connecting biopharma brands with customers through data ... · dial down your investment in the...

How to create a results-based marketing system

Connecting Biopharma Brands with Customers through Data,

Insights & Action

Better, Smarter, Faster:

May 2019

©2019 MNG Health. All rights reserved.

Shorten the Distance from Insight to Action . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Apply Systems Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Create a Results-based Marketing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Start with the Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Sometimes it’s the Little Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

First, Sharpen the Axe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Symphonies, not Solos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

What “Good” Looks like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Ready-Set-Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Drive Continuous Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Manage Campaigns as a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Embrace “Evidence-based” Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

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Instead, truly actionable insights – the kind that convince a customer to change her behavior – require a data-rich, systematic approach combined with access to multiple channels and tools that reach customers when and where they’ll pay attention, using contextually relevant, personalized messaging that resonates. This new, more powerful, more intelligent approach is what our clients and their customers now demand. So that’s exactly what we’ve built, and what we’ll share with you in this report. At MNG Health we spent many months

SHORTEN THE DISTANCE FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION

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working on a new marketing intelligence and activation system – which we call HCPiQ™ – because our clients and their healthcare professional (HCP) customers guided us on what to build, and how to build it. Sometimes they did that directly, especially in the case of our biopharma clients that told us they wanted more comprehensive and integrated solutions instead of one dimensional, one-off campaigns and tactics.

Our HCP audiences told us what to build through their behaviors. We’ve been monitoring their actions for nearly 20 years now, learning from over 250 million interactions across many thousands of multichannel campaigns. We know what works and what doesn’t. There is a stunning amount of insights from our data, systems and brains, and we look forward to helping clients gain access to them.

All too often, we read

articles and see conference

presentations that suggest

having access to mountains of

data or the latest computing

platform will somehow confer

magical, all-knowing powers

to the brand or company that

buys those things. Sadly, that’s

not the case.

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HCP MEETS CPGMarketers for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands learned early on how to use data and analytics to achieve amazing results, and there is much we have learned from them. HCPiQ brings together the best of CPG and healthcare, combining the analytics capabilities and lessons from CPG with decades of experience designing and optimizing successful biopharma marketing programs. The result is a new and powerful intelligence engine combined with MNG Health’s proven channel expertise, now available to the biopharma marketing community. We’re excited to bring this to our customers, and we can’t wait for you to join us in the experience.

In this report we’ll describe our approach to business intelligence and how a properly designed marketing system can become smarter over time. We’ll give examples to demonstrate what good looks like, from continuous multichannel optimization to the valuable micro-segmentations now possible within a single campaign or dynamically throughout an entire HCP brand journey.

Thank you for reading, and please share your feedback with us.

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SHORTEN THE DISTANCE FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION


So, what is a “campaign”? This marketing term comes from military campaigns, defined as “a series of operations intended to achieve a particular objective, confined to a particular area, or involving a specific type of fighting.” Do we really want to be combative with our customers? Yet that’s how many brand managers in most industries have traditionally been trained, and how they think about marketing. We believe that the limited, short-term mentality of a campaign is a key reason so many of these campaigns don’t measurably change customer behaviors.

Isolated campaigns are an obsolete way of thinking that today’s most successful marketers have replaced with more sophisticated, effective systems-based marketing. We can use campaigns within a marketing system, but the sad truth is that most of today’s biopharma marketing campaigns, even when strung together over a series of months or years, fall far short of being a true marketing system.

WHAT IS A MARKETING SYSTEM?A system is a set of people and things working together. Systems are not single channels or single points in time, like campaigns. Instead, systems interconnect. Systems are organized and coordinated. Designed correctly, marketing systems can learn to predict. In sum, a marketing system is an informed, coordinated, interconnected set of capabilities that delivers the right message, to the right customer, via the right channel, at the right time in order to create desired, measurable changes in behavior.

A world-class marketing system: • Becomes more intelligent over time • Deepens your relationship with the

customer, and • Enhances a customer’s affinity for your

brand while delivering increasing ROI

In today’s content-inundated environment, a system helps you win. It’s what your customers now require if you want to stand out and resonate with them, gain their trust and their loyalty. Nurturing a sustained positive relationship, this approach drives incremental benefits well beyond your initial reach through positive online social influence.

APPLY SYSTEMS THINKINGSuccessful marketers build systems

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CREATE A RESULTS-BASED MARKETING SYSTEMIntroducing HCPiQ™ from MNG Health

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What does a winning system look like, and how do you create it? At MNG Health we use a multi-pronged, 360-degree consultative process that forms the basis for a system we’ve created for our clients. Let’s have a look at each step.

