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During a recent dinner among fellow DTC marketers, I asked who believed it was critical for their brand to be on social media. All answered yes. Then I asked how many of the pharma brands they work on have made the leap. Only half answered yes. I turned my attention to the “no” group to dive into their reluctance to take their brands to social media, and their answers surprised me.

I expected the standard excuses regarding MLR headaches, FDA risks, 24/7 Facebook monitoring, and the such. But what I heard was that most of these marketers had a new reason for resisting social media marketing: they simply don’t like social media.

Let’s face it. Trust in social media is declining among consumers and marketers alike. A quick scan of 2018 headlines will bring up allegations of privacy violation, miscalculating metrics, and mass distribution of fake news just to start. In addition, countless recent studies are revealing the perils of digital addiction to our brains, our emotions, and our entire social system. Yet, Facebook remains the backbone of social media and for many people worldwide, it is their entry point into the Internet.

Pharma DTC marketers ask me all the time, why do I need to be on social media? While I hear about people deleting Facebook from their phones, studies show that 68% of American adults, or roughly 171 million people, are still using the social media network. And the same people that claim to be shunning Facebook can’t get enough of Instagram and WhatsApp, social media platforms owned by Facebook. I see it among my peers, too; they say they dislike it, but they keep on scrolling.

It used to be that if you wanted to reach the greatest amount of people, you advertised during the Super Bowl to grab its roughly 111 million viewers. Facebook is like a Super Bowl ad. Every. Single. Day. And you don’t have to spend over $5 million for a 30-second spot. Can your brand afford to not advertise on Facebook?

Accommodating pharma

Maybe it will ease our social conscience to discuss what Facebook is doing right.

Just as Facebook rewards its advertisers for publishing engaging content, the company itself also works at being sensitive to the needs of their users. In response to the unique regulations surrounding drugs and devices, Facebook now allows pharmaceutical companies to turn off comments. While eliminating comments is not ideal due to the subsequent “de-prioritization” of content, this exception is not made for other companies and reflects their desire to make the platform acceptable to the healthcare industry.

In response to industry demands, Facebook has also enabled a scrolling ISI feature so that required safety information can be shared in Facebook ads while not exceeding the available space. As with the comment control, this solution is not ideal. However, it is incredibly encouraging that Facebook is responding to user demands. As more pharma companies create a presence on Facebook, I have no doubt that Facebook will respond to demand and rally their creative genius to find better solutions to ISI, and further adapt their suite of advertising products to better serve the pharma industry.

Metrics + algorithms

Facebook uses big data, deep learning, complex algorithms, and many more advanced technologies in its never-ending quest to balance the demands of its stakeholders. At the moment, Facebook is prioritizing authentic interactions – they want to engage users, and they are using complex algorithms to determine if responses to a post are authentic and credible. While they have offered companies the ability to turn off comments – an idea that frequently appeals to a regulated industry like pharma – they punish you for using this option with lower rankings and less visibility. I recommend to my clients that they encourage and manage comments, but if you’re not ready to do that, the option is there for brands to turn them off.

Just the pictures please

Instagram, the photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, is currently the fastest growing social media network. While Instagram can frustrate pharma marketers with its limited space for legal disclaimers and hyperlinks only available in the user bio, its 1 billion monthly users motivate marketers to overcome the learning curve. In addition, some innovative methods for including ISI information in Instagram Stories or on entirely separate accounts has eased some of the pain of posting necessary legal information.

Who’s doing it right

There are a number of pharmaceutical companies that are doing a good job of managing a social media presence and reaping the benefits of increased consumer awareness. One is Alimera Sciences, a pharma company that makes ILUVIEN – a small drug depot that is inserted into the eye for long-term treatment of diabetic macular edema. Alimera Sciences created a comprehensive program to use Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to raise awareness not only of the drug, but also of the condition itself. They created targeted ads that addressed the concerns of those who might be looking for a solution to potential loss of vision. With a minimal investment in paid outreach on those channels, the campaign achieved nearly 200,000 impressions or engagements with its posts. Facebook provided a space where ads and information about ILUVIEN would be readily received by its audience.

EVZIO is another example of a company, in this case kaléo, Inc., that is successfully taking their consumer marketing to social media channels. A prescription medication used in cases of opioid emergencies, EVZIO chose to disable comments due to addiction being such a hot button issue. Their posts and paid outreach target addicts and individuals who care for a senior citizen who might accidentally overdose on opioids for pain management, and everything links back to their website with its well-developed messaging and product information.

In short, while we love to hate on social media, we’re all still addicted to scrolling. Facebook remains one of the best ways to reach the largest audience.

In today’s world, consumers expect personalized, relevant communications tailored to their specific needs. The consumer goods, retail, fashion, and travel industries all reach these levels of personalization, but how can pharma marketers reach consumers on such an individualized level in such a regulated space? Enter data-driven marketing.

