© 2011 Publicis Touchpoint Solutions, Inc.
Field-Alternative Channels
A Publicis Touchpoint Solutions White Paper
Enhancing the
Message Delivery Mix
2
Field-Alternative Channels
Enhancing the Message Delivery Mix
Introduction
The US biopharmaceutical industry is formidable, generating sales revenues approaching $300 billion per year. However, biopharma now faces a host of significant challenges:
• Reduced R&D productivity
• Intense payer-driven cost pressures • Acute branded and generic competition • Increasing public scrutiny
Unfortunately, these are not the only issues facing biopharma leaders. Superimposed on these executive-suite difficulties is a separate but related set of marketing-specific challenges. Indeed, biopharma sales and
marketing is undergoing its own unprecedented upheaval. Gone are the days when drug marketers could rely on a basic package of simple, accepted, physician-focused tactics such as face-to-face details, samples,
promotional gifts, and journal ads. Instead, marketers are facing several major trends as they work to influence healthcare professionals and other key customers:
• Regulation will continue to squeeze traditional marketing, making prescriber access even more difficult
• Most new drugs today are hospital-based, instead of community-based [Pharmaceutical Executive, Nov 2008], resulting in a new concentration on specialists, who often have different informational needs than primary care physicians (PCPs)
• Doctors today face more stress and less downtime, due to several factors: fee-for-service insurance has given way to managed care, with its attendant demands for more (and shorter) patient visits and mountains of paperwork; an aging patient population requires care that is increasingly complex and time-consuming; and medical knowledge is expanding more rapidly than ever before, mandating that doctors find new ways to keep on top of new products, guidelines, trends, and other information • Marketers are learning to use data-driven, consumer-style strategies and tactics to influence
healthcare professionals; after all, doctors are consumers, too
• Physicians nationwide are making dramatic changes in the way they interact with biopharma: (1) One in four physicians now works in a practice that refuses to see biopharma sales representatives (AMNews, Mar 23, 2009), and (2) For the first time ever, more MDs now get clinical information online than offline (MM&M, Jun 2008).
3
What Physicians Want!
The What Physicians Want! 2010 Survey conducted by Publicis Touchpoint Solutions and Sermo found that physicians are very interested in a number of nontraditional channels to obtain medical information.
When responding to questions about field sales representatives, physicians are much happier with the smaller total numbers of representatives currently calling on their offices. Physicians, however, still strongly expressed a desire for field sales representatives with enhanced skill levels; a full 81% noted that they wanted “higher quality” representatives. These physicians defined “higher quality” as those representatives with more
education and better training and those that were adept at understanding and having high-science discussions about clinical studies and evidence-based medicine.
Physicians expressed significant interest in having more contact with two types of nontraditional
representatives—clinical health educators and customer service representatives (with 75% wanting to see “more” or “significantly more” of both of these types of representatives).
Clinical Health Educators
Customer Service Representatives
Physicians also expressed an interest in seeing more virtual representatives of all types, with 58% wanting “more” or “significantly more” of these field-alternative representatives in their practices. Virtual, or inside, representatives can include live video detail representatives, teleDetailers, and teleService representatives, as well as teleSampling and eSampling.
4
The Path Forward
In response to these challenges, biopharma companies are beginning to employ a multichannel approach to fulfill their physician marketing objectives. In fact, numerous indicators point to the expansion of multichannel direct-to-healthcare professional marketing. For example, the table below includes the latest forecast from the Direct Marketing Association’s annual special report, The Power of Direct Marketing. Although forecasting biopharma marketing trends is an inexact science—now more than ever—DMA had projected that biopharma companies would spend more than $1.7 billion on direct marketing tactics in 2009, with growth in all
segments through 2013.
Although face-to-face field representatives will no doubt continue to be a vital message delivery channel within the biopharma sales landscape, forward-thinking executives are also beginning to adopt message delivery tactics that easily accommodate physicians’ self-directed information-seeking behavior.
Direct Marketing Advertising Expenditures: Pharmaceuticals and Medicines (Millions of Dollars)
F/C
CHANNEL 2003 2007 2008 2009 2013
Advertising (Misc Offline) 822 869 835 858 1,103 Direct Mail (Non-Catalog) 78 89 85 88 110 Direct Mail (Catalog) 73 78 75 78 94 Telephone Marketing 120 99 90 89 102 Direct Response Newspaper 59 50 44 43 49 Direct Response Television 274 288 280 284 361 Direct Response Magazine 118 126 119 120 145 Direct Response Radio 51 46 41 42 53
Insert Media 2 3 2 3 3 Other Offline 15 15 15 15 19 OFFLINE TOTAL 1,613 1,661 1,586 1,619 2,038 Online (Non-eMail) 31 75 83 95 — Commercial eMail 1 2 2 3 5 ONLINE TOTAL 32 76 85 98 169 GRAND TOTAL 1,645 1,737 1,671 1,717 2,207
Source: Direct Marketing Association’s The Power of Direct Marketing, 2008-2009 Edition (www.mmmonline, 2009).
In response to these challenges, biopharma companies are beginning to employ a multichannel approach
5
As access to prescribers has become more challenging, biopharma companies are demanding new approaches that get key information into the hands—and minds—of customers. The key to future success in physician marketing will be to augment the traditional field sales force model with innovative, integrated solutions that effectively deliver messages to prescribers.