START WITH DISCOVERYIn this phase, the goal is to understand the macro environment in which our brand and our audience lives, while simultaneously obtaining an understanding of the personalization factors that will cause our messages to resonate with individual members of that audience. Discovery is much like the planning and materials-gathering phase required when we want to build a house. We’ll probably think of additional items we need as we start pouring the foundation, however understanding

the landscape and having a solid idea about most of what we’ll need makes the later steps in the process go more smoothly.

STRATEGY INFORMS INTELLIGENT CAMPAIGN DESIGNIn this step our clients work with us to hone their target lists and refine their messages, and where we discuss channel selection, message sequencing and frequency. It also includes the next-best action to take with each target, based on how each person responds to elements in this campaign as well as previous campaigns. MNG Health has orchestrated over 250 million HCP interactions, and clients understand that through these we’ve developed a depth of customer knowledge that goes beyond that of any individual biopharma brand or company.

3.

Consultative Approach to Maximize Brand Engagement


CREATE A RESULTS-BASED MARKETING SYSTEM

CONTEXTUAL PERFORMANCE METRICS ENABLE OPTIMIZATION Many marketers overemphasize a single “launch” date, when they would be better served focusing on each tactic and message appearing at just the right time, at just the right volume, and in just the right relationship to other parts of the campaign. The benefits of a systems approach become apparent as we cumulatively learn about the way each customer responds over time. Nearly every response the customer has to every action the marketer takes is recorded, measured and compared to previous actions as well as to the actions of similar customers. When coupled with relevant industry benchmarks, they highlight strengths and opportunities so that every “next” campaign is smarter and more powerful than the one before.

OPTIMIZE THROUGH CONTEXTUAL RESULTSTo close the loop in our consultative process, we take what we’ve learned from a single cycle and infuse it into the beginning of the next campaign’s Discovery work, along with any new attributes and variables obtained as we continuously add new sources. This series of iterations refines our understanding and enables us to continuously optimize the target audience, messaging, channels and timing. Over time, we can anticipate the needs and desires of a specific customer, and deliver to them exactly what they need, when they need it, and in the channels they most prefer.

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START WITH THE BIG PICTUREMacro-knowledge informs the Discover phase

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When building an effective marketing system, ensure your system is informed, and that the type of information you are gathering – especially as you begin to build your system – is sufficiently broad to give you a solid understanding of your customer’s current environment. Working within a marketing culture that celebrates hyper-personalization, marketers may overlook opportunities that a 30,000-foot level view can reveal. However, when you step back and look from a distance, you may uncover opportunities that your more myopic competitors may overlook.

GETTING CLOSE TO A MACRO VIEWLet’s take a macro view of a common engagement opportunity, the medical congress. Imagine a typical specialty physician who plans to attend an upcoming professional convention. A macro view shows that every company and brand that serves this specialty will bombard this HCP with standard pharma-issue emails and postcards inviting them to stop by their booth or

symposium at the conference. This view may prompt a smart marketer to instead use an elegant, embossed VIP invitation to break through the clutter, or a personalized communication driven by the HCP’s actual historical and predicted behavior with the brand, category, or a within a specific disease category.

What if this macro view revealed that only 35% of prescribers in this specialty actually attend the conference? You may decide to dial down your investment in the congress itself and dial up your investment in virtual congress coverage and post-congress video recaps for the other 65% of your target. This wider view offers a way to consider opportunities holistically, and likely create opportunities that many competitors will overlook.

4.Step back to gain a new perspective.


SOMETIMES IT’S THE LITTLE THINGSMicro-segmentation can drive big changes in behavior

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One of the unique benefits to com- municating with hundreds of thousands of HCPs is that we see patterns in terms of how messages affect behavior in aggregate. That’s what enables MNG Health to consistently develop actionable customer segments across specialties. Conversely, the way in which each HCP engages with many different messages, media and promotional programs or events – from many different biopharma companies, over extended periods of time – enables marketers to create detailed profiles of individuals. Micro-segmentation harnesses the insights we develop from these longitudinal views of individuals and is another powerful tool to change behavior.

HCPiQ from MNG Health is a result of recording, tracking and analyzing over 250 million HCP engagements across 20 years. It provides a unique ability to understand what each HCP is likely to do when presented with a certain type of message, delivered through almost any channel, about a wide variety of products across therapeutic categories. We know what each one of these HCPs is likely to do, so we can help clients know what they should do to change behavior. And we can identify ‘lookalike’ HCPs with comparable characteristics that respond in similar, predictable ways. This ensures

more impactful one-to-one engagements, ultimately resulting in scalable action and conversion.

CHANGING PERSONALIZATIONSo, does this drive measurable change? Well, the personalization of emails alone improves click-through rates by about 14% and conversion by 10%. In one recent campaign we managed with PCPs and gastroenterologists we found that campaigns powered by our micro-segmentation approach resulted in these HCPs being 1.7x more likely to open their personalized emails than the industry average. These are powerful results made possible by micro-segmentation and personalization.

