Archive | March, 2009
Mar 31st 2009 

How Pharma Should Use Search Engine Marketing

Mini White Paper

UPDATE April 6 (original post follows):

Seems like the times have changed already. In the week after I wrote this, the FDA has cracked down on paid search ads. On Friday, April 3, the FDA sent letters to 14 companies specifically about misleading search marketing ads. As you saw in this post, no one was really quite sure how to interpret FDA rules for search, but they made it pretty clear in these letters. If you have have the drug name and an indication, you’d better have fair balance. Same as every other promotional medium. The story of these letters broke on April 3 and included a few examples. One such ad was for Biogen drug Tysabri. The quote from the article:

“Biogen received a warning letter for its multiple-sclerosis drug Tysabri. The ads say ‘A Multiple Sclerosis Treatment That’s Different from the Others’ or ‘Satisfied with your MS Medication or Looking for Something Different?’ but don’t include any risk information.

“Their casual approach to Tysabri treatment is extraordinary in light of the potentially lethal risks of the drug and the stringent controls over its distribution,” the FDA said in its letter to Biogen on March 26. The letter was posted on the agency’s Web site Friday.”

The most critical part of all these letters for pharma companies is as follows: “Biogen’s ad includes a link to the Web site for the drug, which does contain the relevant risk information. The FDA said the link ’does not mitigate the misleading omission of risk information from these promotional materials [bold added].’ “ That is, the one-click rule is dead. Just because you have the risk information on the page your ad links to doesn’t mean you don’t have include fair balance. So, for all the complaining I do about the FDA not being clear on digital promotion guidelines, this seems pretty clear to me. Check out my original post, which contains some more things for pharma marketers to consider when placing paid search ads.

Original Post

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and haven’t gotten around to it. Someone at work today reminded me of it when they asked me a very simple question (or so it would seem) about FDA rules regarding paid search marketing. (For the sake of today’s post, I’m referring to search engine paid search such as Google AdWords.) The question was this: “Since you have to include fair balance when you show the drug’s name and what it is used for, how come there are all these paid search ads that do both with no fair balance?” Here’s an example of one of these:

Google Breast Cancer Search

There you see a paid ad (in the tan box) from Femara along with “Breast Cancer.” Femara is indicated for breast cancer, so by including the name of the drug and what it is used for without fair balance they are in violation. Right? Wrong?

The answer is I have no idea and neither does anyone else for sure. The FDA has never formally issued guidance here (a pet peeve that I’ve blogged about before). The rule that many companies seem to use is the “one click rule” (good review here from Catalyst). Many companies use this rule almost like it’s a formal FDA policy, but it isn’t. Basically, the rule is that if the fair balance information is one click away from the ad, then you’re okay. Or are you?

At the end of last year, Diovan received a warning letter for a banner they used that contained no fair balance (hat tip to John Mack’s post about this issue). They were applying the one click rule. The FDA didn’t care. Two things to consider though: this was a banner and not just a simple text ad like AdWords and Diovan has a black box warning meaning it’s got a whole set of special promotional rules to follow. So, you can’t really say this is the end of the story. Fact is that thousands of pharma ads are served up on Google each day that, by letter of the law, are in violation. The FDA has to know this and lets it go, so there has to be some informal nod of approval there…maybe.

Enough of that. In this post, I want to do two things. One, convince you of the value of paid search and two, show you some examples of what to do and what not to do. 

One: Why You Should Care About Paid Search

I’m going to use Google AdWords throughout this post, but know that the same rules apply to Yahoo! or MSN or any other network that wants to serve your text ads. If you have no idea what AdWords is, you can start with this primer from Google.  Very few pharma marketers I know really understand paid search and why it’s important. Typically, the buying and planning for paid search is relegated to the “e” team or is completely outsourced to a media buying agency. While this may be fine, you still need a working knowledge of what’s going on. Here are a couple of bullet points on why you should care about search as a channel for marketing:

  • Over 80% of all web sessions start at a search engine (source: comScore)
  • 85% of all website traffic comes from search engines (source: SEMPO)
  • 91% of Internet users report conducting searches daily (source: SEMPO)
  • 1.78 billion searches are conducted per day on Google alone (source: Google)

Big numbers, right? Here’s why search marketing is so important and why it works: Many people go online with a problem. Problems need solutions. This is what Google’s results, both paid and organic, are supposed to be. Solutions. If you search for “hotel in San Juan,” we can reasonably assume your “problem” is that you need to find a hotel in San Juan. The solutions might be organic results of some major hotels in the area and the paid results that might include something as simple as “Cheap hotels in San Juan.” Consumers are looking for Google to provide a solution and Google is letting you help them provide it (at a cost, of course).

