Current patients can hold the key to valuable information
May/21/2007 06:38 Filed in: Pharma
Business
There is a feeling in pharma that once you have a current patient on your product that he/she is not a valuable asset anymore. Their advertising is focused on people who are not on the brand rather than reenforcing the decision to stay on the brand. The track record for patient compliance for pharma is pretty poor but rather than abandon these customers pharma should embrace them. What made them finally decide to seek treatment" Can we segment this group and identify a common barrier that was overcome? These are all questions that may be answered by current patients but alas pharma marketers seem to turn a deaf ear to this audience.
Let's, for example, look at the ED market. There are millions of men who have not sought treatment for ED because of the psychological barriers. Yet ED brands continue to advertise on TV and go after these men with refined messages. What they should be doing is talking to men who are currently on treatment and ask them "What made you finally ask your doctor about ED?" This way they can identify the triggers to action and utilize marketing channels to deliver messages that address these triggers.
Then there is the CRM component of current patients. Pharma seems to ignore current customers and very few brands, if any, value current patients as a valuable resource. For medications like Lipitor, where patients can't "feel" the benefit of taking the medication everyday, patients need to be reminded that they are fighting bad cholesterol while promoting healthy cholesterol. Yes the Lipitor website has a section for current patients but does Pfizer really believe that people are going to go back to the website, log-on and enter their new numbers? That shows that Pharma is still stuck in Web 1.0 and doesn't understand how people want to use the Web. A CRM program has to be based on a relationship of VALUE to the PATIENT: before someone is going to have a relationship with your brand you have to clearly identify the value equation of your customer.
Listening is a lost art and listening to current patients seems non-existent in most pharma DTC programs. Yet listening to your current patients can provide a wealth of information to your brand.
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