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<title>Reimagining the Role of the Pharma Sales Rep</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/reimagining-the-sales-rep/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mng Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2020 20:23:34 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3835</guid>
<description><![CDATA[For as long as any of us can remember, the role of the drug rep has been the same—get in front of a doctor and tell them why they ought to prescribe your drug. This model relies on a very simple calculus: every friendly, positive interaction a rep can get with an HCP jogs their prescribing pen fractionally closer to the prescription pad in favor of their promoted drug. Of course, all of your competitors are doing the same thing, so it’s an arms race—maximize your share of voice and drive your prescription volumes.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/reimagining-the-sales-rep/">Reimagining the Role of the Pharma Sales Rep</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Stephen Ross 
CEO 
MNG Health
For as long as any of us can remember, the role of the drug rep has been the same—get in front of a doctor and tell them why they ought to prescribe your drug. This model relies on a very simple calculus: every friendly, positive interaction a rep can get with an HCP jogs their prescribing pen fractionally closer to the prescription pad in favor of their promoted drug. Of course, all of your competitors are doing the same thing, so it’s an arms race—maximize your share of voice and drive your prescription volumes.
To use a historical military analogy, traditional drug reps are like Revolutionary War soldiers. They stand in straight lines, load their muskets with product information, and fire! Again, and again and again… Whoever can bring the most fire to bear on the target typically comes out on top in the war for prescription share.
But what happens in a world in which all the soldiers are suddenly on the sidelines? What if they can’t get close enough to their target HCPs to fire off their messages?
The rules of promotional engagement changed dramatically and suddenly this past March, when COVID-19 shut down doctors’ offices across the country. In the face of an impossible access problem, most pharma companies told their reps to stand down and to try and engage HCPs as much as possible via virtual means. How effective has that been? Not very. The number of rep interactions per week has fallen from an average of ~30 at the start of the year, to ~7 in the immediate post-COVID crisis. Although this has recovered marginally, it is still hovering around 10 calls per week as of late July. Efforts to convert live calls to virtual have been minimally effective, with less than 20% of HCPs engaging virtually more than one time this year, according to ZS Associates.
<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/image_chart1.png" alt="" width="845" height="422" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3839" srcset="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/image_chart1.png 845w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/image_chart1-640x320.png 640w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/image_chart1-768x384.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />
Source: ZS Associates, Affinity Monitor, September 2020
COVID-19 has made it painfully clear that the old sales model which depends fundamentally on live, in-person access to HCP offices is irredeemably broken and needs to be reinvented. So, what should that role be?
In 2020, a drug rep should no longer be the physical mouthpiece of drug promotion. Instead, they should be the orchestrator of a whole host of promotional tools and tactics they can seamlessly deploy based on established business rules coupled with their detailed knowledge of the customer. Promotional product information, reimbursement coverage data, access to samples, access to KOL commentaries, and links to archived digital content can all be provided digitally to HCPs, either in person or remotely.
Recently published data from ZS Associates shows doctors are reading more email today than they did prior to COVID-19. At MNG Health we have seen increases in our open and click-through rates, as well as an incredible surge in the number of HCPs participating in virtual meetings, particularly speaker events and advisory boards. In addition, we developed new platforms allowing sales reps to deploy custom email and direct mail pieces, register HCPs for live and on-demand speaker events, and curate digital assets for sharing with target customers. These tools make it possible for today’s pharmaceutical rep to be not just a mouthpiece, but a true territory manager, deploying the full range of promotional and educational tools to influence HCP behavior.
For more information on how to equip your salesforce with all the non-personal and digital tools it needs to succeed in today’s pharma marketplace, please contact <a href="mailto:info@mnghealth.com">info@mnghealth.com</a>.
MNG Health is a multichannel marketing company with over twenty years of experience that specializes in data-driven tactics designed to reach and engage target HCPs throughout the customer journey – spanning non-personal promotion, peer-to-peer interactions, and advisory platforms.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/reimagining-the-sales-rep/">Reimagining the Role of the Pharma Sales Rep</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>From Sales Rep Dependence to Data-Driven Digital Tactics – Is Your Marketing Mix Evolving?</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/is-your-marketing-mix-evolving/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mng Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2020 15:03:51 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3803</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Even before COVID-19 came along, interactions between healthcare professionals (HCPs) and pharma reps were on the decline. Caught between the increasing burden of administrative tasks and the pressure to see more patients, HCPs are spending less and less of their time with sales reps.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/is-your-marketing-mix-evolving/">From Sales Rep Dependence to Data-Driven Digital Tactics – Is Your Marketing Mix Evolving?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[David Newman 
EVP Business Development 
MNG Health
Even before COVID-19 came along, interactions between healthcare professionals (HCPs) and pharma reps were on the decline. Caught between the increasing burden of administrative tasks and the pressure to see more patients, HCPs are spending less and less of their time with sales reps.
According to Decision Resources Group’s <a href="https://decisionresourcesgroup.com/news/124633-decision-resources-group-2019-epharma-physician-report-finds-u-s-physicians-increasingly-too-busy-to-see-pharma-sales-reps/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2019 ePharma Physician Report</a>, the percentage of physicians regularly seeing sales reps in person has fallen to just 50%.1 The same report indicated that 39% of physicians had not interacted with a single sales rep in the last six months. Throw COVID into the mix and HCP/rep interactions have nearly ground to a halt, leaving many sales forces across the industry idle. A recent <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/drugmakers-overhaul-the-sales-pitch-amid-coronavirus-lockdowns-11589194800" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WSJ article</a> cited a 50% reduction in global in-person visits by pharma from January to April2 (see Figure 1) and another <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/covid-19-and-commercial-pharma-navigating-an-uneven-recovery" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">survey by Sermo</a> demonstrated that US in-person visits were down ~90% (see Figure 2). Further, Sermo’s data predicts that even after the COVID crisis is over, that access will not revert to pre-crisis levels—ever.3
<img decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/chart01_wsj.png" alt="" width="380" height="249" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-3811" /><img decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/chart02_sermo.png" alt="" width="380" height="398" class="alignright size-full wp-image-3812" />
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
So, what is a pharma marketer to do? Sales force productivity is down and shows no signs of improving. Meanwhile, the COVID crisis has given all of us a real-world illustration of how quickly a sales model built on a foundation of live sales rep interactions can come unraveled. While the evolution of the traditional drug rep role is still to be seen, it does leave marketing teams in need of effective cross-channel alternatives, now and into the future.