Clearly this is how patients use the Internet. They have a problem (e.g., a condition they are managing) and they want solutions. These solutions can come in many forms and you need to be sure that you’re part of the list. Here’s an analogy for you: paid search similar to someone who goes to a grocery store looking for diapers. They already know their problem (out of diapers…a major problem), but they may not know their solution. This person gets to the shelf (Google’s search results page) and then picks out a solution (a specific brand of diapers). If your brand is not appearing in paid or organic search results on the first page, then you’re not “on the shelf.” It’s hard to be selected when you aren’t on the shelf.

Okay, so by now you’re convinced. Paid search is good. One more thing to consider, it’s highly cost effective. With AdWords, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. So, you’re only getting people that found some appeal with your ad. They’re interested in your solution. So, you’re not wasting money paying to display ads for people who don’t care about your solution. You pay when they click. That’s good news and bad. You pay when they click. Each time someone clicks, money comes out of your budget. The question then is “did you get your money’s worth”? Here’s how you can ensure that you do.

Two: What To Do and What Not To Do

I’m going to be as diplomatic as I can here in providing some constructive criticism. When I show an example, know that this is just one of probably hundreds that are making this same error, so if you’re site or campaign is here, know that you’re in good company. Paid search is still a new skill for many pharma marketers, so mistakes are going to be made. Let’s just figure out some ways to ensure that they don’t keep happening. I’ve broken the areas you should focus on into three sections.

“Fulfil the Promise”

This means that when you promise something in your ad, make sure you deliver it. If you don’t, the patient will simply leave immediately and you wasted your money at best. At worst, you can create someone who has a very poor perception of your brand…not something any pharma brand needs. Here are the first paid and organic search results for “breast cancer” again. You should know that each time someone clicks on a paid search ad for “breast cancer” it’s going to cost between $1 and $7. It all depends on what the competition is bidding at that time. $7 a click is quite a bit to have people leave as soon as they arrive.

Google Breast Cancer Search

So, does Femara fulfil the promise? They say they are going to allow you to “Review Treatments.” When you click on the ad, you get to this page. See it for yourself here and below.

Femara Landing Page

It’s the Femara homepage and, right away, I don’t see anything about reviewing treatments. There is a link to “Treatment Options” on the left, but why didn’t I get automatically sent to that page? Rule one: if you promise something then deliver it. Part of this is ensuring that you don’t direct every paid search ad to your homepage. Direct them to the page that matches the information you promised in your ad. 

To give Femara the benefit of the doubt, I checked this “Treatment Options” link to see if this allows us to “Review Treatments.” For one section, adjuvant therapy (one place where Femara is indicated), here’s what was included:

Femara Treatment Options

Not exactly “Treatment Options” when your treatment is the only one listed and far from letting me “Review Treatments” as the ad indicated.

Patients Like Me, normally one of my favorites, is guilty of the same rule violation. They have two versions of basically the same ad for the search term “fibromyalgia” (Google lets you experiment which works best, which I highly recommend). Here they are:

Fibromyalgia ad 1

Fibromyalgia ad 2

Subtle difference, but one offers you a survey when you click and the other doesn’t. This is a great way to see what people are more interested in and what will get them to click your ad and come to your site. However, both of these ads send you to the same generic fibromyalgia landing page. There is no survey. At best, an honest mistake, at worst a bait-and-switch. Unfortunately, this is very common in AdWords, but people don’t like to be tricked. They clicked on your ad for a reason and expect to see what you promised. Don’t waste your money if you’re not going to fulfil the promise.

