Seeking Medical Guidance, but in Different Ways – How Patients and HCPs Interact with Conversational AI on Pharmaceutical Websites
By: Dr. Duré Hussain, VP, Medical Strategy and Commercial Consulting
By: Erin Ruggiero, Chief Digital Officer, Swoop
This past year was defined by digital, with companies transitioning, innovating and reassessing their targeting strategies post-pandemic. Digital marketers that want to capture HCPs and patient populations should focus on these six key resolutions, including an emphasis on personalization, omnichannel engagement and next best action.
1. Bring Personalization into Your Strategy
Physicians are open to receiving market education from pharmaceutical brands — and are approximately five times more responsive if those messages are personalized. By reaching these high value HCPs using predictive analytics in conjunction with creative, message, and content affinities, marketers can target and engage more effectively. By developing impactful messaging that can be deployed to a preferred audience, campaign impact and ROI are likely to increase.
2. Consider Access Hurdles When Speaking to Your Audience
Access to treatment is a major hurdle across the industry; according to Kaiser, 4 out of 5 adults have either delayed or not received care at all due to cost reasons. As coverage continues to be a factor in 2022 and beyond, it is worth incorporating access targeting within campaigns addressing de-identified patients and their caretakers, as well as relevant health care professionals.
3. Include Pharmacists in Targeting
Pharmacists are among the most trusted HCPs due to their interpersonal interactions with patients in the community; for instance, nearly 4 out of 5 patients are more likely to get vaccinated based on a pharmacist’s recommendation. As pharmacists administer up to 86% of immunizations (such as influenza) and are often located in close proximity to patients, reaching this group is key. Keeping this in mind, pharmacists should absolutely be included in your targeting approach through both direct messaging and geotargeting, along with traditional physicians.
4. Upgrade Your Email Campaigns with Next Best Action
In addition to personalization, email campaigns can be upgraded by incorporating predictive analytics around relevant next best action. By better understanding an audience, emails can be deployed at the right time, place, and with the right content for higher engagement, including optimized follow-up. Trends have shown an increased read time for physicians from ~30% to ~50%, and we can expect much of the same going forward.
5. Develop a Connected TV and Telehealth Strategy
Forbes reports that cord-cutting tripled from 2014-2021. This shift has prompted advertisers to re-prioritize connected TV (CTV), which allows audiences to be reached across streaming platforms. Marketers can now focus their messaging at the device-level and use telehealth data streams to determine HCPs by location. Telehealth also continues to rise in popularity, with McKinsey reporting use stabilizing at 38X pre-pandemic numbers in 2021.
6. Rally Executive Sponsorship to Champion an Omnichannel Solution
An omnichannel solution allows ideal HCP and patient audiences to be activated based on their media preferences, strengthening campaign impact and increasing reach. These channels include programmatic, addressable and connected TV, streaming audio and internet radio, social media, site personalization, linear TV and terrestrial radio — enabling advertisers to target everywhere.
About the Author
Erin Ruggiero
Chief Digital Officer
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Erin DeRuggiero currently serves as the Chief Digital Officer at Swoop, where she is focused on developing targeting and analytics products that allow brands to reach their ideal patient and health care professional audiences. Previously, Erin was the founder and CEO of TI Health where she brought more than 25 years of digital advertising, data and healthcare marketing experience. Prior to that, she founded SRAX, ad tech across industries that was up-listed on NASDAQ two years post launch, a milestone for a female-led healthcare tech startup. She has worked with pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical devices and their respective advertising agencies to create palpable, positive outcomes for hundreds of therapeutics, devices and brands. |