Foregrounding patient voices, omnichannel delivery, and other strategies that will transform healthcare marketing.
I recently attended the Digital Pharma East conference in Philadelphia. Kudos to the FiercePharma team and conference chairs for putting together a terrific curriculum. The presentations and panel discussions shined a light on the current and future state of pharma marketing. Topics included how to leverage digital channels to engage patients and HCPs, the state of digital transformation efforts, issues around accessibility/affordability, and many others.
One common theme that emerged across the sessions was the importance of prioritizing patient needs.
For those who might have missed the conference, here are my top five takeaways:
1. Voice of the patient – listening and empowering
One of the three content tracks was dedicated to patient and caregiver perspectives. I heard moving narratives of patients managing chronic conditions. Hearing them speak directly—and incorporating their voices into our communication strategies—is critical to our patient engagement strategies and their health outcomes.
Listening to these and creating need-based patient-centric experiences reverberated across the panel discussions. It became clear that content useful to patients may differ from the product-centric content traditionally pushed. Most other industries—travel and finance—recognize the need to tailor services and communication to the individual. As consumers, patients have grown accustomed to these digital experiences in other sectors, and they expect healthcare experiences to keep pace. Today patients need to be thought of as consumers of healthcare, which forces us to rethink how we create and deliver content.
Conversations also explored how patient support programs run outside of marketing are often underfunded, yet have an outsized impact on patient adherence and outcomes. Future efforts may unite these programs within the marketing domain and illustrate their value via ROI impact against established KPIs.
2. Data, data, data — the fuel for personalization
Google’s cookie-less environment is on the horizon, and companies are experimenting not only with new ways to interact with their customers but serving communities that have often been left behind. Clean, actionable first-party data will be imperative for brands to best reach, engage, and target audiences — and now “Zero-Party” data becomes that much more important.
Zero-party data refers to data and information that audiences provide willingly to a brand. In health and wellness, this could be anything from a patient’s condition to where they are in their treatment journey. Having a dedicated plan to grow these authentic, data-rich relationships within your patient communities is not only imperative for your brand. It is a massive win for patients, who receive personalized content supporting their health journey.
How to synthesize data into actionable insights while being HIPPA compliant and reducing privacy risk was also a hot topic – all in the service of bringing forward better, patient-centric solutions.
3. Embracing omni-channel marketing – putting patient preferences at the fore
Many panelists spoke eloquently about the need for transitioning from a “multi-channel” approach to an omni-channel channel strategy. This essentially means pivoting from a channel-first mentality to a patient-first focus.
Omni-channel marketing casts a spotlight on how a user, in our case the patient or HCP, prefers to receive a message – where, when, and how. Our job is to leverage the data available to personalize the messaging on a 1:1 basis. This means delivering relevant content that aligns with a patient’s needs at a particular moment within their health journey. This content is delivered to the patient’s preferred channel, with enhanced messaging frequency across multiple preferred channels.
Pair this with engaging content, rich with utility, and you have an exciting opportunity to maximize engagement across the touchpoints your audience cares about most.
4. Modular content – the building blocks for a personalized content experience
In a presentation on omni-channel capabilities, one panelist stated that “content isn’t only King. It is now King and Queen.” This is because “everyone in marketing is now a content marketer” and we must “feed the omni-channel beast.”
To deliver this seamless, optimized customer experience, cutting-edge pharma marketers are creating “atoms” of content that can be pulled from a CMS to serve a personalized content journey. Intended to drive health outcomes, these content modules — pre-approved for specific indications — can be adjusted automatically to fit any channel (email, digital ads, social media, etc.). This process ensures that relevant consumer messaging will be consistent, helping the end user elevate a brand’s value and consideration.
Of course, employing a modular content strategy requires a rethinking of the MLR process. In the end, though, this approach can make for a less cumbersome tactic-specific approval process, as the core nuggets of content have already been MLR-approved prior to uploading into the CMS. Because of unique challenges, the message from the MLR community is to engage them early and often during the process.
5. Evolving HCP marketing – inextricably intertwined with the patient journey
HCP marketing, like patient marketing, is evolving into a new communication space by embracing the whole person. This is most evident in HCP marketing’s migration to consumer social media. And while the concept of personalized HCP journeys is being embraced, there is recognition that ultimately it needs to be merged into an intertwined patient/HCP journey.
Many factors complicate today’s commingled HCP/patient journeys, including the realization that the HCP has interdisciplinary teams and office staff specialists—people the patient often depends on for support and prescriptions. Also, given how overworked many HCPs are, strategies and tactics that worked in the past may need to be revisited. Some examples include the role of the sales rep, introducing new solutions that the HCP may not have time for, and how we are driving HCP/patient dialogue expectations.
Though HCP marketing is in a challenging moment, we know that the path to better solutions lies in listening intently and integrating the whole lives of both patients and HCPs into the equation.
As for what might be a hot topic at the next DPE, several panelists suggested it might be time to rename the conference. When first conceived, the use of “digital” in the conference name was used to differentiate it from traditional marketing. Now, most agree that we are marketing in a digital age.
See you next year at DPE!
