It has become more difficult for pharmaceutical marketers to reach their target health care professionals in an efficient way. Firstly, more specialty medications designed to cater to rare indications are being approved than ever before. Specialty medications grew by 315% between 2015 and 2021, and the specialty drug pipeline is expected to grow at 8% per year through 2025.
Additionally, physician engagement preferences have evolved significantly over the Covid-19 pandemic, characterized by declining access of face-to-face sales rep visits, making the traditional approach obsolete. In 2020, 87% of HCPs wanted to only have virtual meetings, or a mix of in-person and virtual meetings with sales reps. Even today, the preference for in-person meetings remains below pre-pandemic levels as clear demand persists for a hybrid sales approach through 2022 involving both rep-driven and digital channels.
Given these trends, it is not surprising that pharmaceutical marketers are finding it challenging to effectively engage their target HCPs, especially when a target HCP population could be up to 10x the size of the eligible patient population. Furthermore, many brands have relatively small budgets to work with. It’s more important than ever to think creatively and holistically to harness the power of omnichannel marketing.
Our Solution: Oncology Brand Case Study
Recently, a leading pharmaceutical company wanted to optimize the launch of their 2nd to market NSCLC targeted therapy. One of the main challenges this brand faced was a limited budget and a small sales team. Also, the drug was almost a year behind its competitor’s launch. The overall goal of this pharmaceutical brand was to target physicians at the most relevant possible time. If they could target the right physician with the right message at the moment when they were making a treatment decision for an eligible patient, this would make the most of their marketing efforts.
The PharmaForceIQ Approach
Using a hyper-targeted omnichannel approach, PharmaForceIQ enabled this brand team to target their customers more effectively, while allowing their marketing spend to go further.
To achieve success for this client, it was critical to activate the four pillars of the PharmaForceIQ approach i.e. Right Message to the Right HCP via the Right Channel at the Right Time through leveraging anomni-channel next best action platform:
| Data Aggregation | Our database and integrations provides access to a unique mix of data sources including PharmaForceIQ's proprietary affinity data, external data aggregations and internal client data |
| Real-Time Identification | Based on client specific business rules, PharmaForceIQ set up a process of identifying eligible patients for the lung cancer drug before the physician makes a treatment decision. |
| Real-Time Deployment & Measurement | After patient identification, PharmaForceIQ deploy the most relevant message that the treating physician (Right HCP) is most likely to respond to (Right Message) through the channel that they are most likely to be on (Right Channel) in near real time through our platform (Right Time), and track the entire journey in real-time on our proprietary dashboard |
| Omnichannel Orchestration |
For this project, PharmaForceIQ leveraged an omnichannel suite of integrated channels that included sales rep CRM, programmatic channels and non-endemic channels such as Medscape’s NBE program. |
The Results
Over a 20-month period, starting from early 2021, our client’s lung cancer medication outperformed industry engagement rates, effectively doubling the engagement rates of comparative brands within the client’s portfolio. This approach showed a clear NRx lift for the launch, through the channels that were leveraged.
| Superior Engagement Rates | High Performing Channels | NRx Lift |
|---|---|---|
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Overall engagement rate across channels for this brand in the first 12 months of implementation was more than double industry standards. |
PharmaForceIQ identified the Medscape NBE channel as having the highest engagement rates of all 3rd party partners. With approximately 45% of all engagements occurring within the first 12 months. |
97% of all new prescriptions (NRx) in the first year of launch were traced back to the triggers and engagements generated by PharmaForceIQ. |
These results are a clear testament to the end-to-end approach taken. PharmaForceIQ was able to successfully drive brand awareness among oncologists in real-time, then keep that brand engagement high over an ongoing period, leading to an NRx lift.
Leverage PharmaForceIQ for your Brand Today
PharmaForceIQ is the only machine learning powered omni-channel platform that brings together HCP affinity data and real time multi-channel deployment and measurement (mapped back to Rx lift). This means PharmaForceIQ always have our finger on the pulse of what channels HCPs are paying attention to, so PharmaForceIQ can reach them more effectively.
Over the past few years, PharmaForceIQ have worked with a variety of specialty disease brands to achieve industry-beating engagement results and prescription lift. To learn more, contact us today at [email protected] and let’s make a worthwhile marketing investment for your brand.