Perhaps no one can perfectly predict the future—or anticipate a global pandemic that is still having reverberations on our economy, our health, and the life sciences industry to this day—but
that didn’t stop us from asking 10 industry experts to take their best shot at anticipating what to expect in 2023 and beyond. After all, they can still read the tea leaves and provide their best interpretation of what is trending, where the industry is most struggling, and what might be coming down the pike that marketers should be aware of.
So, in order to help best prepare you for what might come, we asked these 10 individuals to peer into their crystal balls and let us know:
What will be the biggest trend(s) marketers will be talking about in 2023? Do you think this trend will prove impactful next year or in the near future or will it just be all talk?
By the end of 2023, what do you think will be the biggest change to the industry that marketers will need to adjust to? What can marketers start doing now to prepare for this change?
Looking further down the road—three to five years from now—what will be the biggest differences in the industry compared to now? How will these differences most impact marketers?
If your crystal ball is too cloudy to predict the future, what are the biggest changes you hope to see within the next few years? What would you want to see the industry do differently or change and why? Can you offer suggestions for how to make your dream a reality?
The Biggest Change in 2023
A lot of talk over the last couple of years has been about the increasing prevalence of zero-click searches, which speaks to a growing trend among our audiences to want quick, easy answers when information-seeking. We’ve been talking internally about how this trend plays out in healthcare and how it impacts the building of healthcare resources. For instance, as we standardize building question-and-answer-based content into webpages as part of our SEO strategy, do we risk giving potentially in-depth health questions short-shrift? Moving forward, we’ll need marketing strategies that keep pace with the desire for bite-sized answers to our most pressing questions, while also creating more personalized, compelling content that breaks through and entices us to go deep where appropriate.
The Biggest Trend in 2023
Patient centricity and more effective inclusion of diverse populations has been, and will continue to be, a topic at the forefront of healthcare marketers’ minds. But far too often, efforts to be inclusive are left until late in the drug development cycle. To truly make our inclusion goals more than just talk, we will need systemic change in the clinical development process that includes designing more inclusive protocols, changing criteria by which trial sites are selected to place a greater emphasis on underserved communities, embracing decentralized trials, and deploying an insights-driven marketing communications approach to trial enrollment that ensures representativeness—without sacrificing scientific integrity, cost, or efficiency.