Direct mail, programmatic advertisements, and email are all tried and true non-personal tactics and warrant inclusion in every promotional plan. Traditional broadcast email campaigns can make a cost-effective adjunct to sales force efforts but are often used as a “blunt instrument”—going to many HCPs for whom the content is irrelevant, filling up their email inboxes unnecessarily, and potentially spoiling email as a tool altogether. This approach can often miss the mark and create negative impressions. However, utilized in a highly targeted, customized fashion, these types of email programs complement digital media plans exceptionally well. What pharma marketers increasingly need are tactics that emulate the sales activity of top-performing reps—conversationally communicating the right message to the right customer at just the right time.
Enter the intelligent, data-driven email campaign. Rather than delivering messages based on segmentation fixed from before the program’s launch, intelligently triggered email campaigns use specific events, behaviors, and market trends (e.g., disease diagnosis, therapy initiation via claims data, etc.) to deliver personalized, contextually relevant email communications to HCPs at scale. In other words, these campaigns leverage pharma’s “big data” to drive real-time personalization decisions within promotional email campaigns, providing HCPs with crucial information when it is needed. When orchestrated with sales rep touchpoints—as a supplement, complement, or both—intelligently triggered emails become a powerful instrument of HCP engagement.
At MNG Health, we believe data-driven email campaigns are particularly effective because:
<ol>
<li>Our platform is “always on”—continually analyzing new outreach opportunities, so messages are delivered automatically, at the time when they will be most relevant and impactful.</li>
<li>Message content is personalized, with different key messages sent depending on the HCP’s circumstance and preferences.</li>
<li>A HCP’s willingness or ability to meet with sales reps are not factors in these types of programs, as they can be delivered directly. </li>
<li>Dynamic, data-driven messages are more impactful due to their contextual relevance and tend to have higher open rates than traditional campaigns.</li>
<li>Finally, pharma sales reps can be notified of the message delivery via their existing CRM tool and follow up directly—that is, when they gain access again.</li>
</ol>
COVID or no COVID, promotional tactics that supplement traditional sales force efforts are only going to become more and more necessary. Intelligent, data-driven emails can be a great way to bridge the personal promotion gap both now and into the future. With so many data options available, today is the best time to launch this type of program. Stay tuned for an upcoming article that will discuss data and optimal trigger options.
MNG Health is a multichannel marketing company with over twenty years of experience that specializes in data-driven tactics designed to reach and engage target HCPs throughout the customer journey – spanning non-personal promotion, peer-to-peer interactions, and advisory platforms.
References:
1. Decision Resources Group. 2019 ePharma Physician® Report Finds U.S. Physicians Increasingly Too Busy to See Pharma Sales Reps. The Decision Resources Group News. <a href="https://decisionresourcesgroup.com/news/124633-decision-resources-group-2019-epharma-physician-report-finds-u-s-physicians-increasingly-too-busy-to-see-pharma-sales-reps/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://decisionresourcesgroup.com/news/124633-decision-resources-group-2019-epharma-physician-report-finds-u-s-physicians-increasingly-too-busy-to-see-pharma-sales-reps/</a>. Accessed July 1, 2020.
2. Loftus P, Hopkins JS. Drugmakers Overhaul the Sales Pitch Amid Coronavirus Lockdowns: Pharmaceutical sales reps, unable to visit doctor’s offices due to Covid-19, are launching new drugs virtually. The Wall Street Journal Online. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/drugmakers-overhaul-the-sales-pitch-amid-coronavirus-lockdowns-11589194800" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.wsj.com/articles/drugmakers-overhaul-the-sales-pitch-amid-coronavirus-lockdowns-11589194800</a>. Accessed July 1, 2020.
3. Cohen O, Fox B, Mills N, Wright P. COVID-19 and commercial pharma: Navigating an uneven recovery. McKinsey & Company: Our Insights. <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/covid-19-and-commercial-pharma-navigating-an-uneven-recovery" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/covid-19-and-commercial-pharma-navigating-an-uneven-recovery</a>. Accessed July 1, 2020.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/is-your-marketing-mix-evolving/">From Sales Rep Dependence to Data-Driven Digital Tactics – Is Your Marketing Mix Evolving?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Is the Live Advisory Board Meeting Dead?</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/live-advisory-board-meeting-dead/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mng Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:23:11 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3791</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I still remember the first advisory board meeting I ever attended. I was in my first job out of school—a market research analyst position in the company’s CNS franchise. The brand team invited me to tag along as a glorified note-taker for their semi-annual Depression Advisory Board.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/live-advisory-board-meeting-dead/">Is the Live Advisory Board Meeting Dead?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Stephen Ross 
CEO 
MNG Health
I still remember the first advisory board meeting I ever attended. I was in my first job out of school—a market research analyst position in the company’s CNS franchise. The brand team invited me to tag along as a glorified note-taker for their semi-annual Depression Advisory Board.
The meeting took place at a fancy beachfront hotel in Miami. There were maybe twenty KOLs in attendance, flown in from around the country for a couple of days in the sun, and some helpful input on marketing and development strategy.
