With Covid continuing into its third year, the lasting impacts on the healthcare industry are more apparent, the most significant of which is a drastic shift to digital. From virtual provider appointments to online drug reps to digital marketing, brands are now trying new tactics to find and reach their audiences through new channels.
Adapting to a digital approach can look very different depending on who you ask. For pharmaceutical brands launching a new drug with recent FDA approval, this means finding and targeting providers and patients online. A recently published white paper from Trinity, “Empowering the Next-Generation Launch Model,” explored the unique marketing challenges during the first 6 months of a drug’s launch. Companies that continued to rely on pre-pandemic go-to-market strategies were significantly underperforming, with 62% of the products that launched between September 2019 and December 2021 not meeting pre-launch expectations. These traditional sales and marketing tactics did not account for how fast the market shifted online. However, companies that were quick to adapt to this new digital landscape found great success in engaging healthcare providers (HCPs) to prescribe their new drugs.
A Success Story
One such company was Takeda, whose lung cancer drug EXKIVITY launched in September 2021. An excellent example of innovative digital strategies to reach HCPs, their approach included building an in-house digital content team, supported by an AI focused on ensuring content gets to the right HCPs at the right time. This allowed Takeda to fully concentrate on creating value-rich content to target HCPs in an engaging, informative manner across online platforms.
In an interview with FiercePharma, Pallavi Garg, Takeda Oncology's head of global oncology and pipeline strategy, further described their approach to this launch. “We’re trying to tailor our content to be most relevant. If all the products in the same basket are using the same algorithm, then it’s a wash.” The success of Takeda’s launch was threefold: they understood who their target audience was, created engaging, impactful content, and developed an omnichannel marketing strategy.
An Omnichannel Strategy
In a recent episode of Nth Degree with CMI Media, Lasso CEO Greg Fields explained omnichannel as harnessing the power of integrated and coordinated messaging strategy with analytics across all communication channels, both online and offline. This ties together the offline channels traditionally used and the digital channels where HCPs and patients are engaging more as a result of the pandemic. Having a strategic campaign that reaches your audience across multiple channels keeps them engaged and your product top of mind.
Takeda’s use of omnichannel marketing opened them up for success by repeatedly reaching their target HCP audience. Drug companies can learn from Takeda's success and take it a step further by targeting patients with the same messaging used to target providers, ensuring both parties are on the same page when they meet at the point-of-care.
A Point-of-Care Conversation
For new drug launches, coordinating messaging and media between providers and patients encourages a productive and focused conversation at the point-of-care, ultimately increasing prescription writing behavior and better patient outcomes. Lasso Connect™ provides this opportunity to synchronize messaging in the most effective way. Connect™ is our deterministic and HIPAA-compliant patient-to-provider attribution, using only a target list of HCPs to create an audience of affiliated patients. Marketers can layer on additional clinical and demographic data and leverage Lasso’s built-in geofencing technology to further narrow down their targeting. This technology enables brands and marketers to expose both audiences to coordinated messaging so that all parties are well informed about the brand and product by the time they connect at the point-of-care.
Then, those who leverage Lasso’s comprehensive Measurement solution can understand the value and real-world actions as a result of this coordinated messaging, and pivot as needed to the tactics that resonated best with the patient and provider audiences.
An Optimized Campaign
Marketers across all healthcare verticals, not just companies taking a new drug to market, can benefit from a coordinated, omnichannel campaign. Using an omnichannel strategy allows for more consistent touch points with a target HCP or patient. Leveraging Lasso Connect™ allows you to take this approach a step further and coordinate campaigns to ensure HCPs and patients are on the same page, driving desired behaviors and ROI and ensuring your product reaches the patients who need it most.
If you’re ready to take your product or drug launch to the next level, our team is ready to help! Get a free demo of the Lasso Platform today.
