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DTC in FocusDTC NewsGuest Columnist

How Point of Care Complements Other Healthcare Marketing Tactics

July 26, 2019 0

 

I sat down with Charlie Greenberg, a respected healthcare industry veteran and an expert in point-of-care (POC) marketing, to discuss current trends in healthcare marketing. It’s a topic Charlie knows well, having worked for more than 30 years in the industry with giants like Saatchi & Saatchi, Wyeth, and Merck. Charlie currently serves as a media and marketing consultant, so he spends a great deal of time thinking about the ways brands can improve their reach and maximize their return on investment.

Q: How has healthcare marketing changed during your time in the industry?

A: Market research on patient population profiles and their attitudes toward treatment options has become increasingly more sophisticated. We no longer focus only on demographics and affinity interests, but now incorporate attitudes toward treatment options, healthcare status, and relevant multicultural distinctions within an overall target universe.

Paid media in the marketing mix has embraced this more sophisticated market research by employing greater targeted media tactics. This is not only a function of the evolution of digital media but greater opportunities within the point-of-care arena and the availability to refine how mass media can reach a target audience.

Q: What’s the biggest thing healthcare marketers aren’t doing that they should, or that they should be doing more of?

A: Good marketers set themselves apart from the pack when they are willing to make bold decisions and address the marketplace by shaping customer thinking. Adopting a mindset of “test and learn” around how marketing dollars are spent needs to be better embraced. Short-term thinking often leads to stagnation and missed opportunities.

Secondly, marketers should also be investing more in communication which has the goal of building health literacy. This will not only support the ability to shape consumer thinking, but health literacy campaigns have been shown to lift the efforts of branded commercial campaigns when the two messages are running together.

Q: What effect can point of care (POC) have on the overall media plan? What benefits can brand managers and media planners realize from adding this channel to their mix?

A: Adding POC to a plan will increase the ability to laser target reaching prospects and patients. This complements the efforts of other tactics within the plan. Secondly, POC offers a guaranteed ROI, which also enriches the promotional effectiveness of the overall marketing plan.

Q: Why is healthcare personal to you?

A: It is rewarding to be able to feel a sense of achievement from launching that new snack food item on shelf, introducing a new car model or driving purchases of yet another shade of red lipstick. However, healthcare marketing offers a benefit of knowing that you are helping people understand health conditions and offering treatment to increase their quality of life.

Q: What’s your favorite thing about being a New Yorker?

A:  New York City offers real mobility since it is one of few places in America where you have the option to walk to get to your destination rather than being tied to your car.

Linda Ruschau

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DTC in FocusDTC NewsGuest ColumnistSponsored Content

Point of Care Demands a Modern Marketing Strategy

April 26, 2019 0

Sponsored Content

A varied media mix that includes effective print tactics, is fundamental to unlock the full value of a Point of Care sponsorship program.

Like numerous other media environments in recent years, the Point of Care landscape has become increasingly focused on digital platforms.  From televisions to touchscreens, providers have created a wealth of technology for marketers to engage patients and consumers.  Yet most doctors’ offices continue to welcome a variety of magazines, posters, wallboards, and brochures throughout their locations.  By capitalizing on these diverse engagement tools, marketers can unlock significant consumer action.  In fact, Nielsen cites that a media mix that incorporates print and digital assets can drive as much as 30% higher ROI[1] – meaning that your campaign can play a vital role in the patient journey. With the ability to “own” platforms that are more transportable and offer distinct take-away value, brands can diversify their POC messaging through print materials, all while gaining 100% share-of-voice.

Reinforcing your brand message with a dynamic media mix

Since its origin, the Point of Care industry has worked diligently to develop its venues to be turn-key marketing environments that offer valuable information to a wide array of consumers and caregivers.  Its channels prioritize efficiency for advertisers by eliminating costly, time-consuming creative versioning through standardized adverting units.  This uniform approach also allows a simplified, multi-channel strategy to engage consumers through multiple touchpoints with only a few required assets.  Waiting room video messaging can be easily reinforced through condition guide sponsorship placed in examination rooms.  Examination room tablet interstitials can boost click-through rates by introducing the brand through a waiting room wallboard before the doctor discussion.  In each case, the brand can boost exposure with static tools by leveraging traditional magazine advertising spreads.  These reinforced campaigns have proven to be incredibly powerful with consumers.  In recent Mesmerize programs, sponsorships that utilized a waiting room wallboard and a hyper-targeted mobile ad unit drove three times greater ROI than standard print programs alone.  Furthermore, those programs prompted nearly five times the national click-through average for mobile banners[2].  Indeed, brand reinforcement across multiple platforms offers a powerful boost, especially for targeted campaigns – and all with cost and time efficiency.

Target your customers by venue and by platform

Targeting remains the consistent recipe for success with all POC tactics – and where the true value of marketing lies in this channel.  Segmentation through client-supplied list matching, medical specialty selection, or audience demographics can curate venue lists to ensure maximum exposure to the appropriate audience.  Since the start of Point of Care promotion, marketers have created media mix strategies that utilized the space for its hypertargeting abilities.  Now that the industry has matured, it is imperative that brands utilize a varied approach within their POC plans as well.