“Switch-A-Roo at Your Own Risk”

The “switch-a-roo” is pretty common on AdWords. This involves including one URL in your ad and then automatically redirecting the user to a different URL. Here’s an example:

High Cholesterol search

So, I searched for “Cholesterol” and got back these three paid search options. The first one sounds pretty good. I want to know how to do all this stuff…lowering my cholesterol and such. The Site URL sounds good too: GetCholesterolInfo.com. I want to get info and it sounds non-biased. I’ll go with that. But where does the patient go? To the Crestor brand site.

Crestor Brand Site

The person clicking this ad may be fine with this or they may scoff at being sent to a pharma brand site when they thought they were going to a third party information site based on the URL in the ad. Again, you might lose someone immediately and you’re wasting money. Let me also say that there is nothing illegal or unscrupulous about using these masked URLs and redirects. They are well within Google’s guidelines. In addition, they don’t violate the letter of the FDA law since the ad doesn’t contain a brand name. So, they are likely “less” in violation than the versions that include a disease state and a brand name. Likely, but who really knows.

Crestor does get higher marks than Femara (disclosure: I used to work for AstraZeneca, makers of Crestor, but they’re getting a little rough treatment, so you know I’m not too biased). They fulfil the promise to a much higher degree. They offer in their ad “ways to lower your LDL cholesterol” and they direct you to a page in the section of their site called “Living a Healthy Lifestyle” with information about diet, exercise, and stress management. They didn’t just dump the patient on the homepage and require him to find his way to this info.

So, I said this section is called ”Switch-A-Roo at Your Own Risk” and I mean it. There isn’t anything wrong with using these masked URLs, just know that some people might not appreciate them. As I said before, Google let’s you experiment. Try different ads and track the bounce rate of those clicking the ads. Bounce rates essentially let you see if people leave your site before clicking anything else. Is the bounce rate really high with the masked URLs compared to the real URLs? If so, you might have a problem with upset people leaving right away when the figure out this is not what they expected. Test, test, test.

“For All That Is Decent and Holy, Buy Your Brand Keywords”

I didn’t include the first part of the rule initially, but added it in my second draft to emphasize the point. I’m not even going to explain this rule, I’m going to see if you can figure out the problem from this picture. This is the search result for “Lipitor:”

Lipitor Google Search Result

Figure out the problem yet? For all the fighting pharma does over Canadian imports, especially Pfizer’s based on its history, you’d think that pharma would take care of this little problem. The two top positions for paid search go to Canadian pharmacies. If someone was just prescribed Lipitor, they probably go online to check it out a bit more even before they fill the prescription. They search for “Lipitor” and find a simple way to buy your drug from Canada. That’s not in the marketing plan.

There might be a really good reason why Lipitor is not buying its brand keywords. They may have exceeded the budget for the day, one of these other companies outbid them, or Pfizer may have chosen to not bid on “Lipitor.” Whatever the reason, it’s still a rule. Always own your brand name on AdWords. Don’t let anyone else dictate the message. By letting someone else have the top spot (you can outbid if you need to), you’re giving them the opportunity to tell your story. You don’t allow that in any other marketing channel, so don’t allow it here.

 

Those are the rules. Follow them to get started in paid search if you haven’t already or follow them to improve what you’re already doing. As always, if you don’t have anyone at your company or agencies who you feel can do this properly, then contact me. Remember if your company was mentioned in my post about Pharma’s Getting the Message, I’ll help you for free. All the companies mentioned in this post are on the list (hint, hint). 

Mar 27th 2009 

Is the FDA Already Creating Digital Promotion Rules?

Many people in and around the pharma industry have been asking for the FDA to create some more specific and updated guidelines for digital promotion. There have been a bunch of conferences where it’s been a hot topic and I’m sure there’s been a few focus groups, but one thing’s been lacking from these. The FDA. They’ve been pretty quiet. 

As it stands now, the FDA (actually DDMAC) regulatory guidance has been pretty thin regarding digital. I noted in a post a while back that the FDA recognizes 40 different types of promotion ranging from DTC TV to the archaic and oddly named “Professional House Organ.” All digital promotion is relegated to just one code “WWW” for  ”Internet Promotion.” There are about five different category types of print advertising for professionals, but there’s only one for everything possible in digital. I wonder where mobile fits in? Get your own 2253 submission form here and see for yourself.

