Have you ever wondered what runs inside a physician’s mind while adopting a certain brand?
It has never been an easy ballgame for healthcare marketers when it comes to achieving the desired outcomes for their brands. The evolving healthcare set-up has paved way for new, stringent regulations, and there is an increased consciousness among doctors and other stakeholders to improve overall healthcare outcomes.
Several factors influence brand adoption among HCPs. This write-up explores them in great depth.
KOL Opinion
Key Opinion Leaders are nodal points for communicating the quality of the drug to the HCP community.
A large section of the community is influenced by the drug used by KOLs to treat their patients. Pharmaceutical companies have to be conscious of this factor and ensure continuous engagement with KOLs.
The most preferred digital channel to connect top clinicians and thought leaders with your targeted HCPs is KOL Interviews, which we host on our platform and engage our community of 3,80,000+ HCPs. Moreover:
– You can tap our network of 7500+ KOLs for your product/brand appraisal.
– You can leverage our strong personal rapport with the clinical community, to have the best-suited KOLs.
– You can enjoy a handsome viewership of 4,00,000+ HCPs across 99 specialties and 1600 cites
– You can build product/brand recall and encourage adoption among HCPs in a subtle, non-promotional manner.
– You can select from a range of tried and tested interview formats.
– You can ensure a structured and “to the point” interaction with KOLs, thanks to our highly-experienced interviewers.
Even in the times of COVID-19, the healthcare industry needs to figure out ways to engage with KOLs. You can read more about this here.
Scientific Factors
While psychosocial factors influence the doctors’ decision to a certain extent, the community chooses to rely on scientific proof before prescribing the drug. For every doctor, the sole aim is to improve the status of health of his/her patient. At any cost, a good doctor never chooses to compromise on the health outcomes of his/her patients.
There are a few scientific factors that determine the possibility of a drug getting prescribed by a doctor.
i) Bioequivalence
If the drug launched has an exclusive composition, then there is no question of bioequivalence. But, if there are drugs with similar properties in the market, then bioequivalence takes impetus in proving its efficacy.
A doctor understands that a different composition of a similar molecule may have different side effects. In that case, pharmaceutical companies should ensure that it places all the scientific facts that clarify the doubts over the possible side effects.
ii) Timing in the Market
For any product being launched in the market, timing is critical. The lesser the competitors for a drug, the better it is for the brand. To make a mark in a highly competitive scenario, pharma should ensure that sufficient scientific facts are placed in front of the doctor for him/her to be convinced about the drug.
These facts should usually be compared with those of the competitors and then presented to the doctors, allowing them to take a rational decision.
iii) Clinical Trials
Results from the clinical trials are perhaps the most important decider of a drug’s quality. These are the facts that speak about the performance of the drug. Sharing the results of clinical trials with necessary scientific explanations may be the game changer.
iv) Pharmacovigilance
The safety of a drug is of utmost importance to the doctor. A good pharma company will always put forth the pharmacovigilance (PV) details clearly to the doctor. A drug without many PV instances will invariably have a positive impact on the doctor’s decision. This along with the results of the clinical trials form the backbone of the brand value.
v) Quality of Generics
The presence of generics has always been a deterrent for branded drugs. Pricing is a crucial factor here. However, doctors will never show a willingness to compromise on the health outcome. If there are reports of PVs about the generic drug, these could be an advantage for the pharmaceutical brand. It is always wise to present your drug in comparison with the existing brands and generics. This will help doctors take a rational decision.
Pharmaceutical companies have traditionally relied on incentivizing doctors to boost brand adoption, but aligning more with discussions around scientific attributes, educational literature, assistance with compliance, and other initiatives are giving far better HCP engagement.
Content Customization
To clinically engage HCPs, it is important to customize your communication as much as possible, removing all the promotional and salesy flavors from your brand content. The better way to achieve this is to leverage an unbiased, “doctors only” online platform like Docplexus and host your brand content on a dedicated microsite (in a non-promotional and clinically credible manner, the way HCPs prefer) to:
– Build top-of-mind brand recall
– Easily accessing HCPs in remote areas
– Reduce your dependency on offline marketing channels and field force
– Post customized, evidence-based content in HCP-friendly formats
– Stoke clinically credible conversations around your products/brands
– Encourage brand adoption among HCPs
– Meaningfully connect with key influencers in medicine.
Now that we have understood the key factors influencing HCPs’ decisions, let’s look at the 5 immutable tactics to make brand adoption happen.
i) Make clinical education the fulcrum of your interaction with HCPs: Engage in meaningful conversations where you talk about new developments in the medical field, findings, and clinical trials of related drugs. This will result in a trustworthy relationship.
ii) Establish yourself as the authority in a particular therapeutic area: Predominantly, a pharmaceutical company is a big player in a certain therapeutic area (TA). A good communication strategy would be to initiate dialogue around specific TAs and engage the physician. Pharma professionals can indulge in the latest developments of that TA or new scientific publications.
iii) Create engagement campaigns that matter: Digital content is indeed the king, but this shouldn’t give healthcare marketers a free hand to bombard HCPs with promotional or salesy brand content. It is important to prune and present your content in a hyper-personalized manner. How?
– By understanding the sentiments of HCPs for specific therapeutic approaches (Mindset Analysis).
– By getting an in-depth analysis of their content consumption pattern on Docplexus (provided by our AI engine)
– By getting actionable insights derived from their clinical conversations on Docplexus (provided by our team of social listeners).
A qualitative analysis of the activity of the HCP community will help healthcare marketers to package their brand content in HCP-friendly language and formats (Infographics, Research Snapshots, Scientific Articles, and KOL Interviews).
iv) Make yourself heard across channels: It is no more about bringing customers to your websites or landing pages or portals but to your interconnected universe, or in other words, into your omnichannel funnel. If you aren’t taking your customers on an experiential journey as they interact with your products or offerings, then you aren’t giving them an omnichannel experience. Along an ideal journey, your customers should accumulate knowledge and learn incrementally. If you are interested in creating an omnichannel strategy for your Healthcare brand, click here.
Way Forward
With huge investments made in developing a drug, Healthcare marketers cannot let their brands not be the doctors’ first choice. To make this happen, they need to show willingness in understanding new behaviors and adopt new ways of communicating.
Suggested Reading – Designing Customer Experience Journeys For HCPs/Prescribers
If you want to know more about our three-pronged solution of Mindset Analysis, KOL Interview, and Branded Microsites, kindly reach us at solutions@docplexus.net.
