Maximizing Brand Impact: Four Year-End Strategies for Pharma Marketers

Elevating HCP Engagement for Strategic Year-End Impact

As the end of the year approaches, how can pharma marketers and their agencies of record ensure they're making the most impactful choices with any remaining marketing funds? It’s a multi-layered challenge - it's not just about the budget left on the table, but how to allocate it most effectively in a competitive marketplace. The healthcare industry landscape is constantly evolving, but with precise solutions designed to make an impact where it counts, your brand can stay ahead of the curve. 

Expand Your Audience Reach and NPI List

For many marketers, the default approach towards year-end budget allocation usually involves sticking to traditional, impression-based tactics, often leading to missed opportunities and underutilized resources. But just buying more impressions isn’t always the best use of budget remainders. Instead, pharma marketers should be thinking about marketing smarter. 

One of the most straightforward ways to level up HCP engagement prior to year-end is through predictive NPI list expansion. With a patient-centric approach and the right AI technology, your brand can discover ‘unknown’ HCPs with eligible patients. In fact, we’ve seen brands using this approach boosting their targeting capabilities by 30%, so each impression delivers more bang for its proverbial buck. 

Help Fields Reps Engage More Effectively

Digital channels are often seen as a “quick win” at year-end, but that doesn’t mean your brand should overlook the real impact that field teams can have in the final months. When thinking about digital solutions, consider investing in EHR-based programs that can facilitate HCP and field team engagement – making it easier for HCPs to reach out with questions, and generating the data insights necessary for field reps to focus their efforts on HCPs that have the greatest interest in (or need for) additional support. 

For example, we worked with a newly-launched autoimmune brand that saw stronger field team/HCP relationships as key in building a strong prescriber base. The results speak for themselves: 

• 89% of brand reps were contacted by HCPs  
• 42% increase in prescriptions 
• 200% program ROI 

Increase Cross-Channel Integration

Another area that tends to be overlooked in the push to buy up impressions is the importance of channel integration and alignment. Too often media tactics are siloed, without the coordination necessary to effectively and efficiently reach target audiences. When looking for year-end impact, revisit not just your target audiences (as described above), but how consistently you are aligning brand messages to the various points in their workday – from pre-visit chart review, to independent research on the latest clinical advancements, to their downtime.  

In a recent survey, OptimizeRx found that while most physicians reported experiencing knowledge gaps, certain types of information are most valuable at specific points in the patient care journey. For example: 

• Pre-Visit / Chart Review: Clinical results, patient eligibility, specialty prescribing and formulary information 
• During Patient Visits: Affordability, eligibility, prior authorization and formulary information 
• Post-Visit: Affordability, prior authorization and distribution information 
• Outside Visits / Independent Research: Clinical results, specialty prescribing guidelines, distribution and formulary information 

Revisit when and how each brand message is being distributed, where HCPs are most likely to encounter that message, and how actionable it is in the patient care journey. If you uncover gaps or misalignments, invest in the channels best suited to reaching HCPs at those missed moments. 

Invest in Patient Affordability

Time and time again, patient medication costs are cited as a barrier to starting and staying on therapy. And while many brands have programs and resources to help patients manage medication costs, HCPs may not always have ready access to that information – preventing physicians from prescribing or inhibiting their patients from starting a preferred therapy.  

Even if your HCP marketing programs are performing well, increasing awareness of affordability support at the point-of-care can deliver an immediate, tangible impact. Building copay and real-time benefit check information into the e-prescribe workflow helps HCPs make more informed prescribing decisions and ensures that copay cards and other affordability resources are delivered alongside prescriptions to the pharmacy, while targeted affordability messages raise overall brand and cost awareness. 

Adaptable, Integrated Strategies for Pharma Marketers and Agencies

Investing in one or more of the high-ROI solutions described above not only maximizes your immediate impact, but also sets the stage for robust, successful programs in 2024. So, if you find your current strategies yielding diminishing returns or your messaging getting lost in the noise, remember that it’s about more than just impressions – the right approach, coupled with the right platform, can turn year-end challenges into transformative opportunities.  

Interested in exploring what our Dynamic Audience Activation Platform can do to maximize the impact of your marketing budget in 2023 and beyond? Connect with our team today.