As shown in the table below, eMarketing (including SEO, SEM, eDetailing, and eMail) is the leading alternative to face-to-face detailing, preferred by 66% of drug marketers. However, other channels include healthcare professional branded websites (42% of marketers), industry-sponsored continuing medical education (34%), teleconferences/dinners (31%), direct mail (27%), and teleDetailing (22%).
Several specific emerging channels are showing particular promise in marketing to prescribers. These tactics include:
• Live Video Detailing: Inside professional sales representatives (with field-level training) conduct live, person-to-person details using the Web and phone. Healthcare providers see and hear sales
representatives via webcam links, and the representatives hear healthcare providers on the phone. During video details, sales representatives display appropriate client-approved content on healthcare providers’ computers. Most live video details are initiated on-demand by healthcare providers who click on a brand-site Web link.
• TeleDetailing: Experienced contact center sales representatives use their advanced training to accurately deliver key product messages to target prescribers.
• TeleService/TeleSampling: Remote/inside representatives make live phone calls to target offices, develop relationships, confirm sample needs, fax and retrieve sample request forms, and forward the requests to the client's fulfillment supplier.
% of Marketers Planning Increased Spending Over Next 12 Months
eMarketing 66%
Website 42%
Continuing Medical Education 34% TeleConferences/Dinners 31%
Direct Mail 27%
TeleDetailing 22%
6 • Inside Healthcare-credentialed Representatives: Phone-based healthcare professionals (eg, RPhs,
PharmDs, RNs, MDs) engage physicians and other high-level targets in complex, one-on-one clinical product discussions, particularly in institutional settings.
• Vacant Territory and White Space Management: Comprehensive vacant territory and white space management can ensure coverage when a field sales representative is not available. Vacant territories can occur due to backfills in process, medical or military leave, hiring freezes, etc. Additionally, white space areas can occur due to geographically difficult areas and/or prescribers not covered based on decile levels. Companies using a variety of highly customizable programs can use a combination of teleDetailing, teleService, teleSampling and eSampling. Additionally, outbound live video detailing can be employed. Vacant territory coverage supports needs in geographic areas that are currently lacking appropriate staffing levels with vacancies identified by territory and/or physician.
7
The real promise in multichannel message delivery lies not in selecting the one “best” tactic, but in deploying a brand-specific mix of fresh, well-integrated tactics via multiple channels—true multichannel marketing. For example, this approach could combine primary sales representatives with clinical health educators,
teleDetailing, content-rich healthcare professional websites, live video details, and online eSampling.
Multichannel marketing realizes its best results when it is used to augment a field sales force, and all channels are interconnected. In fact, ongoing collaboration with field representatives is vital. A common platform and common standards should link all message delivery channels so that all physician interactions are reported to the brand marketing and field sales teams.
A further refinement of multichannel marketing is closed-loop marketing, in which each healthcare professional receives a continuously verified and modified, truly customized, multichannel marketing mix based on his or her individual preferences. Closed-loop marketing is particularly useful because it integrates data gathered from client-directed programs (both face-to-face detailing and alternative channel programs) with information from external data sets. In this setting, the client receives a single source of integrated prescriber information that can be used to manage and measure all message delivery tactics.
By helping biopharma marketers monitor the impact of specific content and channels, closed-loop marketing allows them to predict future business outcomes more accurately, thus driving overall program optimization. Top-performing marketing services providers use complex data-management platforms to execute seamless, end-to-end multichannel solutions and provide a single source of integrated healthcare professional
8
A Case Study
Here is an example of how a leading biopharmaceutical company combined various multichannel message delivery tactics for its suite of seven branded prescription products.
The prescriber target list included over 160,000 subspecialty and primary care physicians. Outbound message delivery tactics augmented the efforts of the company’s field sales representatives to reach
no-see, hard-to-see, and geographically inaccessible prescribers. These additional channels included live video detailing via Internet-enabled video and phone, supported by eMail, fax, direct mail, BRC sample request forms, direct-to-healthcare provider sample fulfillment, and collateral material fulfillment.
Inbound
Outbound
A team of inside professional sales representatives worked autonomously to support multiple brands to four specialty groups and primary care physicians by responding to website-initiated inbound requests for on-demand, live video details. All call activity was entered into the company’s sales force automation tool so field representatives could see relevant activity for their physicians.
Inside healthcare-credentialed representatives (in this case RNs) supported multiple brands to a single specialty of called-on doctors. Each inside healthcare-credentialed representative was aligned directly with a geographic sales region, supporting them by providing additional reach and frequency via phone to no-see, hard-to-see, and geographically inaccessible prescribers.
Inbound, live video details averaged 12 minutes in length, and outbound phone details averaged between 1.5 and 2 minutes. Based on these data and other proprietary ROI information, the client extended and expanded this initiative several times.
Results
9
Conclusion
Today, biopharmaceutical field sales forces need augmentation with a wide range of field-alternative communicators and an array of established and emerging technologies that create real-time, remote
interactions. It is critical that biopharma companies employ a complete, highly customized message delivery mix so they can access physicians when and where they want—and build and strengthen relationships with them.
10
Publicis Touchpoint Solutions, Inc. 1000 Floral Vale Blvd. Suite 400 Yardley, PA 19067 866-616-4777 [email protected] www.TouchpointSolutions.com