So, I think we can all agree that the guidelines and oversight of digital promotion by the FDA are pretty weak. That doesn’t mean that they ignore digital promotion, as the folks from Shire found out when a YouTube video of theirs drew a warning letter. But, they haven’t spelled out what’s legal and what’s not, so everyone is left guessing just a bit. It appeared that Eye on FDA might have cracked this mystery a bit last week with their interview of an FDA official regarding the use of social media by pharma. Unfortunately, despite Eye on FDA’s best efforts, the FDA official was, not surprisingly, pretty vague and non-committal. The net was that there’s nothing inherently violative about social media, it’s the message that matters. In other words, just because your brand has a social media site doesn’t mean it’s in violation, but if the information and content on that social media platform  (e.g., off label, lacking fair balance) is in violation, then the entire thing is. No big surprise, as Shire can tell you. 

Today, MediaPost decided to get some attention by simply rehashing the Eye on FDA interview, but adding a more attention grabbing headline “FDA Official Tells Blogger That Pharma Social Media OK.” Technically, this was said, but it certainly wasn’t a green light for pharma companies to do whatever they want in social media. The MediaPost article has been all the rage on Twitter today, but I’m doubting many read the full details. This interview (and certainly MediaPost’s reworking) was far from providing any specific information on how pharma can use social media. MediaPost’s on my “list” today.

Okay, so no guidelines yet. How far are we from them? Great news! Not far. It appears that there’s already a workstream in place at FDA to develop new digital promotion guidelines. While poking around their site, I came across a section called “Policy Development and Guidance to Industry.” There’s a list of areas where FDA is developing new guidance. One of these is this:

“Promotion on the Internet.- As part of an FDA working group, DDMAC is developing an agency-wide policy to address how advertising and promotion of FDA-regulated products will be regulated on the Internet.”

Outstanding. Relax everyone, the FDA has it well in hand. Sure, we’d like a say in what they come up with, but aren’t some guidelines better than none? I can stop my open letter to the FDA and all the discussions with colleagues on what we’d like to see in the guidelines. It’s too late. They’re coming.

Or are they?

Being a bit of an FDA skeptic, I dug a little further. I noticed that there wasn’t a date on the page, so I couldn’t immediately tell when it was updated. Never fear. Enter the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. For those not familiar with this outstanding tool. You can enter any domain name and this archive will show you updates to the domain and allow you to view the page as it looked in the past. I did a search for this FDA policy page and here’s what I got back. 

FDA Policies on Wayback Machine

As you can see, some version of this page dates back to 2000. So, I clicked the link to the earliest version of this policy page, which dates back to November 20, 2000. The results unfortunately weren’t surprising. There it was…the same exact statement for “Promotion on the Internet.”

“Promotion on the Internet- As part of an FDA working group, DDMAC is developing an agency-wide policy to address how advertising and promotion of FDA-regulated products will be regulated on the Internet.”

My hopes were dashed. 

Here’s what this tells me. The FDA’s been planning to deliver new guidelines for “Internet Promotion” for at least eight and a half years. Once more…eight and a half years. Take away message: Don’t hold your breath on new guidelines. 

Message two: Don’t stop doing new things in “Internet Promotion” because of this. Remember, as far as FDA is concerned, digital is a promotional channel like any other. The same rules apply to digital as they do to print and anything else. If you make claims, they’d better be on label and they’d better include fair balance. If you remember that one rule, you’ll stay out of trouble 95% of the time. 

We do still need to sort out some specifics around the use of social media. Is there ever a way that a brand could really open up live comments and discussion from patients on a branded site? Maybe. We lack the guidance about how this can be done successfully and in compliance though. However, the FDA is generally a fair bunch of folks. They don’t want to kill every idea of yours. They do want it to follow some rules and they will work with you to figure out a way you can do your idea and stay in compliance with the rules.  In other words, can I do this if I also agree to do that? For example, Fabio Gratton from Ignite Health came up with an idea that basically was a widget pharma companies could install on their social media sites that allowed patients to report adverse events in a single click. Perhaps if a company agreed to include this widget in a prominent place, then FDA would allow live, unmoderated comments. Give a little, get a little.