To be sure, many aspects of pharmaceutical marketing and development have changed for the better—the reliance on entertainment being a singular example. But this basic formula for an advisory board meeting still persists—KOLs gather from around the country and huddle in a pleasant atmosphere to give the company the benefit of their insights and experience.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/02_adboardcosts.png" alt="" width="845" height="443" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3794" srcset="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/02_adboardcosts.png 845w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/02_adboardcosts-640x336.png 640w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/02_adboardcosts-768x403.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />
Does this still make sense? In an increasingly technological world, is this “old but good” approach still the best way to get input from advisors? Not to mention the myriad of current challenges in executing in-person meetings that have arisen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are four reasons why today’s ad boards should be virtual, not live:
<ol>
<li>Lower Cost – This is a no-brainer. By eliminating airfare, meals, hotel, etc., you eliminate the lion’s share of the cost—wasted dollars that do not buy you any additional insight anyway. Add to that the reduced honoraria you will pay to compensate your experts for time out of the office and going virtual is a real budget stretcher.</li>
<li>Ability to access the KOLs you want – Let’s face it: the people whose input you want are busy—very busy. Finding a time when all your trusted advisors are available is not easy. Moving to a virtual format dramatically improves your scheduling options, and therefore improves the caliber of your board.</li>
<li>Speed to Launch – When you have questions to ask, you want them answered now, not in 6 months! While live ad boards may require months to organize, a virtual ad board can be successfully executed in weeks or even days.</li>
<li>Engagement and Interaction – A virtual ad board can be much more than a webinar or Zoom call. At MNG Health, our Advisor Direct platform creates an interactive environment for up to 25 advisors on camera simultaneously. We track participant engagement with discussion content, use interactive polling and survey questions, and offer virtual white boards where participants and facilitators to collaborate on topics of special interest. Additionally, we offer a seamless breakout room experience, allowing sub-content to be shared with smaller, intimate groups while providing the same interactive features. Whatever you used to do live, we can now do virtually. </li>
</ol>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/03_virtualadboard.png" alt="" width="845" height="469" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3797" srcset="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/03_virtualadboard.png 845w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/03_virtualadboard-640x355.png 640w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/03_virtualadboard-768x426.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />
None of this is to say that there is no longer a place for face-to-face interactions with company advisors. But given the many advantages of meeting virtually, the modern marketer should give strong consideration to using a virtual platform to host advisory boards.
MNG Health is a multichannel marketing company with over twenty years of experience that specializes in data-driven tactics designed to reach and engage target HCPs throughout the customer journey – spanning non-personal promotion, peer-to-peer interactions, and advisory platforms.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/live-advisory-board-meeting-dead/">Is the Live Advisory Board Meeting Dead?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<item>
<title>Email Marketing: The Right Solution in the Era of COVID-19?</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-right-solution-covid19/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mng Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2020 13:14:25 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3755</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the country this spring disrupted every aspect of life and business as we know it. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, has been upended because healthcare practitioners are, themselves, so significantly impacted by the risks of viral spread within their practices.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-right-solution-covid19/">Email Marketing: The Right Solution in the Era of COVID-19?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Stephen Ross 
CEO 
MNG Health
The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the country this spring disrupted every aspect of life and business as we know it. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, has been upended because healthcare practitioners are, themselves, so significantly impacted by the risks of viral spread within their practices.
At MNG Health, we have observed a substantial increase in the use of virtual meetings, as traditional, live speaker events have become next to impossible. Whether this is a transitory phenomenon, or a wholesale shift in preference that will continue into the future, remains to be seen.
Interestingly, we have seen a reluctance in some quarters to use traditional, proven tactics such as email marketing during the pandemic. There are even some companies who have temporary corporate policies banning the use of email until the COVID-19 situation normalizes. The rationale is that HCPs, struggling to keep pace with their patient load, may object to being marketed to at all, or that these marketing efforts might come off as “tone deaf” given the urgency of our national crisis.
The reality, however, is that most HCPs—outside of a few COVID-19-focused specialties—are less busy, not more. Many practices are only seeing patients with urgent needs and deferring traditional follow-up visits until after the viral wave has passed. A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found that out-patient visits had dropped more than 60% in a sample of more than 50,000 providers.1 Another study of hospital out-patient visits observed reductions of between 32% and 60% in 500 reporting hospitals.2
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/Chart1_patients2.png" alt="" width="845" height="417" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3760" srcset="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/Chart1_patients2.png 845w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/Chart1_patients2-640x316.png 640w, https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/Chart1_patients2-768x379.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 845px) 100vw, 845px" />
Source: Ateev Mehrotra et al., “<a target="_blank" style="text-decoration:underline;color:#595959" href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2020/apr/impact-covid-19-outpatient-visits" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Outpatient Visits: A Rebound Emerges</a>,” To the Point (blog), Commonwealth Fund, May 19, 2020. <a style="text-decoration:underline;color:#595959" target="_blank" href="https://doi.org/10.26099/ds9e-jm36" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.26099/ds9e-jm36</a>
So, are HCPs really too busy to respond to email marketing? Our experience suggests not. An analysis of open and click-through rates on over 29 email campaigns conducted since the start of the year show no reduction in HCP engagement with promotional emails. In fact, engagement has been trending slightly higher since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is one important caveat to this observation: HCPs working in COVID-related fields—such as pulmonologists, ER physicians, and critical care specialists—had lower engagement with email, consistent with the theory that they are currently overwhelmingly preoccupied with patient care.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.mnghealth.com/wp-content/uploads/chart2_email_engagement_img.png" alt="" width="845" height="375" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3763" />
Source: MNG Health e-mail engagement metrics, Jan 1-Apr 22, 2020; Data on geographic distribution of COVID-19 cases worldwide from European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, May 26, 2020.
We conclude that while select specialists at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic appear less likely to engage with email at this time, most HCPs continue to engage with non-personal promotional tactics such as email at rates similar to, or even higher than, pre-pandemic levels. Email remains an impactful element of the promotional mix and should not be neglected as an important part of a brand’s strategy for maintaining share of voice.
MNG Health is a multichannel marketing company with over twenty years of experience that specializes in data-driven tactics designed to reach and engage target HCPs throughout the customer journey – spanning non-personal promotion, peer-to-peer interactions, and advisory platforms.