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FIRST, SHARPEN THE AXEUse insights to guide your actions

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Deep down, we know that preparation is much more important – and much more effective – than simply applying brute force. Yet many marketers and their partners can’t wait to start “swinging their axe,” so much so that they fail to properly use the data and insights available to them to first sharpen their approach.

GETTING THE MESSAGEAt MNG Health we work closely with our clients on campaign design informed by insights, so that their messages are more likely to be read, internalized, and acted upon by their target HCPs.

6.For example, for a recent project, we discovered that a specific segment of HCPs was more likely to:

• Open emails from a mobile device, rather than from a desktop or laptop computer

• Open emails associated with the campaign if the subject line was between 60-70 characters in length, with relevant keywords at the beginning

• Read and act on messages if they were sent before 6:00 AM on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, or after 4:00 PM on those same days

We applied a similar analytics-driven approach to the client’s event marketing and found that there were three lunchtime periods with higher-than-average attendance spread across US time zones, and starting “on the hour” had a lower participation rate than delaying the start by a few minutes. Data like these are only as useful as you (or your marketing partner) make them.


SYMPHONIES, NOT SOLOSMove from isolated tactics to orchestrated engagement

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At MNG Health we sometimes receive requests for just an email campaign, or just a virtual meeting series, or just any single channel. We’re grateful for the opportunity to contribute, but the real “magic” happens when a client leverages true multichannel engagement to form connections with target HCPs using several coordinated methods over time. By surrounding HCPs with multiple, connected impressions, we exponentially increase awareness, recall, engagement, conversion and overall brand equity by amplifying each touchpoint.

AQUIRING THE TARGETTo increase targeting and message precision, we generally recommend that brands combine their internal datasets with third-party ones such as prescription and claims,

along with MNG Health’s HCP-specific campaign-response and behavioral data. Using machine learning we develop a message flow for each target HCP. Each flow may vary the order, channels, sequence and content of a message from one HCP to another in the same way that a professional musician makes each live performance unique. Because behavior change occurs at the level of each, unique person, our goal is to cause each specific HCP to act.

7.We all know what it’s like to have too much of a good thing. Even if that good thing is email and has historically performed well, overusing it can lead to tactic burnout. Results are great at first, but soon opt-out rates climb, and open rates fall.


WHAT “GOOD” LOOKS LIKEAlign early on what & how to measure

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Aligning on goals and measurement strategies for your marketing campaign before it starts, with all internal and external parties, is critical. “Moving the goal posts” once the campaign has launched makes it difficult to assess whether or not the investment is actually working and may raise credibility concerns among senior leaders and other stakeholders.

So, it’s important to develop explicit, agreed-upon goals with your marketing services partners that mirror the goals of the program. Write these down and align on them together, so that each party understands them. We encourage clear and simple writing of these goals, as it’s easy for each party to make assumptions and misperceptions when saddled with opaque language. This will also enable strategic partners to ensure the campaign is optimally designed to achieve desired KPIs and develop a strategic plan for delivery.

GET SMART (GOALS)Once you and your partners align on the overall goals of the program, agree on the specific metrics to evaluate success. You may be familiar with “SMART” goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. The first three letters of that acronym are straightforward, so let’s spend a few moments on the last two concepts: Relevance and Timeliness.

8.

Marketers often use the same metrics repeatedly because they’re easily and inexpensively attained, such as page views on a website. However sometimes information that’s easily attainable isn’t very relevant. Focusing on relevance means forcing yourself to evaluate whether the attribute you’re measuring is a good indicator that you’re accomplishing your goals for a given program, or not.

Timeliness often involves balancing a desire for information with sufficient time for the program to have its desired effect. This is especially important when delivering a complex message, or when increasing share of voice is difficult, because it may take repeated exposures over time for a message to be received, believed, internalized, and acted upon. Discuss this openly with your marketing partner and consider their rationale while also thinking about your need to report timely results.


READY-SET-MEASUREMonitor performance early to course correct

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However, consider also including observations early on designed purely to get a read on the initial behaviors of your audience.

For email campaigns, we often focus on deliverability rates as early indicators to ensure that a target list contains valid addresses. At MNG Health we’re continuously curating and updating contact information for our HCP lists and pulling other critical levers to ensure messages reach desired audiences. If you use your own “house list,” particularly if the contact information is a few years old, you need to ensure that your messages are actually getting through to your customers. Partnering with MNG Health helps to ensure accurate, current contact information with messages delivered via our trusted platform.

