Using target marketing to improve patient compliance

Patient non-compliance with prescription therapies represents significant lost revenue to pharmaceutical makers.



Patient non-compliance with prescription therapies represents significant lost revenue to pharmaceutical makers. According to Datamonitor, patient non-adherence costs the pharmaceutical industry in excess of $30 billion each year.

It is a problem that was largely ignored during the industry's days of double-digit growth, but which has taken on new urgency with pharma's increasingly lean margins.

Jay Bolling, the new president of Roska Healthcare Advertising and a 20-year veteran of healthcare and pharmaceutical advertising, believes the industry's approach to consumer marketing is continuing to evolve, with a growing emphasis on patient compliance and persistency.

Historically, Bolling says, pharma has relied on a database driven, purely opt-in persistency model that has failed to deliver the significant numbers of patients necessary to capture the attention of teams marketing billion-dollar drugs. But as markets and the types of drugs being pursued have begun to change, so too are approaches to compliance and persistency.

Bolling says effective compliance marketing begins with the very first exposure.

There's extensive research that's been done to show that one of the biggest factors in non-persistence is the relationship between the physician and the patient, he says. If a patient doesn'st trust their doctor, they don'st trust the medication prescribed and are a lot more likely to drop off the treatment.

The key, Bolling says, is to integrate the traditional opt-in end with the front end which for the past 10 years has been awareness-based direct to consumer advertising.

With awareness advertising, you appeal to people who are ready to take action, he explains. If it's not already on your radar screen to talk to the doctor and move forward, then you'sre going to ignore that advertising.

By engaging people up-front at the first exposure with targeted advertising, Bolling says, pharmas can really affect: the ability to target their patients, the media they are using and the message.

So, if we talk about targeting, it's really to complement an awareness platform, he says. The questions is how can we really focus on our best prospects and talk to the people we want to reach to the exclusion of all others?

There are many ways to target, Bolling says. One way is geographically by focusing on an area with a high prevalence of a disease state, physicians who are high writers of prescriptions or a positive reimbursement environment, he says.

But Bolling says it is also important to look at individuals.

You have to look at the target audience and determine if you'sre reaching the treatment resistant individual and not just the people who are already ready to take action, he suggests.

Bolling points to osteoporosis as a good example.

What woman turns 50 and thinks: oh, I'sve got to start treating myself for osteoporosis? he asks. It's not on their radar screen. We not only have to target the right people, who are most likely to be receptive to that message, but we'sve got to move them from awareness to acceptance to action. We have to use communication that's going to take them through that continuum, rather than just beating them over the head with a brand.

And television, may not be the best media tool for communicating, Bolling suggests. Although TV has been favored for its broad, strong reach, he says what the industry needs now is to create more of a surround sound effect. This can be achieved by looking at the many places the patient can be intercepted, including the doctor's office, the pharmacy, online, through third-party advocacy groups, maybe even through their friends, he suggests.

We need to establish that surround sound effect by hitting every patient touchpoint and leveraging those so that we'sre not only more likely to get our message to the patient, but to reinforce it in different ways that increases our credibility, Bolling says. The industry has a black eye for marketing to people that a drug is not appropriate for. To change that, we need to get a lot more targeted with our messaging.

Bolling says it also benefits the industry if patients are prepared for a visit to their doctor with pertinent questions and a greater understanding of the disease state from both branded and unbranded information. Roska's focus, he says, is to continue to lead the evolution of target marketing.

It's finally accepted that compliance and persistence is a significant issue and that we have to get closer to our end user, but it has not become a mainstream practice with our clients yet, Bolling says. Part of our role is to show it can be successful that there are measurement models in place that can show a very positive return on investment.

Target marketing is not a tactic, like direct mail or online marketing, it's a strategy that doesn'st replace the other things companies have been doing, but enhances it, says Bolling.

Medium-sized pharmas, that don'st have the infrastructure or budget to invest in purely traditional marketing approaches, are the most engaged when it comes to target marketing, Bolling says.

They'sve got to be smarter, to do it better and achieve more with what they have, he says. They are willing to put the time and investment in, because they can make significant inroads.

Bolling says the bottom line is that pharma must bring value and demonstrate to patients that its products provide a tremendous amount of benefit. Companies, he says, have to look at how to surround patients with support and reach patients in a non-opt-in environment.

It's a matter of getting beyond awareness and taking people through acceptance to action, to really have an effect on consumers today, he says.

To learn more about patient compliance strategies, register to attend eyeforpharma's upcoming conferences. For more information, on our Patient Compliance and Communication Europe 2007 conference June 4-5 in Geneva, visit www.eyeforpharma.com/pceu2007 . Or for information on our Patient Compliance USA Congress November 12-13 in Philadelphia, visit www.eyeforpharma.com/pcusa07 .