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Using Digital to Address the Needs of Caregivers

As pharma and healthcare companies become more sophisticated with their digital offerings, it starts to become much simpler to provide individualized content. Before there was digital, printing a thousand versions of the same educational brochure simply wasn’t a practical option. Now, digital technologies make the task of providing customized materials simple (and no printing required). The wild card in all this is that you have to have quality content that’s also the right content for your audience. Let’s assume for now the content out there is quality. I’d like to address the second part: figuring out if it’s the right content for your many different audiences. At the end of this post, you’ll find six tips for using digital to influence caregivers.

Every healthcare company knows that patients and healthcare professionals (like physicians, nurses, and pharmacists) are important audiences, but who else? Sure, you can add in managed care, government agencies, and even employers (who pay for a lot of that insurance). A few companies with certain products add in one more important audience: the caregiver. It’s a pretty broad term, but for the purposes of this post, I’m talking about anyone who has an interest in a patient’s treatment. This could be a spouse, friend, child, parent, sister, cousin…well, you get the idea. It’s all the people in life who make sure that we actually go to the doctor when we’re sick and that we take our medications when we’re supposed to (at least they try). The level of care they actually provide varies a great degree.

You might be a caregiver right now. It doesn’t mean that you’re with the person you care for 24/7 or that you prepare their meals or change bandages. If you have someone in your life with whom you take an active role in their medical care, then you’re a caregiver.

As I mentioned, some companies already recognize the important role of the caregiver. For example, J&J created an iPhone app that’s completely designed to help caregivers called Care Connector. It’s designed to help caregivers to keep track of appointments, prescriptions, and to connect with other caregivers.

Care Connector

Other companies have placed the caregiver in the center of their promotional efforts. Consider the case of the Exelon Patch from Novartis for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Their entire campaign is built around what the caregiver of an Alzheimer’s patient goes through each day. It’s fitting since the caregiver might be the one who ensures that the patient first gets treatment based on the nature of the disease. In addition, Novartis created a support program specifically for caregivers called My Caregivers Connection.

As an aside, someone recommended I take a look at the Exelon Patch site a couple weeks ago. I must say it has some very striking visuals. It’s a well done campaign in my opinion.

Exelon Patch Website Visuals

Today’s post isn’t about reviewing caregiver programs, but rather to get you to take a different look at how you target the messages for your products and to consider who the critical targets really are. Yes, they’re doctors and patients, but caregivers can play a major role in helping to choose a patient’s initial treatment and also influence whether or not they stay on treatment. When we talk about a product for children, it’s a no-brainer that the parent should be the main focus of communication. Where might this also make sense? Alzheimer’s, as Novartis did, seems like a pretty good fit.

But it doesn’t have to be either patient or caregiver, there’s a balance. This gets to why digital is so important. You can’t afford two TV campaigns, two print campaigns, two websites, and two iMedia plans. Digital technology makes this much simpler. First, by really understanding where your patient’s and their caregivers spend time online, you can focus your message. By using some simple segmentation features, you can individualize content depending on whether they are a caregiver or patient. You can even customize your website based on the search terms that got the person to your site. If they searched for “caring for Alzheimer’s patient,” then you can probably assume they are a caregiver and your site should automatically reflect that. If you’re not using customized landing pages like this, you’re missing something. People expect that when they click on a search result that the page they land on is relevant to their search. If it’s not, they’re gone for good.

One other critical aspect I just mentioned involves understanding your targets’ digital behavior. This is partly driven by age as it relates to whether they are a digital “native” or “immigrant.”  Consider the case of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine from Merck. The patient for this treatment are teenage girls. Where better to have a presence than Facebook? So, that’s what they did and created the Take a Stand Against Cervical Cancer page on Facebook. Some look at this page (including me) and say that it’s not a great use of social media since there is no commenting or discussions on the page. On the other hand, I say, “so what?” All this page serves to do is bring your content to where the brand’s target spends a lot of time. It’s essentially a portable version of the drug’s main website. Put the content where your customers are. Makes perfect sense.