TESTING, TESTING....We also look closely at open rates and click-through rates where applicable, as they tell us whether the subject lines, email content, and calls-to-action are working. When we

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launch the campaign, we recommend A/B testing to identify the most promising subject lines, content, and calls-to-action and automatically shift the bulk of the campaign to the best-performing combinations. We monitor engagement over the life of the campaign and will continuously optimize impressions over multiple flights during an event. These flights will have varied subject lines, message content and/or calls-to-action to drive optimal engagement over the life of the event.

Now, what do you do if your campaign launches and performs poorly, based on these early data points? We encourage you to quickly huddle with your marketing services partner, including their analytics lead. Marketing services suppliers like MNG Health have designed and executed many more campaigns than the average biopharma brand team, so it’s important to leverage their experience in all aspects of campaign strategy, design, execution and optimization.

The types of measurements you make in the first few weeks of a campaign are often the same as those you may use when a campaign concludes.


DRIVE CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATIONBuild capabilities for the real world

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When we shift our thinking about marketing as a sustained competitive capability instead of a string of campaigns, we then understand the need to continuously optimize our marketing “machine” every single day. And we also understand that marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, that the real world brings uncertainty, roadblocks and continuous change. Your marketing machine is also a learning machine.

CHANGE IS HARDSo, for real-world marketing campaigns — which they all are — we suggest that sometimes it’s better to simply make changes midstream, even if those changes make it a little bit harder to measure the results of the full campaign when it’s over.

The goal of marketing is to create value for your company, and seize opportunities, not to prove or disprove a hypothesis for academic research.

Ideas for experimentation can sometimes be integrated into an ongoing campaign in a way that enables us to test the effect of the idea quickly and efficiently, in a real-world setting, without ruining the ability to measure the entire campaign. These are dynamic experiments designed to help a business serve its customers, and if a potentially good idea may be accelerated and readied for the next campaign by testing it midstream in the current campaign, there may be room for it.

10.“The goal of marketing is to create value for your company, and seize opportunities, not to prove or disprove a hypothesis for academic research.”


MANAGE CAMPAIGNS AS A SYSTEMSystematically close & prepare for the next one

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While individual campaigns have a beginning and an end, the marketing cycle never really stops. A system view of each campaign is that you are simply making another loop around a continuously running, continuously improving circle. Think of marketing efforts as a never-ending system that’s more like driving a high-performance car around a track than a series of brief journeys that start and stop, over and over. Individual HCPs are always changing behaviors, patient treatment is always changing, and so marketing efforts also have to continuously evolve to stay relevant and effective based on the current stage of an HCP’s brand lifecycle journey.

PLAN, DESIGN, OPTIMIZEBrand teams and agencies contact us regularly about how we can help them with

a discrete email campaign, or a series of virtual meetings, or rep-generated communications to customers. While we can successfully implement these channel solutions, many of these programs would be much more effective if planned, designed and optimized based on continuous feedback from a system that told the marketer exactly what had happened inside all of their other marketing channels and tactics, over several years. With historical context, and ongoing learning based on new developments for the brand, category, and therapeutic class, for example, we move from reactive based on known behavior change to proactive based on predicted behavior. This results in a much higher probability of successful, sustainable relationship building with customers as you evolve together – and brand loyalty and trust increases.

11.“While individual campaigns have a beginning and an end, the marketing cycle never really stops.”


EMBRACE EVIDENCE-BASED MARKETINGSee if our multi-pronged, 360-degree consultative approach works for you

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MNG Health’s HCPiQ is an evidence-based approach to develop a marketing system for your brand and company. Here are some final takeaways:

The 360-degree consultative stages are fluid and overlapping. Insights begin immediately during discovery and inform implementation strategy and intelligent campaign design, and optimization should occur on an ongoing basis, as should monitoring of external trends.

This ‘always-on’ marketing system approach is like driving a high-performance car, lap after lap around a track while monitoring the dashboard for cues about the vehicle’s performance. As the driver, you wouldn’t pull into the pits and stop after each lap. If you did, you’d have no chance of winning the race; however, certain things

can be tweaked quickly to ensure you see improved results with each lap.

Effective marketers clearly define a target

audience, even down to an individual.

While biopharma regulations may

get in the way of perfect personalization and masterful messaging, having a systems

approach can help automate

repetitive tasks and help you measure

and evaluate each element of the system.

Knowing what works enables

optimization of your investments, helps you monitor the changing expectations of your most valuable customers, and ultimately drives cumulative ROI for your brand.

So you see, leveraging MNG Health’s experience, expertise and insights can truly help increase your HCPiQ!

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MNG Health is a healthcare communications company with a broad range of multichannel engagement solutions to connect you and your brands with your target HCPs.

Contact us today to learn how our experts can help you empower confident care.

Main contact information:

866.408.9242

[email protected]

www.MNGHealth.com

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