The promise of big data has largely remained unfulfilled for pharmaceutical marketers. Many pharma marketers treat data as an afterthought, using analytics only to see how their campaigns and tactics have performed after the fact and for ROI analysis. But data has the potential to help pharma marketers transform their communication streams. There needs to be a mindset shift that moves data analysis up in the thought process, using it to inform overarching strategies, channels, and creative campaigns from the outset. By using data in this way, brands can get the right messages to the right consumers at the right times, in channel-appropriate formats so they can consume the content in ways that make sense to them. In doing so, pharma content will become more relevant and authentic, gaining the credibility that is currently lacking in the existing “one size fits all” pharma advertising climate.

Read on to see how using data at each step in the strategy process can lead to the ultimate goal of creating long-term customer relationships.

Audience-first approach

Taking the time to understand a target audience is an important first step in creating a strategy, but many pharma marketers stop at researching the demographics of their potential patient population. But in this day and age, that is simply not enough data on which to base an entire patient communications strategy. Not only should demographics be considered, further information such as their likes and dislikes, their wants and fears, their device habits and usage, and where they are in their patient journey will give a much fuller picture of who they are and what content will resonate with them. Using this data will allow marketers to drill down to further levels of segmentation and deliver more personalized and meaningful content to their targets.

Social listening, surveys, and first- and third-party data can give these direct insights into consumer targets so that marketers can better understand them better on a basic level. Brands often assume social listening alone provides an accurate and complete assessment of consumer sentiment, but conversations online about healthcare are vastly different than what happens offline. Combining social listening data with other third-party data can fully capture an audience’s needs.

Further, digital media provides a tremendous opportunity to observe consumers’ engagement habits, their media consumption, and their device habits. Tie this data in with AI and machine learning, and pharma marketers have a powerful backbone of data on which to drive their consumer communications.

Insights that can be mined from this data are vast. Brands can understand why consumers are asking their doctors about certain drugs. They can see how target consumers engage with content, when they are engaging, and on which devices. They can track engagement over time, and see which content is valuable to consumers and which isn’t. Data can help uncover key decision points, actions, and perceptions that drive consumer behavior across the patient journey at any given time.

Segmenting audiences using such data is a basic first step in drilling down into a target audience. Segments can include criteria such as whether they are a patient or caregiver, where the consumers are in their individual patient journeys, and whether they are on your product or a competitive brand. Each of these segments of the audience will have distinct content needs, and using data to inform these needs, marketers can create content that speaks to each one of them at each point.

To understand an audience even more fully, more granular data can be used to create personas. Personas go beyond segments, giving a face and a name to individuals who represent these target segments. It is easier and more meaningful to create content for Susan, a stay-at-home mom of three with type 2 diabetes who doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare her treatment regimen than it is to create content for a female aged 35-45 with the same characteristics. Personas use data to give further insight into the target audience’s lives and give creatives something on which to build their creative campaigns.

Once brands have fully identified their targets, they can choose the channels on which they will execute using their targets’ preferred channels. Different channels might be appropriate for different journey stages, based on the target personas. Different tactics and creative formats might be appropriate for different stages of the journey as well. By leveraging these data insights, pharma marketers can map the most effective opportunities to provide content to consumers at times they are most receptive to receiving messaging across the patient journey. Personalizing the content to each stage can drive engagement and customer satisfaction to help brands form long-term relationships with their consumers.

Using data in the execution

Using real-time data to serve up ads isn’t new. For years pharma marketers have been using programmatic ads based on audience segmentation data to better target ads, optimize spend, and drive greater value because they knew the ads would reach the audience that they were intended to reach. Then came retargeting: serving consumers ads that highlight products they’ve recently viewed on a brand site or searched for on Google.

Retargeting can be even more powerful with more data: if brands know that a consumer is early in their patient journey, they can serve ads for awareness and consideration (real-world data for instance) rather than conversion (driving consumers to talk to their doctor about their product). They can treat visitors to their website’s homepage differently than those who have looked at financial support information by driving the former to ask their doctors about the treatment and driving the latter to a patient assistance program. In this way, using data about consumers can lead to more meaningful patient communications.

Additionally, using data to serve sequenced ads can be full-funnel experience by leading a consumer from awareness through consideration to purchase. As mentioned before, different channels and content formats can play different roles in each stage of the patient journey. By serving up a series of ads in sequence based on the target’s specific journey, the message stays relevant and increases the chances of the consumer interacting with a brand’s content.

Data can also be used for real-time optimization of assets in market. A/B testing of creative, messages, and CTAs can show which assets are performing best with each target segment, allowing brands to optimize to only the best performing creative and focus the ad spend where it will have the greatest ROI.

Beyond banners

Using data is not just for buying and serving banners or other media. Data can be used to enrich CRM programs as well. Most pharma brands treat CRM programs as a “set it and forget it” tactic – all consumers that sign up for the program gets the same sequence of emails in the same order, regardless of whether or not they even open the email and regardless of where they are in their patient journey. CRM programs can be tailored to multiple audience segments, and brands can further target each individual consumer based on his/her response to each item in the CRM stream using the previous engagement data. The use of CRM data can be extended to the social media space as well. Based on the user interaction with the email, brands can retarget the user on social with different ads based on that behavior.

