Pharma can’t really afford not to go digital. With ever-increasing healthcare practitioner (HCP) and patient usage of digital technology, the ‘norm’ for marketing and communications must completely change. Digital should take the lead role, argues John Hackney.
The proliferation of mobile device and computer usage by HCPs and patients, and therefore the need for pharma to leverage digital channels, is growing exponentially. Manhattan Research recently found that 26% of European doctors own an iPad, and they spend more than a quarter of their professional online time on that device. The same research also found that iPad-owning doctors use desktop and laptop computers for 55% of their professional Internet use, and smartphones 18% of the time. By the time you read this, the data will have increased even more!
Pharma brands and companies have adopted some types of technology and digital communications, largely in a tactical way. For the most part, pharma hasn’t kept up with its users’ needs. Digital communications are still under-used for HCP campaigns, patient disease awareness and patient compliance. Digital is still secondary, or ‘in addition to,’ rather than ‘instead of,’ offline marketing.
The Digital Reality
Customer needs, digital communications, social networks, media channels, targeting, and opportunities for pharma brands have developed sufficiently in recent times so that a brand can be launched, built, repositioned, and sustained almost entirely using digital channels. Non-digital communications would have a minor supporting sales collateral role.
Before I receive an onslaught of comments along the lines of “yes but regulations means our hands are tied when it comes to digital,” of course there will always be regulations challenges. Approvals take time, and you need to plan accordingly, but they’re not insurmountable. Bring in your legal and medical teams from the outset of any communications programme development, so they become active stakeholders. Get everyone to agree the ‘rules of engagement.’ Plus you can use the time it takes for approvals to your benefit. Your media planner and buyer has time to become a master in creating great relationships and deals with digital media owners in the run up to your campaign going live.
Can pharma really afford not to do go digital? Reaching HCPs and patients online can be around 10% of the cost of doing it non-digitally, from a cost per thousand impressions perspective. Plus high quality open source content management system (CMS) platforms and other software/production techniques mean you don’t have to spend lots of cash building stuff. Instead you can spend money where it counts — reaching and engaging with your audience.
Not only can you move virtually all of your marketing communications online, you’ve also got the potential to do most of your sales support online. Closed loop marketing (CLM) continues to make leaps and bounds from a technological perspective. Your sales force becomes more effective when in front of customers and, more importantly, when they aren’t. It allows customers to engage with the company or brand when they want, accessing what they feel they need. Self (remote) detailing, co-browsing, web-ex, dynamic (intelligent) CMS — all mean that the relationship between customer and company can be rich, fulfilling and one‑to‑one, even on a remote basis.
Digital is virtually limitless in how it can and will be used. For example, we’re developing apps for patient tracking, dosage converters, and other tasks to support and encourage patient compliance. Creating virtual circles between patient disease awareness and HCP education through digital channels is also a growing trend. You tell patients what to look out for, they go to their doctor, you make sure that the doctor is armed with all the information that they need to answer patient questions, and to provide better diagnosis and patient care. Still unconvinced? Here are a few examples of recent campaigns run almost entirely online.
Blockbuster Loss of Exclusivity Campaign
A category-leading blockbuster brand nearing loss of exclusivity (LOE) needed to maintain prescribing behaviour amongst frontline GPs and specialists. Switching from an almost exclusively offline approach, the lion’s share of marketing activity was put behind a multimarket digital marketing programme aimed at relevant HCPs. The aims? To ensure they were fully aware of the benefits of this brand versus future generics on an ongoing basis, and to keep existing prescribers post LOE.
The campaign included a website ‘destination’ with pertinent ‘hooks’ and hard-hitting promotional messages to encourage site exploration and return visits; more detailed content for those that required greater substantiation; highly targeted and adaptable regional and local drive-to-site banner ad campaigns featuring interactive surveys and games, and the use of quick response (QR) codes. The digital media buying strategy meant messages were constantly put in front of the right HCPs for a sustained period of time. Those that wanted to know more were directed to an engaging, content-rich website, giving them the power to access as much information as they felt they needed.
This £1.5-million campaign, including media buying, resulted in a phenomenal 0.5% click through rate via more than 120 banners in nine languages across 11 European countries — that’s around 16 million online impressions during 6 months. The average targeted HCP was exposed to the messaging around 340 times throughout the campaign. The website also had an incredibly low 60% bounce rate.
Now take a moment to consider the creative and media buying cost implications to have such a targeted, yet widespread reach. Can you imagine the cost of 120+ ads in nine languages across 11 countries if they were done as print ads? And how many HCPs would have really paid attention to print ads? Not to mention the fact there’s really no way to measure print ads’ response rate and then revise your campaign messaging and media ‘on the fly’ — a critical aspect of the digital campaign.
Patient Education Campaign Goes Digital
A major pharma company is completely replacing its pan-European television and press patient education advertising campaign with an online marketing and communications programme. The programme is aimed at consumers and is entirely educational — designed to get people who have regularly tried and failed to quit smoking to go to their GPs for help.
Going digital means they can have a proper, highly targeted customer relationship management (CRM) programme for the first time. For example, targeting people via Facebook who are coming up to their thirtieth or fortieth birthdays, people who have just got married, who are changing jobs, or in a new relationship. All of these are considered to be ‘smoking cessation’ triggers.
Then relevant messages are put in front of these people, driving them to a dynamic CRM website, which users ‘opt in’ to. By tracking signed up users, they can regularly send personalized emails based on what people do or don’t do on the site. Ultimately, this is about taking people on a whole journey, from initial awareness through to setting a doctor’s appointment.
This digital programme enables the pharma company to set key performance indicators and benchmarks, and then track and manage the performance of the campaign and messaging in real time to ensure that the objectives are being met. They can weed out messages that don’t work well, or refine site content and the user experience to optimize the programme.
Now consider an offline campaign. This would need to play out in its entirety before you’re able to gauge how well it’s performed. Not only this, but you’re severely limited in the type of tracking that can be done.
Fishing Where the Fish Are
This isn’t about a prescription drug, but it’s an interesting healthcare brand story. SASMAR’s Conceive Plus is a vaginal fertility lubricant designed to assist the path to getting pregnant naturally.
The brand is currently undergoing a complete relaunch to raise awareness amongst a broader target audience in the UK, and it is all being done digitally. SASMAR knows that its prospective customers are highly active in the digital world, visiting online sources of information to improve their knowledge. So logic dictates a focus on digital.
The campaign includes a new content-rich website, with drive-to-site and viral media campaigns aimed at women and couples who are trying to conceive, via search, display, and online PR. Forming the cornerstone of an important social media presence, a Facebook page sends out relevant news and content, and engages in two-way conversation with users. The result is an integrated and enhanced online presence that connects with target customers, guides them through the decision-making process, creates awareness, comprehension, and desire, stimulates and facilitates brand purchase, and engenders brand advocates to spread the message and virally generate incremental sales. SASMAR is able to target all women who potentially want to try to improve their chances of getting pregnant because they’re both reachable and identifiable in the digital world.
There are very few things that pharma companies and brands cannot achieve online in a sales, marketing, or marketing communications sense. Clearly you have to work within the regulations, use digital channels appropriately and understand how to protect yourself from adverse event reporting. But from CLM through to patient compliance and education, there’s virtually no part of a marketing communications campaign that can’t be run on a digital basis these days.
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