A New Tactic To Drive Sample And Trial Requests

Pharma and Biotech manufacturers understand the challenges of a reduced sales force and decreasing accesses to HCPs.  They also recognize the value in advertising.  Advertising is a tried and true practice in the pharma and biotech space. But, demonstrating engagement— and return—on advertising has always been difficult. On average, digital ads only reach 33% of their intended target.  And the more specialized your product or industry, the harder it becomes to reach your intended audience.  But digital advertising, focused on personalization, leveraging content approval and publishing, and respecting privacy, can aid in solving this problem. Pharma and biotech manufacturers can now better service and educate their audience, understand engagement and interest, and communicate return on advertising investment.  It can deliver inbound results and provide continual pull through a communication cycle.

And this could also be a new tool for driving sample request.

Sampling and trialing can be a pharma or biotech manufacturer’s most effective marketing tool, but it can also be a very expensive activity.  According to the Promotion Marketing Association’s Sampling and Demonstration Council, 83% of consumers agreed that experiencing a product or seeing it demonstrated live increases their comfort level when purchasing. 

But where should you start? 

Consider the following steps.

1. Define the objective. The first question pharma and biotech manufacturers must ask when approaching healthcare professional digital advertising initiatives is “Why do we want to do it?” Your ad strategy must have a clear purpose and by defining the “why” you can better pinpoint what that purpose is. In this instance you want to drive interest in a product through a sample request.
2. Measure throughout the process.  Once the purpose is determined you need to develop baseline metrics for your expected results, and ensure that the metrics you use align with your goals.  Let’s say your sample request form conversion is 42%.  You could leverage multichannel marketing and personalized advertising to increase your sample request form conversion rate to 50%.  You could also like define “two new prescribers” as a quantifiable objective. You could also target a 2% increase in NrX by the end of the 90-day campaign.
3. Set a time frame.  You need to consider the duration of your ad campaign.  You may measure the form conversion rate against a 60-day digital advertising campaign, and the new prescriber metric against a 90-day follow-on nurture campaign.
4. Plan. Develop a project plan for your digital ads just like you would for any other marketing communication project.  The project plan should detail the tasks, resources, schedules, constraints, and costs necessary to achieve the objective.  In this case, the project should contain the deliverables for both the inbound digital ad campaign, and the educational nurture path.
5. Be specific about your target audience.  For example, your target audience could consist of cardiologists in Chicago who were detailed in the last 30 days. 
6. Get personal. Content should contain personalized messaging relative to the HCPs digital body language.  The campaign communications should follow the 1:3 rule.  There should only be one sales focused communication for every 3 communications delivered.  The other 2 communications should contain KOI content relevant to the HCP’s digital body language.
7. Think across a program. The project doesn’t end at the sample request.  At the completion of the campaign, HCPs will be assigned to the appropriate post-campaign process. 
8. Respect the data. Sampling data will demonstrate the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness of the sample process.  This will allow pharma and biotech manufacturers to better employ the sample process, drive more meaningful engagement, and understand the return on their sample investment.

Digital advertising technology exists today that allows you to use business demographics to precisely target ads to your exact audience wherever they travel online. This results in more efficiently spent ad dollars, and gives you the ability to reach more of your target audience, more often, and strategically guide them through the buying cycle from building brand awareness through to driving conversions and sales.