As CMI recently noted, the strategic benefits from print-based tactics complement and reinforce digital messaging and significantly impact consumer engagement.  Furthermore, by understanding the specific audience target, marketers can segment a venue to reach various factions through the tactics they relate to best.  For example, physicians who are accustomed to reading printed materials will likely respond more strongly to a customized guide, while digital tactics in the waiting room can occupy time for patients anticipating their physician visit.[3]

Digital media has a solidified place in healthcare marketing and Point of Care remains a powerful proving ground for those tactics.  However, by adopting a diversified strategy that employs a variety of tools – including static media – marketers can optimize their POC spending to ensure maximum engagement, all with superior targeting and access that has offered repeated success in this channel.

 

References

[1] Tsvetkov, Tsventan. (2018, August 8). “Perspectives: The Easier Way To Drive Higher Marketing ROI,” Retrieved from https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2017/perspectives-the-easier-way-to-drive-higher-marketing-roi.html

[2] Mesmerize, (2019, January 21). “Consumer Packaged Goods 2019 Mobile Case Study”.

[3] Marvel, Darcy, Cooper. (2019, 14 March). “The Importance of Print Media in Today’s NPP Channel Mix,” Retrieved from https://www.cmimedia.com/insights/povs/the-importance-of-print-media-in-todays-npp-channel-mix

 

Craig Mait

DTC News

How to Identify Breakthrough Ideas and Dramatically Improve ROI

January 20, 2015

Increasingly, patients have become a critical link in the prescribing process. Individuals are taking more responsibility for their own healthcare choices, proactively seeking disease and drug information online and initiating dialogues with their doctors – and it’s having a significant effect on the treatment they receive. A 2014 study published in the Medical Care journal found that “activated” patient requests for drugs had a strong effect on doctors’ treatment decisions; requesting a specific drug doubled (at minimum, depending on the drug) the likelihood that it would be prescribed to the patient. This means that delivering an effective DTC campaign can have a significant impact on the overall understanding and appropriate utilization of a product in market.

While many pharma companies appreciate the importance of connecting with consumers, it can still be difficult to develop a breakthrough message that cuts through the clutter in the market. So how do you identify an idea or execution that will make people sit up and listen?

For starters, the five recommendations below can help you approach the problem differently and begin to drive more successful DTC campaigns. They can also help bolster your business case for launching or refreshing a DTC campaign.

 1.  Explore a wide range of ideas efficiently.

“To have a great idea, have a lot of them,” Thomas Edison famously quipped. Unfortunately, traditional market research – qualitative interviews and the “test-tweak-retest” process – makes exploring a wide range of ideas costly, time-consuming and practically impossible. Therefore, companies are inclined to play it safe, and the chances of identifying a truly breakthrough idea remain low. (While regulation does place restrictions on what can be said, there are still opportunities to develop breakthrough DTC campaigns within the given parameters). New research technologies, such as those which rely on evolutionary algorithms (guided by real-time consumer feedback) to sift through large idea spaces efficiently, are allowing marketers to explore a wider range of ideas without incurring any additional risk, cost or time delays. Because they’re able to test many more ideas, they’re more likely to identify standout ideas that will deliver superior performance.

 2.  Let consumers decide, really.

Even when companies conduct consumer research, decisions are often made arbitrarily, guided by internal politics or “best guess” assumptions. Research solutions that can explore lots of ideas quantitatively, and which can point to the exact messaging or imagery that resonates well with consumers, remove the guesswork and increase stakeholders’ confidence in the idea.

3.  Measure the right things.

Traditional “ask and tell” research methods often don’t reflect how people will actually behave in the marketplace; much of consumer decision-making is guided by unconscious heuristics or biases, especially as relates to an emotionally charged topic like personal health. So how do you find out how consumers will really respond in the moment of truth?

  • Mirror a real-life scenario by asking the consumer to choose between different alternatives, rather than asking her to react to stimuli in isolation (e.g., which message would make the patient most likely to inquire about the drug, rather than how likely is this message to make the patient inquire about the drug).
  •  Have consumers react to the stimulus holistically, not to separate elements of the stimulus. In reality, we launch campaigns comprised of different elements that work in concert to deliver key information and motivate action. Therefore, it’s critical to present ideas holistically in the testing phase to capture realistic feedback and, ultimately, gain the most accurate insight into what will perform best in the market.

 4.  Deliver actionable insights.

Focus on value-based outcomes by understanding how your campaign is actually likely to perform. In other words, how does stated interest translate to actual patient utilization? How does the campaign benchmark against industry norms? Forecasting is a powerful tool for predicting success. That said, in order to develop a robust business case for funding, make sure to base your forecast on the idea that is truly your best opportunity to succeed.

5.  Optimize the message for the medium.

A review of pharma’s recent ad spend suggests that many companies may be significantly underleveraging digital channels in favor of more traditional media such as television and radio. As patients become increasingly proactive about seeking health information online, companies should consider how their expectations might differ across platforms. For example, a TV ad may be focused on informing those who are at the very beginning of their patient journey about a disease. On the other hand, someone who subscribes to a targeted newsletter or who is seeking specific answers through an online search may have very different information needs. To resonate with a wider range of patients, marketers should match (and optimize) the right message for the medium at hand.

Kelly Startzel