So, if caregivers are your customers, you have to tailor your approach. We were asked to come up with a digital strategy for a chronic pain treatment as part of a pitch a few months ago. The key target was older women (55+) with arthritis. Along with a few other demographic details, we were told that the target had children (either teenagers living at home or who just left home). We came up with some solid ideas and a simple strategy. The plan was to communicate with the patients, but to use the caregivers to help drive additional awareness and compliance once the patient started the treatment. Since most of the caregivers were in their late teens or early twenties according to their research, we proposed building a caregiver educational page on Facebook along with many other tactics. In the end, we didn’t win the pitch and the feedback we got was that we didn’t consider the target audience with our tactics particularly when we suggested the use of Facebook. They told us that old women didn’t use Facebook. Clearly, they didn’t listen (or we didn’t explain it clearly enough). It’s not all about the patient, but also the caregiver. You’ve got to tailor your communication plan to the caregiver with as much thought as you put into the patient.

Assuming caregivers are a critical piece of your communication strategy, then here’s how you should be using digital to ensure that you’re giving them the right information, in the right venue, at the right time.

  • Create custom content. Just don’t copy and paste the same content you have for patients and put it in a “Caregiver” tab. Caregivers have unique needs that are completely different than those of patients. If you don’t want to go through the expense of creating content yourself, look for some that you can license or that is available for syndication.
  • Buy caregiver search terms. Don’t just focus on what patients search for and buy those keywords. Think about (or do some research) about how caregivers search when they are looking for information they need to take care of someone else. Maybe “caring for <plus condition>” or “administering <plus treatment>.”
  • Develop custom landing pages. If a caregiver comes to your site from a source that you know makes it highly likely that they are a caregiver (e.g., one of your caregiver targeted paid search ads), then make sure they land on a page that has caregiver specific information. Don’t just dump them on your homepage.
  • Reach them where they are. Chances are that caregivers will be found on completely different sites compared to your target patients. Remember my Facebook example above.
  • Choose the right technology. Caregivers might be comfortable with different digital technologies versus your patients. Your caregivers might prefer to get new information via RSS, while your patients might have no idea what RSS even is.
  • Consider connecting caregivers with other caregivers. Facilitating the conversation between caregivers would be a useful service. You can only learn so much about caring for a person with Alzheimer’s by reading about it online. You learn the little details that make all the difference from talking with others in your situation. One of the features of the iPhone app that J&J created is a way for caregivers to connect to one another and share what they’ve learned. Nervous about social media and open discussions? Consider how the Connect to Conquer Epilepsy program is set up. Instead of allowing discussions on a company-sponsored site, the program instead matches people with similar situations (like a dating service). Once you are matched up, you share your personal contact information with your match and then you talk off the website via email, phone, or whatever you feel comfortable with.

Caregivers can be an important influencer not just on which treatment a patient chooses, but also on whether or not they continue the treatment. There are plenty of opportunities to use digital to reach this important group in a simple and cost-effective manner. If you aren’t using them, count on your competitor to do it.

Bringing Digital to Pfizer’s Drug Giveaway

First, I would like to applaud the folks at Pfizer for their new MAINTAIN (Medicines Assistance for Those Who Are In Need) program. Yes, it’s a little bit of stretch to get to the acronym, but pharma’s got to have them. For those not familiar with the program, basically, it provides one year of free drugs if you’re unemployed at no cost. A couple of important caveats: you have to have been on the Pfizer drug for three months prior to losing your job and  have no other healthcare coverage for drugs. Essentially, this is the Hyundai Assurance program for pharmaceutical products. 

As we all know, big pharma could always use a bit of good PR and this is some of the best it’s had in a while. Some cynics might mention the limitations of the program or that it’s tied to losing your job instead but does not include those with jobs who still can’t pay for their medications. You could also note that higher cost (and higher profit) oncology products aren’t included in the program according to Ad Age’s review of the program. However, the cynics seem to not be making a big splash this time around as most of the buzz is positive. 

Overall, this has got to be a positive PR coup for Pfizer. At the same time, I’m going to guess that they’ll actually not have that many people who fit the requirements for the program. You need to be on branded Pfizer products for three months and then lose your job. Yes, many people have lost their jobs recently, but the employment rate is still (historically-speaking) relatively low and job losses seem to have slowed. The other piece that limits the number of people who might qualify is that patients have to have been on treatment for three months. Assuming people tell the truth, with adherence rates dropping dramatically in the first three months, most patients never make it to month three. My point? This program might not cost Pfizer that much at all. Compare that to the PR value that they are getting (and could never have bought) and overall it seems like  pretty smart move. 