And of course data can be used to track the success of all of a brand’s in-market tactics: media, websites, and CRM programs. Bringing all of this data together in one integrated dashboard can give brands insights into which tactics and channels are working well for which consumers at which stages of their patient journeys, and it can show a brand where it needs to optimize for its next campaign.

Looking to the future

While pharma marketers have access to a wide array of data about their target consumers, some challenges do exist. Consumers are increasingly wary of giving up their data online, and the highly visible data security breaches in the past few years haven’t helped. With regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) expanding globally, marketers will have to be increasingly transparent when collecting consumer data. That said, consumers are willing to exchange their data for content that provides value, so we as pharma marketers need to ensure that the content we are creating solves a need that our consumers have.

The benefits of data-driven marketing are vast and include efficiency, real-time optimization of messaging, improved creative, and extremely quantifiable ROI. When properly implemented throughout the entire strategy and content creation process, it can save pharma marketers time and money and allow brands to create relationships with its targeted consumers, not just advertise and market to them. By leveraging data, brands can glean insights into their target consumers so they can deliver the individualized content that will achieve the as-yet unfulfilled promise of big data for pharma marketers.

Announced on Diabetes Alert Day, March 26th, PatientPoint and the American Medical Association (AMA) are developing content to educate patients and their HCPs about the risks of type 2 diabetes as well as cardiovascular disease. The collaboration will utilize PatientPoint's in-office technology to encourage patients to have an informed conversation about either condition, with the goal of “reaching and activating patients … to prevent the onset of both diseases,” stated the news release.

Educational materials will include a prediabetes PSA in primary care and cardiologist waiting rooms, as well as interactive banner ads and infographics available in the exam rooms. Content will drive patients to either DoIHavePrediabetes.org (which was launched by the AMA, Ad Council, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Diabetes Association) or online, downloadable resources from the AMA and American Heart Association.

Click here to read the full details about this joint educational effort.

HCB Health has created three internal business units to “best serve an increasingly diverse set of clients and to help manage the firm's rapid growth,” according to a recently news release. The three units – MedTech, BioPharma, and Health & Wellness – will manage their own P&Ls as well as each having its own dedicated team. All “will report to HCB Partner, Nancy Beesley, who recently became the firm's president.”

HCB MedTech was “created and staffed with a curated group of deep device expertise and technology talent.” The team will be led by Associate Partner, Managing Director Amy Dowell and Creative Director, James Hamilton. Both are veterans in the MedTech space.

Servicing small to mid-size biopharma companies, HCB BioPharma will “serve the agency's increasing foothold in the pharma space.” Francesco Lucarelli will lead the charge, serving as EVP, Managing Director. This unit will have offices in Austin and Chicago. He will be joined by Amy Hansen, Executive Creative Director to help “guide and grow” this unit.

HCB Health & Wellness will “focus on prevention and treatment”, serving clients in “large physician networks, hospital systems, health plans, behavioral health, and post-acute care centers.”  Associate Partner and Managing Director, Kim Carpenter, and Creative Director, Michele Evans, will helm this team.

Dan Chichester has re-joined Ogilvy Health, after a five-year hiatus, as Chief Experience Officer (CXO). In this newly-created role, he will be “responsible for driving forward Ogilvy Health’s innovation, digital strategy, and brand engagement,” the news release stated.

Andrew Schirmer, CEO of Ogilvy Health was quoted in the release, stating, “Today, everything in the marketing, communications, and transformation business operates through a digitally enabled ecosystem. What we are building for our clients are brand experiences that reach healthcare providers, payers, caregivers, and patients through a myriad of channels, touchpoints, and platforms. … Dan is exactly who should be leading this charge. I’m really looking forward to working with him and the rest of the leadership team as we continue our push to ensure we are innovating and optimizing on every front,” he said. Chichester will report to Schirmer.

Chichester most recently served as Chief Digital Officer with TBWA\WorldHealth. Prior to that, he was Ogilvy Health's Chief Digital Office for five years and a part of their Interactive Group as a Creative Director for nine years beforehand.

Stacey Singer, an agency growth specialist of 30 years, recently announced the launch of her own independent agency consultancy. Having left her post with WPP, where she most recently built and managed their global Client Satisfaction Center of Excellence, Singer told DTC Perspectives that she identified a growing need to help better serve agency accounts and thus led to her new venture. Her eponymous consultancy will help agency clients develop the skills and behaviors required to retain and grow their businesses, as well as provide advisement on areas of vulnerability and how integrating proven techniques will lead to immediate improvements and long-term gains.

According to the press release, Singer said, “Agencies dedicate tremendous resources to winning new business. They have pitch teams, consultants, dashboards and best practices, but few agencies commit the same resources or rigor to retain and grow that business. This practice is particularly unfortunate, as nothing hurts an agency’s morale and bottom line more than the constant cycle of pitching, winning, losing and re-pitching business.”