“What’s the ultimate call to action?”

This question was raised in a recent meeting, and I thought it a good one to discuss since we’re in the midst of planning season. Many would say the answer depends on the brand’s end goal. For pharma marketers, however, I say the ultimate action that brands need to focus on is getting patients to ask their doctor for a prescription for their treatment.

Script volume is the be-all and end-all measurement of the effectiveness of pharma marketing. Make no mistake: impressions and click-throughs are important metrics and help drive patients to the doctor’s office. But, ultimately, if those patients aren’t asking their doctors about your brand, your marketing efforts haven’t worked to their full potential.

That’s why Point of Care (POC) is so crucial for brand marketers. It’s the only tactic that puts your brand at the point of script, at the exact moments doctors and patients are thinking about and discussing treatment options. From the waiting room, to the exam room, to the back office, and now to beyond the office, thanks to mobile technologies, POC provides a connection point between your brand, the doctor, and patient. And it’s proven to drive desired behavior (1):
• 84% of patients who saw an ad at the POC are more likely to discuss the ad with their physician
• 77% are more likely to ask their doctor for a sample
• 68% are more likely to ask a doctor to prescribe a specific product

Many brands already realize the value of POC. Reaching $440 million in 2015, POC ad spend is growing faster than overall DTC advertising(2). Zion Market Research’s recent findings indicate that today’s $23 billion POC market will reach $40.5 billion by 2022.

But why do so many brands still find it challenging to choose between their tried-and-true digital tactics and POC? It shouldn’t be one or the other: digital and POC go hand in hand. For you Trekkies out there, I like to make this analogy: POC is the Montgomery Scott to your Captain Kirk. POC takes your digital ad and transports it to the exact locations you want, placing it in front of the exact audience you want, at the exact time they, and you, need them to hear your message—compelling the ultimate action of asking their doctor about your treatment. Then, it gives you clear insight into how that message changed doctors’ prescription-writing behaviors—and how much revenue was generated as a result. It doesn’t get much more impactful than that.

It’s planning season. You’re analyzing the risk versus reward of your tactics to determine a marketing mix that’s going to bring in the biggest buck. Why not include a tactic that delivers direct revenue—guaranteed. Be confident. Invest in POC and know you’re entering 2018 with a clear understanding of the impact your brand will have.

References

(1) Kantar Media for the Point of Care Communications Council, “Point of Care: Why Care?” 2017
(2) ZS Associates, “Right Place, Right Time: How Health and Wellness Companies Are Capitalizing on the Rapidly Growing Point of Care Communication Channel,” 2014

As pharma marketers continue to expand their footprint in the point of care (POC) channel – a channel where spending is growing at eight-times the rate of television spending – they are realizing not only its potential but the importance of ensuring their messaging mirrors their brand essentials as much as possible. For pharmaceutical brands, the moment of truth happens in the exam room, the “magic moment” when the physician is discussing treatment options with the patient and the prescription is being written.

We encourage pharma partners to view point-of-care as an extension of, not adjunct to, their overall marketing campaign. That’s the mindset needed to unlock the full potential of a pharma brand in the POC channel – and this channel offers lots of opportunities to do just that. First, though, consider POC’s uniqueness and develop strategies and tactics accordingly. Tried and true branding and marketing philosophies are a good place to start.

Consider the setting

We are not the same person when we are watching a television commercial in our basement during a football game as we are sitting in a waiting room in a doctor’s office or wearing a gown in the exam room. We are no longer a consumer of mass media but rather a patient thinking about our personal health. Your creative should capitalize on this environment and mindset.

Let’s look at Crohn’s disease as an example. According to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America, approximately 780,000 Americans have Crohn’s disease. TV as a medium for advertising Crohn’s treatments has become quite prevalent as of late. While this raises awareness of the condition, or can generate website traffic, given the millions of people watching television, it can be like finding a needle in haystack to reach the target patient suffering from Crohn’s disease. However, consider if that campaign had a strong pull through in physicians’ offices, and not just any physician, but IBD gastroenterologists. Brands could go much deeper with education and dialogue starters to address flare ups, treatments, compliance, etc. This setting encourages meaningful conversations between patients and physicians, and results in a direct correlation to an increase in new prescriptions.

Innovate

As marketers, we strive for a multi-channel marketing plan in which both print and digital play a vital role. The same holds true in the doctor’s office. While the educational brochure is and will remain an influential POC execution, brands have the opportunity to innovate and engage tech-savvy patients who expect innovation in the healthcare arena.

Take the use of interactive 3D anatomical models as an example. With print and TV advertising, patients are pushed a message and but aren’t really interacting with the brand. PatientPoint technology in the exam room is designed to foster interaction with touchscreens and explorations with 3D models that show inside of their body. This accessible interactive tool, also available on mobile for physicians, is unlike anything that has been offered before. Brands can extend their creative to sponsor this content, building innovative brand associations not possible through pushed mass market content.