Let’s also remember, Pfizer has a lot to gain from this program. People who lose their job may cut back on medical treatments along with everything else. Those on Lipitor may ask their doctor for something that’s almost as good but much cheaper and they end up on generic Zocor. Pfizer gets nothing. However, when the patient gets his job back, he’ll probably continue with what was working. Pfizer would rather make sure that their drug is the one the patient is taking when they get insurance coverage once again. So, instead of losing them forever, Pfizer basically loaned them some money until they can get back on their feet and start paying once again.

As an aside, Ad Age included this in their article: “A former high-ranking pharmaceutical company executive said the cost to Pfizer for this new push may not be as high as people think. ‘Most of the money [drug companies spend] is in [research and development],’ said the former executive, who asked not to be identified. ‘It doesn’t cost a lot to manufacture the pills or package them.’”

Perhaps this comment explains why he/she is a “former” executive. If this were the pharma business model, then they could be selling every pill for 3 cents. Technically, I guess they’d have to sell the first pill for $800 million and then the next one could be 3 cents. The point of the higher prices is to re-coup the investment in development throughout the life of the product. Giving them away doesn’t have a high costs of goods sold, but it has a tremendous opportunity cost (or sacrificed revenue “cost”). So, seriously with this quote? But, I digress…

The point of this post isn’t supposed to be a Pfizer-lovefest, so I’ll get to it. My challenge to Pfizer is how they could have (can?) bring digital (and relationship marketing) into this program to make it even more valuable and actually turn a profit on it later on. It’s pretty clear that this program isn’t going to be advertised (which also keeps the number enrolling down) and I’m not suggesting that Pfizer advertise it. There also are some rules around offering enticements for getting someone to use your products and free samples (which is what this basically is) can fit in that category in some cases. So, I know that they have to be careful with how they tie this program to current and future sales and marketing.

That said, there’s an opportunity here. On the application form, Pfizer asks for the patient’s email address. I would guess that people would readily turn over this piece of personal information because they feel that they are getting some value in return (my take on this value exchange). But the question is: what can/should Pfizer do with these email addresses? Again, keep in mind that they’ve offered something very valuable in return for information and have people who are likely to be willing to accept some offers in exchange for these free drugs. So, is Pfizer asking each of the people in the program to opt into one of their product-specific CRM programs? For example, an applicant who is taking Lipitor should be offered the chance to enroll in My HeartWise, the product’s CRM program. If Pfizer believes in the value of these programs, then why not try to get more people enrolled?

Since those who get accepted for program are likely to have a very positive attitude towards Pfizer (and rightfully so), why not leverage this while you can? Perhaps they’ll agree to share their story for use on your website. Maybe they’ll write a blog post about you (or send a tweet). Maybe they’ll tell their friends about how great of a company you are. You can help them do all of this by providing them with simple talking points about the program and the company. Let them be your ambassadors while they’re willing and have a great opinion about your company. 

Maybe now’s the time to start collecting product reviews for inclusion on your site later on (when you can sell it to your regulatory team). Surely, these people would be more likely to give you a positive review (or any review at all). All of this is very common in other industries where they do a much better job at finding, energizing, and supporting their biggest brand advocates. They look for the right people through a variety of channels (social media being the big one now). They get them excited about what they can do and the difference they can make. Finally, they give patients simple ways to spread the word to others. It’s not a quid pro quo, as you’re not making their participation in the program contingent on their agreeing to help. Pfizer can follow this same model: find, energize, and support. 

How? The find part is really easy. They’ve got the names, street addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of those that should be the biggest advocates for the company (i.e., those that were accepted into the program). Energizing is hard regardless of the industry, but it can be done here for sure. Let those in the program know the value of what they are getting, how the drugs are going to help them (i.e., they made the right choice to find a way to stay on treatment), and how many other people could benefit, but aren’t. Yes, a little bit of a guilt-trip, but I think fair. Support is the final part of the model and that could be as complex as mailing a PR kit to every member of the program who is interested or as simple as adding a ShareThis button to every product site. Either way, you have to make it very easy for people to share your story otherwise they won’t.

So, hats off to Pfizer for taking on this ambitious program, it’s a 7.5 out of 10. My challenge to you is for you to figure out how you can make this even better and bring it to a 10 out of 10.

The Ante of Quality Assurance

As part of my regular research, I’m constantly checking out websites all over the Internet. I’ve even had the chance to be a judge for the WebAwards. Point is, I’ve seen a lot of what’s good and bad online. There’s stunning creative with terrible content and there’s amazing content with lifeless design. Occasionally, the best of these combine to create a site that both looks beautiful and has tremendously valuable content. They’re rare, but they exist. Unfortunately, this isn’t all that it takes to have a website that customers engage with and changes their minds. In the end, the number one requirement is that is works.