For now, we don’t know, but that doesn’t mean we can’t forge ahead. The FDA will give comments on any idea before you launch it, so there’s no excuse to not try because you’re worried about trouble later. Get FDA involved early and you might be pleasantly surprised what’s possible. You won’t be the first try social media in pharma. Remember the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki we (including all of you) created? Well, share that with your company and show them that you wouldn’t be the first. Many others have tried and not one of these programs have gotten a single warning letter.

Why would you?


Mar 26th 2009 

Pharma Can Use Email Marketing to Improve…Everything

The main finding of a recent study by Epsilon shouldn’t come as big surprise to marketers: Many patients prefer to learn about pharmaceutical products online. There you have it. Not a big surprise, right? Well, a few things from this study will surprise you.

This study focused on email marketing. It’s something that I’d say just about every pharma company does to some degree. Some do it as an “also ran” tactic, while others have truly integrated it into a larger marketing mix. A big question I’ve heard from many pharma marketers in deciding whether to invest more in email marketing is whether or not patients actually find the emails useful and if they have any positive impact whatsoever. It’s a fair question. The natural assumption might be that people don’t like pharma companies, so they don’t like emails from pharma companies. This ignores two facts. First, in every case, these people have opted into receiving emails (real pharma companies don’t spam). They want them. Second, I’ve found that people don’t like YOUR pharma company, but they like the one that makes the drug that helps them (i.e., THEIR pharma company)…an important nuance.

What the Epsilon study showed was that email marketing improves, well, everything. Here’s the data:

How patients prefer to learn about pharma products

Not surprisingly, talking with your doctor came in first. Also not surprising: websites came in second. I think we can all accept that now  people go online to find about about pretty much anything and pharma products are no different. I personally am a bit surprised that talking with a pharmacist came in so high since I haven’t ever done this, but then again, I’m not part of the study.

My favorite two data points, of course, are for “email from a brand/pharma company” and “offline advertising/marketing.” I’m glad to see email marketing so high (more on that later) and that offline is so low. Allow me to translate for those that still haven’t gotten it yet…patients would rather learn about your drug from an email versus your TV commercial. How does that impact your brand budget? More on how you can use this fact in a bit.

Since we’re focused on email marketing today, let’s continue through the Epsilon study.

why patients open emails from pharma companies

Two VERY important pieces of VERY actionable information come from this question. First, if you’re not doing it already, include a coupon in your emails. It’s simple to do and it’s the number one reason why people subscribe to your email program. If they get a few emails from you (especially in the beginning) without a coupon, do you think they’re going to continue opening your email? Number two. The next most popular reason why people subscribe to your emails is to learn about new products. Unfortunately, the study doesn’t give details on what “new” means. It could mean new to the market or new to the patient (i.e., a drug they haven’t heard about yet). Learning about existing products is third, so this might be semantics. I think we can safely say that the number two reason for subscribing is to learn about new and existing products. 

How can you use that information? Simple. When you opted in people to your email program, you asked them if they wanted to hear about other products from your company. You did ask them, right? If not, change your opt in TODAY (a lot of stuff in CAPS today…can’t help it). If you do have this opt in, find all the people who checked that box and put together a compelling message to them about other products your company offers or are developing. Key word there is “compelling.” Compelling to them, not you. That means you might want to do a little extra legwork. A few thoughts…if you have an email program for your asthma product and also have an allergy product, you’ve got a story. 50% of asthma can be attributed to allergies, so someone who’s asthmatic might be interested in finding out ways to control his or her allergies as well. Don’t just randomly send them something about your hypertension drug. Think about what might be relevant and compelling first.

Next useful tidbit:

Personalized Pharma Emails

Read that one again just to be sure you got it. Good. Summary: People want you to personalize their content. They don’t construe this as spying on them (as one brand manager once told me). They don’t feel like it’s an Orwellian invasion of privacy. On the contrary, they EXPECT you to do this. Good news is that you might already do this to some extent. Perhaps you asked a few questions about their condition when the person signed up for your emails, but did you actually do anything with this information? Did you create an algorithm and rule set that describes how certain combinations of answers correspond to different content? If not, you basically made your sign up process harder and added no additional value. Consumers are too smart for this and will ask themselves why they gave you all that information only to get nothing (like personalized content) in return. So, some advice, if you’re not using the information from these questions, get rid of them. Make your sign up simpler. However, I’d rather you create true customized content instead.