References:
1. Ateev Mehrotra et al., “The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Outpatient Visits: A Rebound Emerges,” To the Point (blog), Commonwealth Fund, May 19, 2020. <a style="text-decoration:underline;color:#595959" href="https://doi.org/10.26099/ds9e-jm36" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.26099/ds9e-jm36</a>
2. Hospital Visits Down Sharply and Patients May Not Be in a Rush to Reschedule Appointments. TransUnion. April 24, 2020. <a style="text-decoration:underline;color:#595959" href="https://newsroom.transunion.com/hospital-visits-down-sharply-and-patients--may-not-be-in-a-rush-to-reschedule-appointments/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://newsroom.transunion.com/hospital-visits-down-sharply-and-patients–may-not-be-in-a-rush-to-reschedule-appointments/</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-right-solution-covid19/">Email Marketing: The Right Solution in the Era of COVID-19?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<item>
<title>Direct Mail Marketing: Your Results May Vary</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/direct-mail-marketing/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2019 13:37:21 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3658</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In an age in which everything is digital, direct mail (DM) may seem to belong in a museum of quaint things direct marketers once used. However, an experienced and broadly-skilled marketer today knows the facts about DM, which are surprisingly impressive. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), DM customer response rates increased by an ... <a title="Direct Mail Marketing: Your Results May Vary" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/direct-mail-marketing/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/direct-mail-marketing/">Direct Mail Marketing: Your Results May Vary</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[In an age in which everything is digital, direct mail (DM) may seem to belong in a museum of quaint things direct marketers once used. However, an experienced and broadly-skilled marketer today knows the facts about DM, which are surprisingly impressive. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), DM customer response rates increased by an unheard of 43% from 2016 to 2017. For that same period, prospect response rates to DM increased by an eye-popping 190%! It makes sense: DM is now a channel with low message clutter and noise, so those who use it have a greater ability to stand out and get noticed.
The simple truth is that outdoor advertising has become wallpaper, email inboxes are increasingly cluttered with spam and other messages, and social media platforms continue to proliferate, mutate and consume more of our time. So a message that arrives in a special wrapper, that sits patiently and prominently on our desks, and that we can hold in our hands and annotate using just a pen, is becoming a “new” way to grab the attention of HCP customers and prospects of all ages. Here are a few tips to take best advantage of DM, based on our experience at MNG Health.
First Impressions Matter
One of the reasons DM fell out of favor for some marketers was an over-reliance on the use of glossy circulars and collateral with “in your face” advertising. That’s not the best way to reach an audience of busy professionals. Instead, we recommend that our clients use a plain, #10 envelope as the wrapper for many of their DM pieces. In healthcare, it’s often a good idea to have the envelope appear non-descript, without overt branding or messaging. It’s fine to include your company’s logo on the envelope, and a well-designed, tasteful teaser. Keeping things simple and professional will increase your open rates more than approaching the design like a used car salesman.
KISS the Content
For the letter itself, keep it simple. We recommend using a single sheet of letter-sized paper instead of custom sizes, heavy card stocks and complex die cuts that increase costs of design, production and distribution. If your message requires a second page, it’s better to use the back of the sheet rather than leave the back blank and add a second page – it makes the message seem more concise and easier to read.
We also recommend putting the call to action (CTA) in the front, top half of the letter because most readers like to know immediately what’s being asked of them. This is especially true if you include a Business Reply Card (BRC), which we’ll look at next.
Enable Easy, Fast Responses
If you’re communicating directly to an audience, you want them to do something, right? More often than not, the desired response is a “next step,” such as ordering samples, requesting more information, or scheduling an in-person conversation. Given that this individual received this message via DM, why not use this same channel for her response?
A physical BRC gives the reader an easy way to reply back to you, and it gives you a validated way to understand precisely who is responding to your message. You can reduce problems caused by unreadable handwriting and incomplete information by preprinting a recipient’s contact information onto the BRC, or by offering digital response mechanisms such as web forms.
Align Home Office and Field Teams
In life sciences, DM is used by a variety of home office functions including brand teams, patient access and medical affairs, and by field sales and medical science liaisons (MSLs). Each of these groups can connect with HCPs using DM designed for their particular needs, and each piece can be customized to meet the specific requirements of the moment.
For example, a brand team can send a series of DM pieces announcing the availability of a new product or formulation, while an access group may want to communicate a new formulary win. Sales representatives and MSLs can easily follow up after an HCP visit using pre-approved letter templates on their phones or tablets. It’s important to select a DM partner that can handle these many needs and ensure that the overall communications effort of the brand or company has a consistent look and feel that drives engagement and results.
Mass Mailing, not Mass Market
We know how hard it is to create truly personalized messages due to drug promotional regulations. Yet a leading-edge DM supplier can help your messages stand out through dynamically printed customizations, such as a photo of your sales representative printed on collateral that varies based on unique factors for an individual HCP. We often advise our clients to have up to ten different letter templates for a campaign, because variety also helps create optimal results.
DM is of course only one part of a larger communications program, so consider working with a supplier that can handle your DM needs as well as your email, event-based and other channels. Having a supplier who knows the messaging preferences of your target audience can allow you to match your message and channel to the preferences of individual HCPs, which drives greater results.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/direct-mail-marketing/">Direct Mail Marketing: Your Results May Vary</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>Our Results-based Marketing Process</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/results-based-marketing-process/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Shields]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2019 14:27:11 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3654</guid>
<description><![CDATA[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 called HCPiQ that forms the basis for a system we’ve created for our clients. Let’s have a look at each step. Start with Discovery In this phase, the goal is to understand ... <a title="Our Results-based Marketing Process" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/results-based-marketing-process/">Read more</a>
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[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 called HCPiQ that forms the basis for a system we’ve created for our clients. Let’s have a look at each step.
Start with Discovery
In 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 design
In 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.
Performance metrics drive focused learning 
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 actionable insights
To 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.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/results-based-marketing-process/">Our Results-based Marketing Process</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>Successful Marketers Build Systems</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/successful-marketers-build-systems/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2019 08:41:55 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3631</guid>
<description><![CDATA[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 combative with our customers? Yet that’s how many brand managers in most industries have ... <a title="Successful Marketers Build Systems" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/successful-marketers-build-systems/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/successful-marketers-build-systems/">Successful Marketers Build Systems</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[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 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:
<ul>
<li>Becomes more intelligent over time</li>
<li>Deepens your relationship with the customer, and</li>
<li>Enhances a customer’s affinity for your brand while delivering accretive ROI</li>
</ul>
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.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/successful-marketers-build-systems/">Successful Marketers Build Systems</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>Maximize the Value of Virtual HCP Events</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/maximize-value-of-virtual-hcp-events/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2019 13:02:50 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3615</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Virtual events have become a pillar of modern training and meetings. In fact, according to Market Research Media the overall market for virtual events is forecast to grow from $14B in 2018 to $18B just five years from now. Pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies have been strong participants in this trend, and virtual meetings ... <a title="Maximize the Value of Virtual HCP Events" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/maximize-value-of-virtual-hcp-events/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/maximize-value-of-virtual-hcp-events/">Maximize the Value of Virtual HCP Events</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[Virtual events have become a pillar of modern training and meetings. In fact, according to <a href="https://www.marketresearchmedia.com/">Market Research Media</a> the overall market for virtual events is forecast to grow from $14B in 2018 to $18B just five years from now. Pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies have been strong participants in this trend, and virtual meetings will continue to replace much of the live speaker and live training programs that in the past were mainstays of the industry.
