SKILLS FOR SUCCESS
September/October 2006
Personalized Marketing in an Age of Personalized Medicine
Liz Kay
Director, Healthcare Practice, Cramer Productions
“Personalized medicine” is an important emerging trend, in which new methods of molecular analysis are used to better manage a patient’s disease—or even an individual’s predisposition to disease. New diagnostic tools are being developed to help doctors customize drug therapy for patients and, hopefully, lead to better outcomes. As science moves towards realizing the promises of personalized medicine, healthcare marketers should strive to personalize our communications to patients and consumers.
We need to develop messaging that speaks to the individual, not the masses. Advertising and mass communications simply aren’t as effective when speaking to individual patients who may have very specific diseases. This is especially true when we consider that the ever increasing complexity of our lives is leading to further fragmentation of the market into niche interests, lifestyles, cultures, and geographic verticals.
As healthcare marketers, we must adapt to these changes. The online media is perfect for niche marketing and individualized communications. Search engine marketing, online advertising, email marketing, social networking, webcasts, blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds are just a few of the online tools that can help speak more personally to audiences. These tools also enable us to perform highly-targeted online advertising based on online shopping and surfing habits.
In this environment, we have many opportunities to reach out to consumers and patients to begin personalized two-way conversations. As digital ROI metrics become more sophisticated in exposing inefficiencies in marketing spends (i.e., too much on TV, not enough online, etc.), we are better able to adjust our channels and messages. We have to embrace the evolution of the market, be smart about how we are interacting with consumers, and develop new frameworks for delivering messaging.
As we think about moving towards personalized niche marketing, here are seven helpful rules of thumb:
1) The Golden Rule—respect. Every patient embarks on a unique personal journey when confronted with an illness. Therefore, the more we understand, relate to, and respect the journeys that our patients are on, the more supportive and helpful we can be in helping them confront their diseases.
We can help by speaking clearly and honestly to the patient to offer them a better understanding of the entire process. Working within regulatory guidelines, we can help them over barriers and guide them toward getting the right therapy. In order to be effective, we must allow patients to engage and interact with communications on their terms, in a manner that is respectful and empowering.
2) Know your audience. To speak successfully to our audience, we need to understand who our audience is, where they go for information, how they prefer to receive information, and how they want to engage in dialogues with their doctors, communities, and drug companies. Research is critical in order to be able to deliver the right messaging, at the right place, at the right time.
We also need to understand how patients interact with their caregivers and supporters. To do this right, we need to plan for usability testing, and set aside time for retooling communications programs.
3) Audience segmentation is key. For example, one might wrongly assume that all women having trouble getting pregnant are going through similar emotions. In fact, there is a huge emotional chasm between a woman who is trying to conceive without medical help and a woman who is seeing a reproductive endocrinologist about her infertility. If we want to communicate to each one personally, it helps enormously to know precisely where she is on her respective fertility journey.
The goal of our communications is to continually move the individual further along her or his personal journey, and incrementally build trust and patient confidence.
4) Align patient and professional messaging. Nothing undermines the patient journey more than having the physician and patient operating from a “different page.” Communications with professionals need to be timed so providers are already educated about a product’s benefits before the patient approaches them about that product.
As in the DTC/DTP arena, there are now many mechanisms available that can keep the conversation going with a doctor before, during, and after prescribing patterns are influenced. It is important to monitor and measure the flow of communications all the way along the path.
5) Add value. Don’t communicate unless there is a clear and compelling reason that provides value to the audience. Otherwise, we run the risk of losing credibility and—worse—losing their attention.
6) Measure, analyze, redirect and improve. There are many online analytical tools to help evaluate performance. Customized dashboards allow us to view critical measurement points across an entire brand or marketing campaign. By carefully tracking and analyzing data, retooling, redirecting, and making incremental improvements, we can continually refine our messaging and speak more personally to individuals.
7) Be ready to take the journey. Personalized medicine doesn’t end at acquisition—so neither should our communications. If we are asking a patient to begin a journey to better health, we need to be a respectful partner at every step of way. Our commitment should be to sustain an ongoing, engaging, and supportive dialog. In other words, we have to be willing to join the journey, too.