5 Steps to Doctor-Driven Inbound Marketing

5 Doctor Driven Inbound Marketing Solutions for Pharmaceutical Companies - Joseph DiGiovanni

The convergence of content marketing and the FDA's recent recommendations on social media provides pharmaceutical companies a transformational opportunity to support physicians as active content curators on health and wellness.

HCP DRIVEN EARNED MEDIA

This creates tremendous opportunities for HCPs, larger clinics and group practices to embrace content marketing as a means to gain market-share, engage with potential patients, provide valuable information regarding medical conditions or treatment options, and build a relationship that will drive appointments, revenue, patient loyalty, and socially amplified referrals. The ROI speaks for itself Platforms like TAPPMD.com are driving 1/4 million in earned media per physician.

HCP Driven Content Marketing involves the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of promoting positive behavior change. – TappMD

Physician to Patient Content Marketing promotes disease awareness, prevention, compliance, and ultimately empower patients to live healthier lives. Physician to Patient Content Marketing is also a powerful tool to promote a physician’s practice to acquire new patients. Physicians and Medical Groups need to begin by creating content that is valuable and relevant to their patients via their web site, blog, and social media and integrating it into their own expert guided content marketing hub. Here is a snapshot of the integral steps for getting started.

THE 5 STEPS OF PHARMACEUTICAL CONTENT MARKETING

Step 1: Define Patient Personas The first step is identifying the needs of their patients and the interests of their prospects. This involves a detailed patient persona profile based on the specific stages and content needs along the patient persona journey.

Step 2. Purvey & Publish Physicians are evolving into publishers and purveyors of health content. The payoffs are tremendous. However it cannot be scatter-shot. Physicians and group practices need to devise a strategic editorial calendar with their content marketing team that includes curated content, original content, and associated social messaging for each contemplation phase, disease stage and persona. This will lead to greater patient education, compliance and adherence.

Step 3: Promote Integrating key social media channels such as Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn into each blog post will exponentiate your practice’s reach. Social media is not the way to practice medicine and would give HIPPA a coronary, however it is the most important element of content marketing for promoting your practice and educating patients. This is also a great opportunity to partner with Pharmaceutical Companies to leverage their educational resources.

Step 4: Mobilize & Measure Content marketing enables physicians to further establish themselves as thought leaders in their field and share their expertise on a global and local basis. Utilizing measurement and sentiment tools will quickly enable your content marketing team to maximize your results to improve patient outcomes and engage new patients.

FAST FACTS For those HCPs who question the need for a content marketing hub on their website. Consider this: o When researching health information, 76 percent of potential patients look on hospital websites. o Before booking an appointment, 61 percent of patients visited two or more hospital sites o Of those, 48 percent took more than two weeks to complete their research o Of those patients who booked appointments • 50 percent used health information sites • 26 percent read consumer generated reviews • 83 percent looked at hospital websites • 54 percent viewed health insurance websites.

THE OPPORTUNITY Despite this obvious opportunity to engage with patients online, pharma is behind the curve in the adoption of content marketing. Most agencies are getting all wrong and pitching content marketing services around pharma brands. Think outside of the black box and empower HCPs to amplify their voice. Not only will you drive brand awareness, scripts and advocates, you will promote positive behavior change and compliance along the way. While concerns over patient privacy and a reliance on doctors for information may have been obstacles to engaging directly with patients online, forward-thinking clinicians, hospitals, and group practices are embracing the opportunity and driving business and health promotion through content marketing.