Life sciences companies tell us that virtual events are a win-win for both the meeting sponsor and participants, for three key reasons:
<ul>
<li>Scarce budget dollars can be stretched much further with virtual meetings compared to live meetings, simply due to travel savings</li>
<li>Busy internal teams and speakers can shave days – even weeks – off their already-packed schedules by avoiding meeting travel</li>
<li>In contrast to live meetings, the greater use of technology found with virtual meetings can produce deeper customer insights and content that can be easily repurposed</li>
</ul>
As leading producers of peer-to-peer meetings, virtual training programs, and technology-enabled remote advisory boards, among other virtual event services, we receive a continuous stream of questions about best practices for virtual events, meetings, and training programs. Here’s a sampling of the tips our clients find most helpful.
Be Ready to “Strike While the Iron is Hot”
Virtual meetings give you the ability to bring people together from around the globe in days, rather than weeks or months. When a hot new development with you brand occurs, it’s smart to have a relationship already in place with a virtual event company that can help you act quickly and efficiently. MNG Health has conducted advisory boards and training sessions with less than a week to prepare, because the client had an urgent need. Ensure the supplier you select can respond in a similar timeframe, because the speed at which you can move can have a dramatic effect on the return you get on your virtual meeting efforts.
Check Local Technology & Provide In-Meeting Support
Your content for a meeting can be world class, but if the local audience and participants can’t see it – or you can’t engage with them – because of technology problems on either end of the virtual meeting, it can turn into a disaster. We work with a network of nationwide technology experts who can make pre-meeting site visits to ensure technology at a local restaurant or other meeting venue, or even at a speaker’s home, is capable of supporting the meeting and enabling a great user experience.
Similarly, you don’t want to leave your meeting participants unsupported in those critical minutes before a meeting, when a technical problem can easily derail a participant’s experience. To prevent that, first rate virtual events suppliers usually provide an online support person about 30 minutes prior to the event and make them available continuously during the event. Make sure your meeting supplier is capable of offering this level of tech-focused preparation and customer support, because it is often the difference between an event that is a great success or one that’s an embarrassing failure.
Keep the Audience Engaged During the Meeting
Virtual meetings and events have an upside, but unfortunately they also allow participants to multitask and be distracted from your content—unless you build in ways to prevent it. Including polling questions and surveys within the meeting and deploying attestation questions either during or at the end of an event, can keep an audience engaged. These ‘check ins’ also ensure that you have the right audience, and that participants are absorbing your valuable content. Other techniques used by successful meeting sponsors are break-out sessions and interactive Q&A segments within the meeting or training session. These enable an event to feel more like a face-to-face meeting and connect participants.
Get More Out of the Meeting Itself
As with any meeting, those who can’t attend miss out on the live interaction that occurs during the event. However with virtual meetings, you can replicate much of the meeting experience – and add more reach – by recording the meeting for later viewing and repurposing the content into other communication and engagement vehicles.
For example, many of our clients ask us to archive the meeting recording and related presentations online. We feature them in email or direct mail campaigns directed toward those who missed the meeting, as well as to serve as a reminder for those who attended. Additional information that may appeal to subsets of the larger audience can also be shared in other channels, allowing for more customized and personalized follow-up after the meeting. This additional post-meeting outreach can make the difference between having an attendee who “sort of” remembers your content versus one who absorbs it and takes action.
Make an Informed Decision
Whether you have an existing virtual event supplier or are new to the concept, it pays to make an informed decision. Feel free to contact us to find out more about the <a href="https://www.mnghealth.com/solutions/virtual-events/">virtual meetings and event offerings</a> of MNG Health. And don’t’ forget to ask us about how we can make virtual events part of a larger and more effective multichannel HCP engagement program.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/maximize-value-of-virtual-hcp-events/">Maximize the Value of Virtual HCP Events</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>When Did Email Marketing Get So Sophisticated?</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-gets-sophisticated/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Apr 2019 14:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=3587</guid>
<description><![CDATA[While trendy social platforms grab headlines, email has quietly become the vehicle through which modern communication and commerce is conducted. According to email service provider Constant Contact, over 205 billion emails are now exchanged every day globally, growing to 246 billion by the end of 2019! The return on investment (ROI) for email marketing can ... <a title="When Did Email Marketing Get So Sophisticated?" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-gets-sophisticated/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-gets-sophisticated/">When Did Email Marketing Get So Sophisticated?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[While trendy social platforms grab headlines, email has quietly become the vehicle through which modern communication and commerce is conducted. According to email service provider <a href="https://www.constantcontact.com/">Constant Contact</a>, over 205 billion emails are now exchanged every day globally, growing to 246 billion by the end of 2019! The return on investment (ROI) for email marketing can be significant, with the <a href="https://thedma.org/">Direct Marketing Association</a> (DMA) reporting a whopping $38 returned for every $1 invested (2105). And when it comes to the communications channel physicians most prefer, one industry report noted that 68% of physicians prefer to receive information via email (2016).
These are encouraging statistics if you oversee email marketing for your brand, but there’s a downside: Nearly every other company and brand team that wants to reach healthcare professionals will also use email to get the word out about their product, and that makes for some crowded inboxes. At MNG Health, we’ve helped life science marketers connect with their target audiences through over 30 million emails delivered. This experience has taught us the best ways to cut through healthcare marketing clutter, and some important things to keep in mind as you select an email marketing partner.
It’s Your Targets that Matter
Email marketing suppliers are famous for touting the size of their email lists, and size does matter. However, the match rate to your existing HCP target list matters more, so insist on performing a list match to see how a supplier stacks up for your specific audience. You need to determine the go-no go threshold—the minimum percent matched for which you’d still invest in the campaign. However, an unusually low match rate in a particular specialty may suggest that these customers prefer channels other than email for their medical information.
