We all know that precision and relevance are paramount in pharmaceutical advertising. Integrated campaigns, which speak to both possible patients and providers, offer unparalleled opportunities to reach relevant HCP and DTC audiences simultaneously. 

The magic of integrated HCP-DTC campaigns comes from an intentional overlap: potential condition sufferers see relevant advertising, and their healthcare providers see similar, clinically relevant advertising. Our industry has been quantifying the incremental impact of DTC campaigns and HCP campaigns—and, recently, the degree to which that impact is amplified when exposed DTC consumers visit HCPs who were also exposed to brand marketing. By maximizing the degree to which both consumers and their HCPs are shown messaging, marketers are seeing greater results.  

Success, however, depends on several factors. These include audience targeting, both for consumers and HCPs, and the ability to reach the HCPs of the patients who are ultimately reached in consumer marketing.

For HCPs, marketers can focus on broad targeting, and segmentation is typically based on providers’ clinical attributes and behavior, which are derived from signals such as:

• HCP specialty and degree type.
• Clinical practice location.
• Diagnosis, procedure, and drug codes.

For marketers who have specific providers identified from their marketing or CRM tools, segmentation will commonly come in the form of an NPI list. This NPI list can be curated based on a number of different signals, including:

• Recency and frequency of prescriptions.
• Providers’ preferences for branded or unbranded medications for a given condition.
• Participation by HCPs with particular payers or healthcare organizations.
• Past prescriptions by providers for different indications of the same condition. 

For the DTC portion of integrated campaigns, HIPAA-compliant and privacy-safe modeled audiences are critical. These are created using algorithms that analyze the attributes of a non-identifiable seed population and then select an online audience from an entirely different dataset based on these relevant characteristics. This approach allows for efficient health targeting, increasing the likelihood of reaching the target health audience without using protected health information and protecting user privacy. The result? Complex, multi-faceted, and privacy-safe audiences of relevant consumers. 

An integrated campaign’s DTC audiences commonly use a breadth of different datasets to approximate consumers relevant to a pharmaceutical brand. 

• General demographic attributes. These include age, gender, income range, and education level, along with basic geographic attributes. 

• Interest attributes. This data could be based on:

• Interest, like non-health purchase data.
• Context, meaning relevancy to content being viewed, including on TV devices.
• Affinity, i.e., their likelihood of purchasing based on media context signals.
• Site Engagement, or users’ visits to a brand’s website or app.
• Interaction Activity, which refers to specific actions a consumer takes online.

Integrated campaigns start with an HCP campaign, looking at the unique attributes that the patients of those HCPs have, to find other potential DTC consumers who have characteristics similar to theirs. Using the same methods outlined above, this increases the likelihood of reaching consumers who are also likely to be seeing the HCPs being marketed to. Marketers can thus activate tailored content addressing specific concerns for each audience. This might involve simplifying complex medical information for potential patients or making sure HCPs know the best lines of questions in response to different patient concerns. 

Marketers can ensure that messaging is consistent and complementary by creating relevant audiences for both groups. This alignment helps providers feel more confident in prescribing new treatments, knowing their patients are also informed and engaged. When a marketer leverages the most relevant audiences to target both groups, they help inform the dialogue between patients and providers, which influences treatment decisions and health outcomes.

A health advertising platform brings these audience-creation and audience-activation capabilities to life. In addition, it helps you measure the key performance indicators (KPIs) unique to pharma, like audience quality (AQ), cost per verified patient (CPVP), and script performance. This is a powerful way to optimize your healthcare advertising dollars with privacy by design.

At AdLab Health Marketing Summit, leaders explored the future of integrated campaigns. Read our recap here.