When I say “work,”  I don’t mean that it must “work,” as in move people along the adoption spectrum, purchase funnel, or whatever you call it, I mean that it actually functions correctly. You’d be surprised how often this doesn’t happen. Links are broken, videos don’t play, fancy iframes don’t quite load, and sites are down. All of these (and many, many more) are completely unacceptable. But, for some reason, these major errors seem to be fairly common. I haven’t noticed that they occur more often on pharma or healthcare websites and I’m not going to call out any specific sites (to protect the innocent and guilty), but I am going to cover a few very specific things you need to ensure happen as you’re developing your new site and maintaining your old one.

I’m going to focus on something I call “The Ante of Quality Assurance.” That is, you have to pay a bit before you can even get started just like an ante in poker. Everyone has to pay it and it ensures the game (i.e., your site) goes as planned. If you don’t have money allocated for quality assurance (QA) in your budget, then take money from somewhere else for it. If your site doesn’t work, does it matter that you have one more flashy graphic? As a client, you should have zero tolerance for errors in the final product. I can guarantee that they are going to happen during development, but once the site is live (and out of beta if you have one), then your site should work flawlessly. F-L-A-W-L-E-S-S-L-Y. Anything less should be fixed immediately. However, if you employ the right QA staff, you should never have this problem. So, do you have money budgeted? Do you have dedicated QA professionals who are trained to find errors and not just people at your agency who need billable time? It makes a tremendous difference.

The best analogy I can give to people who aren’t digital experts is this: Imagine if you completed your TV commercial and during it’s first airing, it simply when black after 20 seconds. Would you stand for that? No, you’d probably have someone’s head on a platter. Now then, how come it’s all right if your shopping cart or your product demo video doesn’t work?

Top Web Browsers

Most companies do a good job with the basics. Links all work, Flash elements play as they should, pages render as they are supposed to. At least they do a good job when it comes to one browser. It takes a little extra effort and also some extra development smarts to ensure that the site works correctly in every browser. I’ve seen too many sites from giant companies work fine in one browser and fall apart in another. This isn’t a one browser world. Market share of web browsers is split between basically six browsers that account for 99.6% of browser usage. They are, in share order, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Netscape, and Opera. What?!? Only heard of two of these? You’re probably in good company. Internet Explorer (IE) accounts for 66% of the market. I’ve found most IE users don’t know (or care) much about the other browsers out there. But, if you don’t consider the others when you’re developing your site, you’re basically saying “sorry about your luck, but you can’t see my stuff” to one third of all Internet users. Not good, but common. 

Without too much technical detail, each of the browsers interpret code differently. Some are very close to one another, others are not. For example, Firefox (22% share) interprets code very strictly and literally. This means that pages that contain coding errors are rendered in such a way so as to leave them looking or working incorrectly in the browser. However, to be sure, it’s the site’s fault, not the browser’s fault. Firefox strictly interprets the W3C standards for coding. IE tends to let you get away with a few mistakes and “hacks.” Some developers have little shortcuts they use when they code and others are just sloppy. The result can be a perfectly functioning page in IE, but one that barely loads in Firefox.

To add a little more complexity to this, let’s not forget that there are currently three versions of IE that people are using right now: IE6, IE7, IE8 (in beta). Each behaves differently than the other two. So, that means you’ve got to test opposite multiple browsers and multiple versions. While you’re at it, you need to check different operating systems as well if your site loads or installs anything outside the browser (like a widget or gadget). 

By now, you’re probably seeing why you need QA included in your plan and the value of ensuring that it’s properly funded. You’ve got to do the basics right in order to communicate with your customers. Remember, these people usually don’t trust pharma and healthcare companies, so when they do extend themselves and come to your site, make sure your house is in order.

Do You Really Need Your Digital Agency?

As someone who works for a digital (and relationship marketing) agency (Bridge Worldwide), I was a little hesitant to write the title of this post. It’s a fair question though: Do You Really Need Your Digital Agency? I’m addressing this question not just to all the pharma and healthcare marketers out there, but also to all the agency folks that are regular readers. Your question is just slightly different: Does Your Client Really Need Your Digital Agency?

