Pharmaceutical companies conduct medical meetings of various types. Different types of meetings have different goals and, therefore, require a different format to achieve the desired goal or target. Within the past year many in-person events were cancelled, leaving medical event planners scrambling.
Having a medical meeting planner by your side ensures the success of your meetings. By developing and following a personalized strategy for your event, you can ascertain that your message is getting across.
Here’s a list of different types of events medical meeting planners can host for your company:
1. Investigator Meetings
The health industry communicates scientific information through investigator meetings where sites teams attain valuable data and attain knowledge. The success of your clinical trial depends upon the quality of your investigator meeting. Thus, it directly impacts the time and cost it takes to bring your product to the market.
To ensure success, medical meeting planners must have a focused agenda. Schedule it such that there are several breaks in between sessions allowing time for the attendees to retain information, relax, grab a cup of coffee, or network.
Keep your lectures short, yet value-packed. You don’t want to bore them or divert their attention with scattered information.
You need to make the registration process smooth by providing an online registration process. Since most healthcare professionals are busy individuals, tending to patients and their clinics, advance notice of the meeting would give them time to arrange their schedule. It will increase their chances of attending your meeting, resulting in a greater ROI.
Another important decision is the format of your meeting. While in-person meetings provide valuable interactions and networking opportunities, they come with a hefty price tag and a lot of logistical and managerial challenges. With online meetings, you can drastically reduce the cost and time you need to arrange the meeting. You can also grab a more diverse audience by removing the spatial barriers. Another great feature of the virtual format is that by leveraging technology it is easier to attain and analyze valuable data from the meeting.
With hybrid meetings, you can have the best of both worlds.
2. Advisory Boards
A strong advisory board provides strategic advice to top-executives and helps steer clear of common mistakes businesses make. Having a board of industry experts to guide you can speed up your company’s success.
Before calling the advisory board meeting, you should create an agenda for the meeting. Having pre-prepared questions and/or objections for the meeting will ensure a healthy discussion.The meeting should discuss both long-term and short-term goals and provide practical and measurable steps.
Even though a chairperson is not required for an advisory board meeting, a moderator should be assigned. The meeting moderator should not only start the meeting but should also keep all board members (even the quiet ones) engaged. And try to extract their views and opinions on various matters. The moderator will present various discussion points to keep the meeting running smoothing, while also ensuring the meeting does to deviate too much from the main agenda.
3. Annual Shareholders Meetings
Annual shareholder meetings are essential for reviewing important company analytics and information such as financial statements. These annual meetings allow shareholders to take part in the important managerial decisions of the company.
Unprecedented times such as these have had various implications on the health sector, one of which is the issue of conducting annual shareholder meetings in light of the social distancing policies mandated by the state.
To avoid last minute cancellations, companies should conduct these meetings virtually, provided they’re allowed to do so. Review your company bylaws to see if you are allowed to conduct the annual shareholder meeting virtually. If so, you should give notice of the virtual meeting to the shareholders and providing instructions on how to access the meeting online.
Virtual meetings offer functionalities that support AGM’s. You can do live voting and conduct polls when stakeholder decisions are being made. Live Q&As can also be scheduled to discuss any topics or issues facing stakeholders.
Medical meeting planners can also record and post the meeting for some time, allowing shareholders to review the meeting in case they missed it.
4. Virtual Product Launch
While planning your product launch, having a rigorous marketing strategy is paramount. Having a clear understanding of the kind of demographic you’re targeting, the problems your product is solving will help guide your marketing strategy.
Medical meeting planners need to set a clear goal for their product launch event. Your main goal should be a collection of your departmental goals i.e. marketing, sales, manufacturing, customer support, etc.
Since healthcare products can get complex and difficult to grasp, you’ll need to deliver the most important features of your product. You can share the impact your product can have through engaging visuals such as 3D animation, VR, and the like.
Your sales force needs to be well-trained and equipped with all the useful materials (documents, brochures, product manuals, etc.). Event participants will have a plethora of questions and your sales force should be assisting them every step of the way.
After the event, you need to collect relevant data and analyze it to see if you met your goals for the launch. Such data also helps in devising personalized follow-up strategies.
5. Educational Dinner Meetings
Also known as learn and lunch or brown bag events, educational dinner meetings provide a more relaxed learning environment. These events promote a culture of interactive learning. Employees from various departments and teams come together to discuss ideas and strategies. It allows them to learn about various company roles and fosters an environment of cooperation.
For such events to be successful, medical meeting planners need to clarify their “why”. Do you want to achieve certain business goals? Do you want to teach skills?
Schedule and format the event so that it supports your goal/s for the meeting. It should be interesting and engaging, and one way to know what will work is to ask your employees what they would be interested in.
You can also invite your remote employees by having hybrid educational dinner meetings.
Final Word: Virtual Options for Medical Meeting Planners
A medical meeting planner can host different types of events (the most essential of which have been mentioned above). Each type of event differs in its goals and the people that it targets.
With the pandemic and its precautions, conducting virtual or hybrid events can save your company from potential delays or cancellations.