Perhaps you segment people and deliver slightly personalized content based on a few questions, but you can take this much further and I haven’t seen many pharma companies even dabble in this area (correct me if I’m wrong). Notice that part of the question was whether using website activity to create customized information was okay as well. The answer appears to be yes. Are you tracking website behavior of your visitors? It’s simple to do if you require people to log into your site. Now, before you simply add a log on to your site, a warning…there had better be a really good reason for requiring a log on. For example, it could be an individualized meal plan (or other content) or calendar tools, but whatever it is, people have to see it as useful or they will never log in to get it. Maybe it’s a special offering or coupon. Just make sure it’s purposeful. So, assuming you got people to log on, you can match their activity to their profiles, which should drive the content of the emails they receive. Sound like voodoo? Feel free to contact me and our company will do it for you. 

How would you use this information? Simple. If someone navigates to your page on financial assistance, for example, and spends five minutes reading the content before leaving, you probably can assume that finances and how to pay for your drug are concerns. The next email you send to this person should focus on financial issues. That’s good. But you can make it great. Consider instead an email that goes out immediately and tells the patient that you know she is concerned about paying for the drug. You include a series of coupons she can use and a phone number (and a link for live chat, natch!) that connects her to someone who can talk about the different financial assistance programs you have available. Do that well and you might have saved someone who may have given up on your product simply because of price. That’s what great looks like.

One  more point before I stop this ridiculously long post…

Perception of pharma companies that send email

What?!? One of pharma’s biggest issues is an overall negative perception of the industry, right? Turns out you can improve this with email marketing. Read the question again: “I have a more favorable opinion of the pharmaceutical companies that send me email because of the communications I receive.” Looking for a simple way to improve your company’s public perception? Here’s a place to start. One caveat, the “because of the communications I receive” is an important part of this, so make sure you’re sending quality content that’s meaningful to patients.

Do it right and you might find that email marketing can improve…welll…everything.

Mar 23rd 2009 

Pharma Needs an iPhone

Mini White Paper

I doubt that Steve Jobs was thinking about helping the pharma industry when his company created the iPhone, but he is a visionary, so you never know. I’ve found that pharma marketers are always looking for the next big thing that they can be the first to try, that’s “innovative”, and that will put their products out front of everyone else. From time to time, someone actually manages to do this. I have noticed though that it takes pharma quite a while in many cases to catch up. That is, the innovations in pharma marketing this year were the innovations in consumer packaged goods marketing five years ago (sometimes less, but a general number). Rarely is pharma the first to try anything. In many cases, there’s good reason for this. It’s a highly regulated environment, as we all know, but it’s also an environment where marketing risks are generally not rewarded within the corporate structure. What I mean is that pharma companies have been very successful in the past doing things the way they’ve always done them, so big risks aren’t encouraged. Stick with what you know. However, it’s a whole new world now and pharma needs to do something different. Their traditional marketing model is breaking down, so now’s the time.

So here is a chance for pharma to really take the lead. It’s something that isn’t highly risky and that’s a perfect fit for an important focus of pharma marketing: the education of physicians and patients. I’m talking about the iPhone.

First, some stats…I have tried and tried to dig up the percentage or number of doctors that use an iPhone, but I haven’t been successful. If you’ve got the data, please leave it in a comment. However, I’ve got a bunch of other data that should give you a pretty good picture how successful the iPhone is and how quickly it has been adopted. 

Okay, so you get the point. iPhone usage is growing really quickly. In addition, there are now 291 medical applications available in the store (of 29,330 total). That’s not a lot especially when you consider there are 5,906 games available. So, there’s a big opportunity to grow this category.  

Enough background…on with the show. Pharma should begin to leverage the iPhone to educate and form closer relationships with physicians and patients.

Physicians first…here are a few ideas.