Be helpful

Patients crave information like never before. 80% of internet users look for health information online, making medical inquiries the third most popular web-based pursuit, following only email and search engine use. Physicians, too, crave information; indeed, it is integral to providing up-to-date meaningful information. They require an endless stream of information to keep up on the latest research and treatment options. In POC, we have the ability to target and validate helpfulness and credibility, which is important since trusting content found on the web is often challenging.

Pharma can be helpful by strengthening the patient-provider relationship through its sponsorship of tools and information that help make complex medical issues easier to explain and understand (especially now that you can’t sponsor pens or hand sanitizers!).

Remember your message

Your brand need not be left at the waiting or exam room door. Pulling through your brand message to a POC execution does not need to be challenging. Assessing creative thoughtfully will help determine if it is a direct pull through or if custom content should be created. We guide our pharma partners through those decisions, helping them see how to create advertising that positions their brands while adhering to established branding guidelines. Bringing that same expertise to the POC channel will ensure the right brand message resonates with patients and physicians.

Be creative

Like other health care touchpoints, POC offers a wide variety of opportunities for creative execution. The National Health Information Awards (NHIA) program, for example, honors leading organizations in the consumer health field. The NHIA program – the most comprehensive competition of its kind – sets the standard for the industry’s educational collateral. Honorees include prestigious organizations like the American Heart Association, Mayo Clinic, March of Dimes, and Parents magazine. At PatientPoint, we’re proud that, over the past 12 years, our point-of-care programs have been recognized by the NHIA with a total of 431 awards, a great honor that brings credibility for our sponsor brands to medical professionals. Your brand can win awards here, too.

Pharma marketers who apply their marketing prowess to POC will reap the full rewards of a channel that offers unparalleled opportunities for deepening relationships with patients and providers, and for delivering the right message at the right time. The best POC program is seamless with TV, print, sponsorships, detailing, and other pharma marketing tools, and takes into account the touchpoint’s unique needs and opportunities.

One of the first health lessons many of us ever heard was that famous rhyme our mothers used to recite frequently: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. With all due respect to mothers everywhere, while apples are a perfectly good source of nutrition and have many benefits, unfortunately we know that simply eating one every day is not enough to keep us in perfect health.

However, if you’ll indulge me for just a minute, let’s pretend that apples really could keep the doctor away. Sadly, here’s what we know would happen:

• Roughly one-third of people who are supposed to eat an apple a day wouldn’t even go to the grocery store to buy a bag[1]

• 75% wouldn’t eat an apple all seven days of the week, but they’d definitely try their best to eat an apple at least four or five times per week[2]

• More than 70% of those struggling with depression would start eating apples every day, but would no longer be eating them after six months[3]

• The grocery industry would be spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year trying to figure out why nobody wants to eat their apples[4]

Unfortunately, as we all know, we’re not talking about apples. This is the reality of the pharmaceutical world, as study after study has shown that patient adherence and compliance are two of the biggest challenges facing the industry.

You can write this off as human nature if you want. After all, people are notoriously bad at taking orders and following directions. But what if the problem isn’t that patients don’t know what they are supposed to be doing, but rather, they simply don’t understand why they should be doing it?

As a brand marketer, there’s a huge opportunity for you to go beyond the prescription pad to give patients what they want most: knowledge.

By incorporating key messages in education materials placed in the offices and exam rooms where they receive this prescription, you can go beyond simply telling the patient what they should be doing. Rather, you are showing them why they should be doing it and empower them to ask questions that truly make a difference in their health journey.

What are those questions? Here are a few to get you started (using our “apple a day” example):

• What do I need to know about this disease/condition?
• Why is an apple a day the right treatment option for me?
• How is the apple a day going to improve my disease/condition?
• Do I want a red, green, or golden apple?
• Are there any side effects to eating an apple a day?
• In addition to the apple per day, what are other treatment options or things I should be doing to manage this disease/condition?

And it’s not just patients who find this information helpful. As Debra Miller, M.D., from the Mapleton Medical Center in Indiana told PatientPoint, “Staff and patients really love [your] brochures because it’s easy to get the information they need. Often, I walk into the exam room and the patient has already taken a brochure and has questions ready for me.”

By planting the seeds of knowledge before the script is ever written, you encourage a meaningful conversation between patients, staff and physicians about the disease and medication options. And while telling someone to eat an apple a day may result in temporary success, showing them why it’s an effective option can produce much more fruitful results.

SOURCES:

[1] http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1852865

[2] http://www.talkaboutrx.org/documents/enhancing_prescription_medicine_adherence.pdf

[3] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818850

[4] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818850

Where do consumers go to find information?

Don’t overthink it—the simple answer is Google. In fact, the last time Google released data in 2012, the search engine giant reported more than 1 trillion searches every year. It’s only safe to assume that number has grown significantly since then.

But where are these consumers getting their health information? Where are they learning about disease education and prevention?

Oh sure, they may still be Googling medications or symptoms, but how many actually trust the varied results found on the internet? Or more importantly, if they do research a medication they want to try, how many are doing so without consulting their doctor first?