Integration Increases Speed
Email is often a response to an HCP behavior or event that’s important to your brand, and getting the word out immediately is critical to your success. One of the keys to email success is to partner with a supplier that also manages other channels in your marketing ecosystem, such as websites, direct mail or events. Doing so enables you to quickly repurpose an existing asset into an email marketing piece, reducing internal approval time and better aligning creative across channels. Another time saver is to select an email partner with a robust offering, reducing complexity, time to market and the partner’s need to outsource.
Design for Humans, Optimize for Machines
Email marketing is like an iceberg, with the email creative at the tip and data management and technical optimization below the surface. The industry has had decades to evolve and fine-tune HCP email creative to ensure it is opened and read by the human recipient. Variable subject lines, headers, copy, links, graphics, calls-to-action (CTAs) and other elements capture a reader’s attention and then direct her to a next action, whether completing a registration form or downloading a report.
However, the non-human factors of email marketing have evolved even faster. Today’s software-enabled spam filters and artificial intelligence tools used by major email platforms can identify, block and blacklist even useful and desired promotional or informational messages from biopharma companies. At MNG Health, our email campaign designers vigilantly monitor and respond to an ever-changing email landscape of blocked IP addresses and suspect sender domains, trigger words within messages, subject lines or headers that may get snagged by filters, best days and times to send emails, and the optimal way to tag media files. The best email creative in the world won’t work if it can’t reach, be opened and be read by its intended receiver.
Email Is Increasingly Data-Directed
Email messages must be about something relevant to the target HCP recipient. Whether it’s details about a formulary win, a medical congress recap, news about a recently approved product, or updated prescribing information, it must be personalized based on the receiver’s explicit preferences and data from other sources.
Being able to manage and integrate a variety of client-supplied data sources is critical to an effective campaign, so ensure that your email supplier is experienced working with data from the main data suppliers to the life sciences industry. This will enable you to target your email campaigns based on important elements such as specialty, prescribing behavior, concentrations of formularies within an individual prescriber’s practice, and other elements that can mean the difference between an email the drives results and one that ends up instantly deleted.
Email Is Part of a Larger Marketing System
We often have clients come to us because they tried to work with a firm that claimed to be an “email marketing expert,” but those “expert” efforts weren’t coordinated with the many other tactics the client was using to launch and maintain an effective marketing program. Look for an email partner that lives and breathes email marketing, but also understands that email is just one part of a larger effort. Carefully planning for email to work synergistically with digital, event marketing, direct mail and the salesforce can deliver an exponentially better outcome.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/email-marketing-gets-sophisticated/">When Did Email Marketing Get So Sophisticated?</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>Bridging the Gap between Insight and Action</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/bridging-the-gap-between-insight-and-action/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2019 16:42:23 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=2764</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Intelligence and analytics are hot topics these days, which makes this a great time to work in these fields. All too often, however, we read articles and see conference presentations that suggest having access to mountains of data or the latest computing platform with a catchy, human-like name will somehow confer magical, all-knowing powers to ... <a title="Bridging the Gap between Insight and Action" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/bridging-the-gap-between-insight-and-action/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/bridging-the-gap-between-insight-and-action/">Bridging the Gap between Insight and Action</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Intelligence and analytics are hot topics these days, which makes this a great time to work in these fields. All too often, however, we read articles and see conference presentations that suggest having access to mountains of data or the latest computing platform with a catchy, human-like name will somehow confer magical, all-knowing powers to the brand or company that buys those things. Sadly, that’s not the case.
Instead, truly actionable intelligence and analytics – the kind that convince a customer to change her behavior – requires a data-rich, systematic approach combined with access to multiple channels and tools that reach customers when and where they’ll pay attention. This new, more powerful, more intelligent approach is what our smartest customers now demand, instead of one-off, single-shot campaigns. So that’s exactly what we’ve built, and what we’re now eager to have you learn more about through this article and future blog posts.
At MNG Health we’ve spent over a year working on this new marketing intelligence and activation system – which we call HCPiQ<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.1.0/72x72/2122.png" alt="™" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /> – because our customers and our audiences (the very people you’re trying to reach) told us what to build, and how to build it. Sometimes they did that directly, especially in the case of our biopharma clients, who told us they wanted more comprehensive and integrated solutions instead of one dimensional, one-off campaigns and tactics. For our HCP audiences, they told us what to build through their behaviors. We’ve been watching 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 information we have in the MNG Health knowledge vaults and we look forward to helping clients gain access to that.
However, we also knew that more was possible, so we figured out how to make our existing knowledge base and solutions even better. Marketers who work on consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands learned early on how to use data and analytics to achieve some amazing results, and there is much that can be learned from them about the power of data and analytics to design and execute marketing campaigns. Our new system brings together the best of both worlds, combining decades of experience in successful biopharma marketing to HCPs with the insights and analytics capabilities and lessons of the consumer marketing world. The result is an unstoppable level of marketing intelligence, 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 series of posts about analytics and insights, we’ll describe our general approach to marketing intelligence and how a properly designed marketing system becomes smarter over time. We’ll give examples from healthcare and consumer marketing to demonstrate what good looks like. We’ll cover everything from dealing with the effects of a big formulary win (or loss), down to the micro segmentations that are now possible within a single campaign, such as varying the channel, message cadence, and even the call to action based on what we know about small subsets of prescribers.
We’ll talk about predicting what a particular audience is going to want and need in terms of information and proof points, and about the ways a marketer can discover these things before they launch their campaign. Next, we’ll explore how a brand team can pursue both those prescribers who are just beginning to show interest in a brand (but haven’t yet “bought in”), while simultaneously taking decisive action to retain previously loyal customers who are now experimenting with new competitive products. In other words, we’ll talk about the challenges you face every day, that affect the growth of your brand and even the trajectory of your career. That’s a lot for a series of blog posts to tackle, but it’s what you deal with every day. So that’s what we’ll write about, even as we continue to enhance our systems and tools so that you can act on what you’ve learned.