Every time I talk with someone about an edetailing program, they always want to know the incentive you’re going to provide the physicians to participate. In the past, you could give away any medically-related item, but the new PhRMA code for interacting with healthcare professionals says this is a no-no. Any items now have to be of nominal value and “designed primarily for the education of patients or healthcare professionals.” No more tschoskies, no more stethoscopes. Of course, my view has been that if you do a quality edetail, you don’t need an incentive, but that’s a story for another day. Assuming you want to provide an incentive, how about a download of a medical iPhone application? One of the most downloaded, paid applications is Instant ECG, which is an educational piece to help physicians brush up on their ECG reading skills. If you’ve got a cardiovascular drug, it’s an even better fit. Cost: $4.99. Isn’t this better than what you’re giving away now?

How about creating your own application related to your drug’s treatment area? If you’re in Oncology (as I used to be), it’s wide open. A search for “oncology” in the app store returned three applications (none of which were really related to oncology). Same thing when you search for “Cancer” though there are a few more results because of all the stellar horoscope apps. Once you create your application, you can sell it in the store, give it away on your site, allow sales reps to distribute to doctors (sending it directly from their iPhones…if they had one), use it as a convention booth draw, or, oh yes, use it to promote your product. If you’re not really familiar with apps and how they work, you might be short of ideas. Feel free to contact me for a few free ones.

What about an edetailing “portal”? You already saw that iPhones are where most of the mobile Internet traffic is coming from, so people are using them essentially as a laptop. A well-designed app or a properly optimized edetail would be perfect for the iPhone by allowing physicians to participate in edetails when it’s truly convenient. Did I mention the iPhone is actually a phone as well? Forgot about that. How about ending your edetail with a button that immediately connects the doctor to the local rep or MSL (medical science liaison)?

And now Patients…a few more ideas…

Pharma companies need to be creating apps for patients to help manage their disease…NOW. The tools that are available currently are not good enough. There is only one asthma-related disease management app available. It’s called Asthma-Charter. The current version has an average rating of 1.5 stars out of 5. You don’t need to be an app store expert to know this isn’t great. 

Asthma-Charter

Mainly, the issues people have with the application is that it is very unstable. If you’re going to make an application, you’ve got to make it right otherwise the reviewers in the app store are ruthless. In this case, they should be. This application costs $4.99. That might not seem like a lot, but it is when you consider that less than 10% of all the apps cost this much or more and about 60% of all apps are free or $0.99. Two things…no one should be paying for this. A pharma company should be giving this away to all new patients (but a better version). A download certificate packaged with each bottle of pills (or inhaler in this case) would work perfectly. Second, there’s no reason this shouldn’t function perfectly. I can say a lot about pharma technology, but when they do it, it usually works. Someone needs to take ownership and start fixing this situation.

Pharma also needs to think about how to make their information more mobile. There are very few pharma .mobi sites or even a quality mobile version of the main site. With more and more people getting healthcare information from their phones, you need to have a presence here as well. Your mobile site needs to work as well as your regular site or you’ll lose customers. Guaranteed.

The next natural question is :have any pharma or healthcare companies jumped into this space yet? I’ve found a couple. Johnson & Johnson created the Care Connector app for patient caregivers to keep track of appointments, prescriptions, and to connect with other caregivers. It’s free and has a respectable three and a half star rating. 

Care Connector

Perhaps it’s not surprising that this comes from J&J, as they seem to be blazing the digital trails with the first meaningful company blog in healthcare and one of the first (the first?) Facebook pages for a brand. The other one I found was a bit more surprising. It comes from Zicam (zinc products for shortening the duration of your cold). They created The Cold & Flu Companion. While most of the app involved product offerings and sales messages, there’s a decent tool that shows cold and flu activity for any ZIP code.

Zicam Cold and Flu Companion iPhone app

While it has a two star rating at this point, looking at the reviews this is mainly because people were bothered that most of the app was “advertising.” A word to the wise when creating these, balance product messages with the value of the tool.

That’s all you need to get started with the iPhone pharma folks. As I mentioned in a past post about how pharma firewalls were making it hard for their marketers to learn about the latest digital technologies, the same problem exists here. You’ve got to have an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and use some applications in order to understand the power of this tool and how it REALLY works. As always, you can only learn so much from reading about something versus actually experiencing it. The iPhone’s no different. So, pharma marketers, go tell your bosses you need an iPhone. You can tell them it was my idea.

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