The inspiration for this post was a fellow Bridge colleague, Jason Bender. He writes the blog Famine City along with Marty Boyer, another Bridge-ian. Earlier this week, Jason wrote a post called “Howard Stern schools digital agencies w/ facebook.” I really should just re-blog Jason’s post because he pretty well sums it up. I’m going to add a little pharma/healthcare commentary to his thoughts though. Here’ the background from Jason’s post:

“He [Howard Stern]  (the “client”) had a relatively simple request for the folks who run his website (his “digital agency”). He wanted to post a video to his site. He made the request live on the air, and waited.

“After a few minutes, his producer claimed “they—the guys who run the site—can’t post a video on the site.” In other words, the “agency” told the “client” that it wasn’t possible to do what he wanted to do with his site.

What did Howard say?

 “Get back to me with a plan?” No.
“Let me know when that’s possible?” No.
“Can you explain why we can’t?” Nope.

He didn’t ask them anything. He solved the problem himself.

His solution? Forget the website, then. Create a Stern Show page on Facebook and post the video. “We’ll have it up in less than 5 minutes.” 

Jason ends his post quite simply: “So the question for digital agencies and the people who work at them is…what do you offer your clients that they can’t do themselves with 15 minutes and a Wi-Fi connection?” [bold is his]

For all you agency folks reading this, take a moment and really answer this. For you “clients,” ask yourself if you could do what your digital agency is doing on your own. 

As someone who takes great pride in the quality of work and depth of thinking we bring to our clients, I’m hoping, for the industry’s sake, that most agencies have a good answer for this question. You have to because if you don’t there’s an agency right behind you that does.

So to take Jason’s observation and apply it to healthcare and pharma (and really any industry), I put together a little list of what you should expect from your digital agency. If they’re just tweaking your website or uploading content for you, you don’t need them. If they’re doing more than this, great. But how much should you really expect? Here goes:

Your digital agency should…

  • be able to occupy a seat at any table where any marketing strategy, tactic, or channel is discussed. In other words, they should be able to add value beyond just digital.
  • provide strategic recommendations and not just tactical executions. Your agency shouldn’t simply take orders and do just what you say. They should be partners who are helping define your digital strategy and not just updating a little copy on your site.
  • be creating systems that allow you to make simple updates without redoing things from scratch. In other words, if you request a change to one word in a Flash piece and your agency sends you a bill for $50k, you need a new agency. Same for updating site content (not design, content). Frequently updated sites should have a content management system (CMS) or some other simple procedure that allows this to happen.
  • tell you “no.” They should tell you “no” to ideas that they believe are not good ones. They should say “no” when they know that you’re about to waste your money. Part of any agency’s job is to talk you out of doing things.
  • know if you’re making your numbers. Are you over-budget? Are sales behind plan? Every agency should know this including your digital agency. I don’t know why some clients don’t share this with agencies and I don’t know why more agencies don’t ask for this. How can you recommend what a client should do next if you don’t even know where their business stands?
  • cooperate with every other agency. More and more, digital is the hub of communication with customers. If your digital agency doesn’t know what everyone else is doing, you’ve got a problem.
  • know healthcare/pharma. Yes, even your “tech” people should understand the market. They might be the ones who can come up with an elegant technology solution to a big problem (like adverse event reporting)  if they understand the market, regulatory rules, and brand strategy. If they only know “tech,” then you’re not getting your money’s worth. 
  • know other industries as well. They should also know industries like consumer packaged goods (CPG) or consumer electronics or any other industry where some of the newest digital strategies and tactics are being tried. This will allow them to reapply these lessons to healthcare/pharma. If your agency only knows healthcare/pharma, then you’re missing something and probably doing the same thing as last year.
  • do some thinking for “free.” Not your entire brand plan mind you or an entire website. I’m talking about leading your thinking. This might be as simple as sending you an article they found along with some of their own commentary. It might be a presentation they created on social media principles that they share with you (kinda like mine that I’m sharing).
  • be making you smarter on digital…everyday. When was the last time your agency taught you something about digital that you didn’t already know? When was the last time they put together, say, a small training program for you that made you better?

It’s a pretty long list, but I don’t think it’s anything too complex or too much to ask. So now I’m curious if you’re getting this if you’re a marketer and if you’re giving this if you’re an agency person. Let me know what I’m missing or if I’m asking too much.

Now…I’ll sit here and  hope I’m not firebombed by some of my industry colleagues for letting out all the secrets and making their jobs harder.

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