In short, our goal with this series of posts about analytics and insights – and with the new marketing intelligence system we continue to create – is to help our clients know the “next best action” they should take, and to have the tools available to take that action, regardless of the marketing situation they face. We’d really like to hear from you about real-world challenges you’re facing, so email MNG Health’s analytics lead at <a href="mailto:Will.Potts@mnghealth.com">Will.Potts@mnghealth.com</a>. Then we can address some of those challenges as this series unfolds. Until then, we’re grateful for colleagues like you who are interested in creating and using the systems that will power the future of our industry. It’s nice to work with the best our industry has to offer, both in terms of systems and tools, and people.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/bridging-the-gap-between-insight-and-action/">Bridging the Gap between Insight and Action</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>3 Tips for Designing Content that Appeals to Time-constrained HCPs</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/3-tips-for-designing-content-that-appeals-to-time-constrained-hcps/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2019 16:41:57 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=2762</guid>
<description><![CDATA[During the past 18 years MNG Health has orchestrated nearly 250 million engagements with busy HCPs, and we’ve learned that content is a critical part in making meaningful connections and empowering customers. First, content must be personalized. Choice of subject matter, length and depth, and personal preferences like time of day and location awareness matter ... <a title="3 Tips for Designing Content that Appeals to Time-constrained HCPs" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/3-tips-for-designing-content-that-appeals-to-time-constrained-hcps/">Read more</a>
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<content:encoded><![CDATA[During the past 18 years MNG Health has orchestrated nearly 250 million engagements with busy HCPs, and we’ve learned that content is a critical part in making meaningful connections and empowering customers. 
First, content must be personalized. Choice of subject matter, length and depth, and personal preferences like time of day and location awareness matter to a mobile-first audience. 
Next, content distribution and consumption must be omnichannel. Not only must content adapt to the constraints of each device, channel and platform, it also needs to be available in text, graphics, video and emerging formats like VR. 
Finally, content achieves its greatest value when it appears just in time for the audience to make good use of it in the moment. In the case of our clients and their customers, we believe that content can support HCPs in ‘empowering confident care.’ And in healthcare, that’s everything.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/3-tips-for-designing-content-that-appeals-to-time-constrained-hcps/">3 Tips for Designing Content that Appeals to Time-constrained HCPs</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>Orchestrating Effective HCP Content</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/orchestrating-effective-hcp-content/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:41:27 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=2760</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A byproduct of our increasingly connected world is that many of us are drowning in content, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) are no exception. This is due in part to the increase in content marketing by pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device makers, medical publishers and other players in the healthcare ecosystem. According to marketing automation leader Marketo, ... <a title="Orchestrating Effective HCP Content" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/orchestrating-effective-hcp-content/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/orchestrating-effective-hcp-content/">Orchestrating Effective HCP Content</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[A byproduct of our increasingly connected world is that many of us are drowning in content, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) are no exception. This is due in part to the increase in content marketing by pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device makers, medical publishers and other players in the healthcare ecosystem. According to marketing automation leader Marketo, “Content marketing is a digital, inbound marketing strategy that uses educational, entertaining, or informative content to attract, engage, and grow a target audience. It’s becoming increasingly competitive, which means marketers need to produce valuable content, not just more content.”
Over the nearly 20 years, MNG Health has helped clients refine their approaches to creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to HCPs. Today, this is informed by our massive volume of over 250 million data-rich HCP interactions that yield deep insights about customer behaviors, channel and other preferences, and broader trends. These data enable MNG to act as a smart filter for the vast sea of medical information, predictively and precisely matching HCPs with the content and tools they need to confidently care for patients.
<h2>Start with customer needs</h2>
As in any relationship, both parties want to feel heard and understood. That’s the basis of an audience-centric approach as opposed to a brand-centric one traditionally used by pharma Sales and Marketing teams. According to Manhattan Research, “Pharma can help address physician distrust and frustration with its digital offerings by understanding their needs and challenges – and then providing content and services that go beyond promotion to provide value, especially on dedicated HCP customer service portals.”
At MNG Health, one way we addressed common customer needs was by creating a platform solution called Media Hub that supports brands and sales teams in helping HCPs select highly relevant content delivered through their preferred channels and times of the day. Media Hub curates the experience, enabling HCPs to discover immersive, current and dynamic content based on their needs and interests, as opposed to forced choices among limited, static options. For brand teams, it creates a high quality, enduring brand destination that increases frequency with valuable prescribers. Input from sales representatives helps to further personalize an HCP’s experience and extends their relationships with HCPs. Interestingly, it helps a sales rep to seemingly be everywhere, filling in gaps before and after office visits, and fulfilling many customer requests digitally.
<h2>Trust is a must</h2>
While traditional marketing focuses on selling and putting brands at the center of a pitch, content marketing works best when it positions companies and brands as trustworthy and worth doing business with. Once you free yourself from the narrow constraints of repetitive, similar-sounding brand messages, it opens up huge opportunities to be more conversational and educational, answering questions and solving problems. HCPs experience this in other parts of their lives and have come to expect it in their interactions with pharmaceutical companies. When they trust a company representative like a sales rep, we find that they are several times more likely to open and engage with communications (like an email) from that person.
Alignment between Marketing and Sales is critical. Sometimes a credibility gap is caused when communications to the same customer from the home office brand team and field-based sales team appear to the customer like they’re coming from two different companies. It is a pervasive problem that pharmaceutical companies face, and actually created. At worst, customers are bombarded with redundant, irrelevant and ill-timed messages driven only by calendar dates. In orchestrating the type, timing and triggers for content delivery, we often help clients overcome organizational habits and hurdles to put the customer first, providing just-in-time, data-driven and preference-based content and tools to busy HCPs.
<h2>Think multidimensionally</h2>
Medical content today needs to shape-shift to accommodate our multichannel, multimedia and multidevice world. For many companies, centralizing the editorial planning, creation, distribution and measurement of content is the best way to modularize, personalize and amortize. Modularization means breaking content into ‘chunks’ that can be more easily approved, stored and assembled based on a viewer and her context. Modularization is a core concept underlying most content management systems, whether text, images, video, audio or something else.
Personalization considers an HCP customer’s specialty, geography, demographics, behaviors and preferences when dynamically assembling content chunks and serving relevant, timely and actionable content. Amortization in this case is a fancy word for reuse. For example, as pharma companies continue to move beyond product content, they will find more opportunities to reuse unbranded content across customer segments and channels.
