The First 'Right' in the Omnichannel Strategy: Reaching the Right Physicians

Written by -Harpreet Singh

The First 'Right' in the Omnichannel Strategy: Reaching the Right Physicians

The ultimate goal of any omnichannel implementation is to meaningfully engage the right physicians, at the right moment, through the right channel, and with the right message. In this series of four articles, we will explore each of these four rights. Let’s delve right into the first ‘right’: "Identifying the right physicians"

Who are the 'Right' Physicians?

The goal for pharmaceutical companies is to engage with the HCPs who are not only relevant to your product or message but are also likely to be receptive. The traditional segmentation approaches, which rely on factors like demographics, specialty, and number of patients, provide some insights into who is important for your brand. Yet, to truly identify the right physicians, a more refined and nuanced approach is required.

How can you become more precise in Identifying the Right Physicians aligned with your Brand Positioning?

Unearthing Historical Prescribing Patterns
can help in classifying physicians into various buckets such as loyalists, trialists, conservative, patient-centric, and cost-conscious. This type of segmentation provides companies with a valuable direction depending on the stage of your product’s lifecycle. For instance, if it’s a launch product with a novel mechanism of action, it will make more sense to put a focus on trialists rather than the loyalists.
Identifying and Engaging the Influencers
will unlock the larger potential for the brand by tapping into the previously inaccessible network groups. This in itself is an extensive exercise that requires the companies to study affiliations of physicians to medical societies, their participation in relevant clinical trials, research publications, industry affiliations, and many more. Many brands have a strategic imperative to educate patients along with the physicians. These brands look for influencers who have a strong digital or social presence.
Evaluating Engagement History
with your company helps in understanding the overall receptiveness of the physicians for your brand. Companies don’t want to spend too many resources on inaccessible physicians.
Understanding the Patient Population
being treated by the physicians plays an important role in tailoring the message that speaks directly to the physician interacting with specific patient groups.
Evaluate the Relative Value of Physicians
to target the lower-value physicians through non-personal promotion channels.

Many pharma companies are giving due importance to Omnichannel strategy. It’s evident from the way they are hiring and openly discussing in their investor updates. In a recent investor update call that I attended for a pre-launch pharmaceutical company named Verona, set to launch its COPD drug in the middle of next year, I learned about the company's multi-pronged segmentation approach to identify and engage healthcare professionals (HCPs). While there might still be more ground left to cover as part of their omnichannel strategy and implementation, the timeliness in acting upon this is an aspect that can set the ball rolling for commercial success. Various data science algorithms can be leveraged to create these segments and identify the pool of physicians who are more relevant to your brand.

However, this is not a one-time exercise. Pharma companies must build a mechanism to capture feedback through field teams, other engagement channels, and changing physician behaviors to continuously refine these segments to stay ahead of the competition.

Stay tuned for the next right: “The Right Moment”

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