How data is giving healthcare advertising a shot in the arm
With an ever growing bank of valuable data generated by patients and doctors taking to online and social media to diagnose ailments, we look at how brands can harness this to make their marketing more powerful.
Research reveals that 43 per cent of US patients search for medical information before seeing a doctor, while 73 per cent of physicians rely upon online resources for clinical information more than they did two years ago. The shift in behavior is generating reams of valuable data, from search and websites to social media, giving brands a huge opportunity to reach this empowered audience and influence behavior. So how is the sector harnessing such data to make its marketing more powerful?
One of the biggest opportunities offered by the wealth of data available lies in better understanding human emotion. As Chrisie Scott, vice-president of marketing and corporate communications at not-for-profit US healthcare organization Meridian Health says, healthcare is personal: “If we can get individuals to feel something, we can bias them to action.” She adds that engaging consumers to take responsibility for their health is a foundational mandate of healthcare.
Social media provides a valuable source of such insight. Global provider of healthcare and pharma consulting, InVentiv Health Communications, carries out social media listening, analyzing online conversations to further its understanding of patient experiences, and their lexicon. Alex Brock, head of insight at InVentiv, says the company’s approach is about ensuring that the data is used to better understand consumers’ emotional state. “[The creative is used] as an entry point to get consumers to engage with more in-depth content about their health, and from their take action—by going to talk to their doctor about it, for example.”
This approach is illustrated in a listening project that InVentiv undertook for a global disease awareness campaign around lower back pain. Brock says: “By analyzing social conversations across multiple markets, looking for how people describe their back pain, we can tailor creative messaging to be reflective of the real language used by these patients on a market by market basis.”
David Cherry, chief digital officer at healthcare communications firm Sudler New York, cites the Novartis ‘Take This, MS’ campaign from 2013 as another example of marketing informed by social media insights. He comments: “It plays out the patient empowerment story with frank and edgy social presence, and with patients blogging on topics pharma would not normally countenance, such as MS and sex and MS and recreational drugs, with significant recognition and impact.”
Social media in its broadest sense is also enabling brands to reach healthcare professionals in the UK. Ben Mansfield, deputy managing director of global pharma media agency Four MSA, says the company accesses data from a number of online industry platforms, including doctors.net.uk, which is used by around 50,000 UK doctors every day. Mansfield says: “Doctors are very well profiled, enabling us to know their seniority and whether they are a GP or cardiologist, for example.”
Four MSA will cross match its clients’ target lists against the doctors.net.uk information and, for example, overlay this with data relating to a doctor’s prescribing behavior. “If the information shows that they prescribe a lot of our client’s product, the creative will be more centered around how to help them and their patients get more out of it, but if it shows that they prescribe a lot of a competitor product, the creative would want to highlight any clinical trial data versus that product.”
In the US, increasingly empowered consumers are also an important way of reaching healthcare professionals, due to tight restrictions around how the pharmaceutical industry can market direct to doctors. “The consumer, armed with the information provided by the pharmaceutical manufacturer, can be a powerful voice and influence in getting the drug [when clinically appropriate],” says Michael J Krivich, a US-based freelance healthcare marketing strategist who has worked in the industry for 20 years.
Knowing when to talk to consumers is also getting a lot easier, thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices enabling an insight into the all-important healthcare consumer’s journey. “That knowledge allows for the delivery of meaningful content in the right contextual framework at the right time, regardless of the individual’s location,” says Krivich.
Timing and context is an issue that is also recognized by Cherry, who says: “With this wealth of information, our challenge becomes discerning the most valuable intervention points, which means deciding which specific insights, at which point in the experience, will best enable the creative teams to improve the effectiveness of our next campaign or tactic iteration.”
Ultimately, the key to using data to create brand or product differentiation lies in being ruthlessly centered on the end-user. As Scott says: “Our insights must drive messaging and packaging that result in action. We are focused on strategically and creatively placing people at the center of their own healthcare story.”