Finally, a few words about helping customers find your valuable content: “Brands should ensure that content is discoverable in the right channels and is easily accessible for busy, fast-moving physicians who don’t have time to spare fumbling around a poorly-organized website,” says Manhattan Research. The fundamentals still apply in optimizing your content for search across channels: Well written titles, subheads, meta descriptions, and names and tags for images and other media types. The trick of course is to create content worth finding.
In sum, here are 3 characteristics of successful content:
<h3>1. PERSONALIZED</h3>
Content must be personalized. Choice of subject matter, length and depth, and personal preferences like time of day and location awareness matter to a mobile-first audience.
<h3>2. OMNICHANNEL</h3>
Content distribution and consumption must be omnichannel. Not only must content adapt to the constraints of each device, channel and platform, it also needs to be available in text, graphics, video and emerging formats like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
<h3>3. JUST IN TIME</h3>
Content achieves its greatest value when it appears just in time for the audience to make good use of it in the moment. In the case of our clients and their customers, we believe that content can support HCPs in ‘empowering confident care.’ And in healthcare, that’s everything.
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/orchestrating-effective-hcp-content/">Orchestrating Effective HCP Content</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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<title>A Balanced Approach to Brand Planning</title>
<link>https://www.mnghealth.com/a-balanced-approach-to-brand-planning/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MNG Health]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2019 16:40:42 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.mnghealth.com/?p=2758</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It will soon be the time of the year again when summer vacations start to wind down, kids dread the first day of school and pharma marketers make their final push to finish next year’s tactical plans. The pharma brand planning process relies on the fundamentals of business planning, but each company and its partners ... <a title="A Balanced Approach to Brand Planning" class="read-more" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/a-balanced-approach-to-brand-planning/">Read more</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/a-balanced-approach-to-brand-planning/">A Balanced Approach to Brand Planning</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[It will soon be the time of the year again when summer vacations start to wind down, kids dread the first day of school and pharma marketers make their final push to finish next year’s tactical plans. The pharma brand planning process relies on the fundamentals of business planning, but each company and its partners put a different spin on timing, inputs and outputs, and the balance between the old and the new.
At MNG Health we have helped clients through this process for nearly 18 years, and together we’ve learned how to simplify and focus on doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t. That sounds easy, but without consistent measurement and organizational memory it can be difficult to sort the winners from the losers and develop a dependable and sustainable portfolio of successful tactics. The task is made easier by starting with a foundation of tried and true tactics based on a massive volume of data-rich HCP interactions that yield deep insights about customer behaviors, preferences and broader trends.
<h2>Balancing the Known with the New</h2>
Effective marketing is most often a balance between unbounded right-brain creativity and systematic left-brain analyses, grounded in lots of data. Planning is one of several marketing processes that requires both sides of the brain to collaborate and yield a solution that satisfies both the need for reliable results and the need for novelty and innovation. Planning can also be used as a tool to pressure test the strategy and ultimately make it better.
Sometimes innovation happens as a home run, but more often than not it happens as a consistent series of singles and doubles. In fact, incrementally evolving and improving the things that work is sometimes a more valuable kind of innovation in an industry that has an allergic reaction to large and rapid changes. While difficult to predict the impact of a new-to-the-world solution, innovation must sooner or later be accountable for business results. Otherwise it’s just an experiment that doesn’t scale and takes resources away from investments with more predictable returns.
<h2>Precision Medicines Require Precision Marketing</h2>
I’ve often thought that since many of our clients create precision medicines, it’s fitting that we help them create HCP awareness and engagement using precision marketing. Precision marketing can also be called evidence-based marketing—using customer behaviors and responses; location and time of day, channel, content and other preferences; and overall program performance data to inform the evolution of the tactics that make up the marketing system.
Tactic timing and duration are also important considerations in constructing an annual marketing plan. A combination of short-burst campaigns and long-term capabilities should ideally drive toward the same overall outcome—supporting or changing customer behaviors. Often brand teams and their external partners gravitate toward several standalone campaigns every few months, when in fact they also need a stable, longer term platform in place to capture, analyze and activate the interest generated by those campaigns. Again, balance is the key to creating an effective marketing ecosystem.
<h2>Include Customers and Suppliers in the Process</h2>
It may seem obvious that sound strategy and effective planning require a continuous closeness to the customer. Many brand teams have this connection with thought leaders, however they can also benefit from their agencies’ and other external partners’ relationships with—and deep understanding of—a much broader population of prescribers. At MNG Health we practice what we preach: 90% of our successful new products originated with an idea from our customers during some type of planning exercise.
External partners also provide continuity during planning, execution and optimization when there is turnover within the brand team or support functions. Further, with a wider view of the industry, they can help pharma companies optimize messaging and investments across their brands, their portfolios and their key customer segments. Particularly at the start of the planning process it’s critical to have as many partners as practical around the table to align on a common understanding of what is working and what is not, based on all of the relevant data.
<h2>Timing Is Everything</h2>
Most life sciences companies have a finely tuned annual brand planning process with clear deliverables at defined points throughout most of the year. So it’s important to carefully time inputs like customer insights, competitive assessments, program performance data, marketing mix analyses and others so these are available when needed by the brand teams. It’s also critical to bring innovative ideas to the table during the tactical planning and budgeting phase, which for 2019 is happening now and will continue into early fall. Often suppliers will wait until the new year turns over to shop around their new offerings, but unfortunately nearly all investment decisions have been made by that time.
As pharma brand teams near the end of 2019 ‘planning season,’ they must focus on the fundamentals in order to drive more predictable results. After that, we recommend experimenting with new approaches to address their most important challenges. Of course, having a thoughtful plan is only a starting point when the calendar turns over in January and your tactics start engaging real customers.
<h3>Here are 5 Steps to Balance Tried-and-true with the New:</h3>
<ol>
<li>Clearly articulate which problems you are solving</li>
<li>Use data to understand if there are well-tested tactics that are already working</li>
<li>Do more of what’s working, and less of what’s not</li>
<li>Invest in small experiments to broaden your portfolio of ‘things that work’</li>
<li>Continuously measure and shift resources to the ‘winners’ in your portfolio</li>
</ol>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com/a-balanced-approach-to-brand-planning/">A Balanced Approach to Brand Planning</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.mnghealth.com">MNG Health</a>.
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