When it comes to disease education, prevention and medication, consumers still turn to the most trusted source—their doctors. And if that’s where consumers go for specialty information, shouldn’t you focus your marketing efforts at the point of care?

Consider this PatientPoint research data:

• 65% of patients believe their doctor only allows a brand to advertise in their office if they feel it is the most effective product available.
• 62% believe their doctor has personal experience with the brands advertised in brochures and allows advertising only for those they consider best for patients.

The bottom line is that patients still trust physicians to make the right decisions for their health—including disease education, prevention and medication. Therefore, as a brand marketer, if you want to reach more consumers, you have to reach more doctors. More importantly, the doctors have to trust your brand.

There’s that word again: trust. It really is a core component to the marketing world, and it’s what the entire point-of-care industry is built upon. Patients trust their doctors to prescribe medication that is in their best interests, and doctors trust brands and health education providers to offer solutions that improve health outcomes, efficiency and patient satisfaction.

As we all know though, it takes a lifetime to build up trust and only a second to lose it all. It’s something that must be pursued daily, with no shortcuts.

At PatientPoint, we are honored to work with leading brands to help them connect and build trust with their customers in the point-of-care industry.  We take our role very seriously. It’s why we reference only medical, professional, government, and not-for-profit organizations as sources when researching health topics and consult medical reviewers to provide oversight of all our editorial content.

This approach ensures patients and physicians receive balanced and objective health education that they can trust. It also has proven results (which we’ve shared before, but are worth repeating):

• Nine out of 10 patients report learning a tip they can take action on right away.
• 96% of patients agree the education and technology solutions PatientPoint delivers makes health information easy to understand.
• 98% of healthcare providers believe our programs are a valuable patient education tool.

When patients and physicians trust the education they receive, it spells good things for brand marketers, too. Sponsors experience nearly five-to-one ROI and can average 12% new prescription lift with education solutions at influential points of care and engagement.

Now those are results you can trust!

It’s probably safe to say that you’ve been to the doctor at least once in your adult life. So you can probably relate to this:

You’re sitting on the exam room table in your physician’s office.  In your head, there’s a lengthy list of questions related to the reason for your visit – an aching back, perhaps, or persistent heartburn, maybe a minor sprain – and you’re hoping you don’t forget any of them. Your doctor walks into the exam room after what feels like an eternity, even though it’s probably only been 10 minutes, and asks, “How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” you answer.

You’re not alone! Doctors say this is a common scenario … and one that makes effectively treating patients all the more challenging.  “I’m fine” has become a default response.

One of the most important interactions individuals can have is about their health. But empowering patients, educating them to take control of their health – avoiding the default “I’m fine” answer – is one of the greatest challenges DTC marketers face. In fact, it’s one of the greatest communication challenges in healthcare, period.

It’s also one of the greatest opportunities. So how can you overcome that challenge? Where do you start?

In my opinion, the most effective way to overcome communication challenges starts in the exam room. And it’s so critical to the patient, the physician and the pharmaceutical marketer to get that interaction right.

I call it the “magic moment.” It’s that moment in the scenario I described above, right before the doctor comes in. You’re sitting on the crinkly-paper exam room table (with your phone put away!). You look up and see a display of approachable, aspirational brochures. Or maybe it’s a mounted digital device that invites you to learn more about your symptoms with a few taps of your fingertips. The privacy of the exam room is a safety net where you can learn more about the reason for your visit, arm yourself with questions for your doctor and feel empowered to discuss your diagnosis after engaging with meaningful, condition-specific education.

What constitutes meaningful education? Easy-to-understand, for starters. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. adults read at an intermediate level or lower, so materials are most effective when written in what health literacy experts call “plain language” – a fifth-grade reading level, at most.[1] It’s easy for us as marketers to lose sight of this and go for the more complex messaging, but if patients can’t understand what we are saying, they won’t be empowered to ask the right questions.

Then there’s the medium itself, which can also make patient education more meaningful: interactive touchscreen technology, engaging videos and, yes, even print – each medium is particularly effective for certain patient demographics.  All serve as an opportunity to appeal to a patient’s learning preference and to provide a guide to a patient’s condition.

But content is also key. The most meaningful exam room education addresses not just the condition, but the underlying causes, lifestyle management and treatments as well. Treatment options will obviously vary depending on the condition and the progression of the disease state – so education must help patients learn how to communicate with their doctors throughout their diagnosis and journey.

This approach works. According to PatientPoint results, 9 out of 10 patients learned a tip they could take action on from our exam room education, while 96% of patients agreed we make health information easy to understand.[2] This translates into 5 to 1 ROI and 11% NRx average lift.[3]

So the next time you’re in your doctor’s office, sitting on that crinkly-paper exam room table, take a look around. Look for information that’s meaningful and draws you in. If you’re seeing one of the healthcare providers that such provides such resources, it’ll be there, ready to empower you to take control of YOUR health.

References

[1] Static Brain, “Illiteracy Statistics.” 2014.

[2] PatientPoint national survey. 2015.

[3] Symphony Health Solutions. 2015.