


3 Pharma Marketing Strategies to Bring Patient Relationships to the Next Level

Digital media best practices for creating relationships with your “Goldilocks” audience

A patient acquisition campaign needs to have a deftly calibrated target audience to achieve its true goal, driving conversions that meet both volume and quality requirements. Looking at this challenge from both the top and bottom of the conversion funnel, I’ll outline some simple guidelines that can help a marketer find as many qualified leads as possible.

Audience Selection Pitfalls

Finding the “Goldilocks” audience – the target that’s just right for your value proposition – requires a measure of confidence in your brand, your message and your website. Casting a wide net and using lax qualifying criteria for enrollment is an easy path to high volume and low CPA (cost per acquisition). But if your core message is only compelling to 5% of your opt-ins, the cost to acquire the other 95% could deal a decisive blow to your results.

On the other hand, there’s a fine line between prudent targeting and going overly narrow. A common reaction is to overcompensate for potential wasted impressions by getting too granular with targeting. Often, budget-wary marketers define their audience as people who not only fit the target customer profile but are likely to act immediately. This is a wonderfully convenient concept, but its over-application is the reason some relationship marketing and customer acquisition programs fall short of their ROI goals.

Successful acquisition marketing involves convincing some portion of your potential consumer audience to use your product or service for the first time. So how do you turn unaware non-users into brand loyalists and hand raisers?

Finding Your “Just Right” Audience

Focused outreach among those who can be identified as potential customers (one step up the funnel) or have a higher propensity to engage (one step down the funnel) will inevitably result in the growth of that acquisition pool. Here are three simple steps that will ensure your acquisition is calibrated to attract and engage the sweet spot of your desired audience:

1. Go One Step Deeper with Your Audience Profile

This can be as simple as paying attention to who your current customers are, using existing campaigns and analytics. Ask yourself what elements of user profiles and digital actions contribute most to that tendency to convert. As an example, patients who use cardiology drug X, considered the standard of treatment, are over-represented in the Southeastern United States where its indication is most prevalent, yet under-represented in that region compared to generic competitors. Rather than focus on low-usage markets, is reasonable to assume that drug can grow its Rx velocity and market share in the southeast by targeting generics users with messaging emphasizing the drug’s superior efficacy.

2. Climb One Rung Up the Ladder Before You Cast Your Net

Having sharpened your qualifying criteria to maximize conversion, the next step is to grow the qualified prospect pool by entering the dialogue a bit earlier in the consideration journey. Using “pull” tactics like paid search and contextual placements is a highly effective way to make sure that when you reach beyond “conversion ready” audiences, you are relying on tangible user intent signals to guide your investment.

3. Fine Tune the Conversion Experience

Once the targeting methods are calibrated and efficiently working to drive acquisitions, testing the right keywords, ad copy, media placements, creative messaging, qualifying questions and landing page design can all help build a solid roadmap to maximizing ROI and rolling out your program with confidence and enthusiasm.

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