all teams are using the most up-to-date and approved versions of logos, text, images, videos, and other brand assets. On top of that, with easy asset discovery and reuse capabilities, your content team can quickly find and utilize pre-approved assets. This speeds up the content creation process and reduces the likelihood of duplicating work or recreating valuable assets, that already exist.
Modular content management
The CLM should support creation and management of modular content blocks and easy assembly of these modules into various marketing materials for a few important reasons. First up, healthcare professionals and patients increasingly expect personalized content. Modular content allows for easier mix-and-match of content blocks to create tailored materials for specific audiences or individuals.
Secondly, the reuse of content modules reduces the need for creating new content from scratch for every campaign or material, leading to significant cost savings in content creation and translation.
Last but not least, modular content allows companies to quickly update and disseminate new information across all relevant materials, enabling faster market responses.
Mobile accessibility
This is critical for field teams and remote work scenarios. Content lifecycle management systems should offer mobile- and tablet-friendly interfaces, offline content access control capabilities, and secure mobile approval processes to ensure that your sales reps have all of the tools needed to conduct a successful meeting with a healthcare professional, no matter the settings.
Integration capabilities
Integration capabilities are necessary for seamless operation, particularly CLM’s integration with your CRM software. When CLM and CRM systems are integrated, sales representatives can access relevant content based on an HCP’s specific interests or past interactions. This means that during a sales call or digital engagement, representatives can quickly pull up the most appropriate and impactful materials, tailoring their presentations to the individual HCP’s needs and preferences.
For instance, if the CRM data shows that a particular doctor has expressed interest in clinical trial results for a new drug, the sales rep can immediately access and present the most recent and relevant clinical data through the CLM system.
Content Lifecycle Management Tips & Tricks
When we talk about content lifecycle management tips applicable for pharma and life sciences organizations, a few suggestions come to mind. Some may intertwine with the features we deem to be important in CLM software, which we outlined in the previous section.
Less is more
After defining your specific needs in CLM software, seek out comprehensive solutions that cover multiple aspects and stages of the content lifecycle rather than piecing together numerous standalone marketing tools.
A fragmented approach using separate systems for project management, SEO, content development, managing assets, distribution, marketing automation, and email marketing can quickly become unwieldy and inefficient. This patchwork of tools often leads to data silos, inconsistent workflows, and increased complexity in training and maintenance.
Instead, prioritize platforms that offer broad functionality within a single ecosystem.
Set a strategy for archiving content
Create a clear process for archiving outdated content while maintaining access for audit purposes.
This helps declutter active content libraries while ensuring that historical materials are available when needed.
Implement a “content-first” approach
Develop core content before deciding on the format or channel. By creating core content first, you ensure that the fundamental messages about a drug’s efficacy, safety profile, or unique selling points remain consistent across all platforms and materials.
For example, create key messages about a new drug’s efficacy before developing specific materials like brochures, websites, or sales aids.
Embrace the modular
Create a library of pre-approved content modules that can be easily combined and repurposed. This approach speeds up content creation, ensures consistency, and simplifies the approval process.
You can build sales rep presentations, landing pages for HCPs, and other content assets out of the same modules.
The Future of Content Lifecycle Management
Content lifecycle management is experiencing a major upgrade, thanks to artificial intelligence. This isn’t just a small tweak — it’s a complete game-changer in how we create, manage, and share content. AI is becoming an essential part of the content process, bringing its ability to analyze data, learn from patterns, and make predictions. This technology is helping us understand and respond to our audience’s needs better than ever before. From thorough personalization to automating various functions that previously heavily relied on manual work, we think that AI is most definitely in the future of CLM.
Our content experience platform, eWizard, is designed specifically for life science and pharma brands. It utilizes cutting-edge technologies like AI and ML to speed up MLR review, personalize and auto-tag content assets, and create various forms of marketing materials with a modular approach. If you’re looking for a tool that has it all — let’s discuss your requirements.
