HCPs’ Pharma Marketing Preferences Don’t Always Align With Actual Behavior: Report

A new report from HealthLink Dimensions and DeepIntent pairs a survey of nearly 900 physicians on their attitudes toward health and pharma brand communications with actual HCP engagement data to highlight potential areas of opportunity for marketers. 

“For years we asked physicians to tell us their communication preferences. This year we mapped what they said against what they actually do. You will find some interesting alignments in the report, and some surprises, and that is where the real lessons for marketers are,” Amar Duggasani, CEO of HealthLink Dimensions, said in a statement to solli. 

The report compared what HCPs say they want from brands and how they actually behave across eight core findings; the gap between the two was “wide” on half of the points. 

For one, a majority of the surveyed physicians said they’d prefer to receive brand information at least monthly, and only 32% said they want it weekly. In fact, the real-world engagement metrics—spanning 2.4 million email opens and 221 campaigns—showed that there’s essentially no decline in click-through rate as brand exposures increase, which the report’s authors suggested means that marketers should set frequency ceilings not by clicks but by writer and script rate. 

There was also a relatively wide gap on the topic of when physicians pay attention to brand communications. When asked to choose one of five segments of the day when they’re most receptive, the surveyed doctors separated themselves into five near-equal groups, implying that campaign timing doesn’t really matter. In actuality, though, data shows that email opens peak around mid-morning and that more than 60% of a given week’s opens occur from Tuesday to Thursday—giving marketers a potentially more promising media plan than simply “any time.” 

Meanwhile, when asked about the types of content that earn their engagement, 40% of HCPs said clinical trial summaries and scientific data are most valuable. But that content type ranked toward the bottom of actual opens, at a median of 13.4%. Higher open rates went to lighter, less dense formats, including interactive demos, information about continuing medical education and events, and industry news. According to the report, that means marketers should “ease off” denser materials and prioritize the more practical formats that actually earn opens. 

solli’s Final Thoughts 

Pharma marketers often use the adage “trust but verify” when it comes to working with new data sources or AI tools, but perhaps it should also be applied to conversations with actual audience targets, too. 

Doctors may claim to click on dense scientific content at any time of the day or week, but a media strategy built around those claims will be rendered quite ineffectual when the data shows that they’re really clicking mainly on interactive tools on Wednesday mornings. 

Though it can certainly be informative and insightful to speak directly with HCPs about their takes on branded health and pharma content, the report’s findings suggest that when it comes to media planning, it’s best to look at those discussions as starting points rather than the end-all, and be sure to bring in real-world measurement data to more accurately refine outreach strategy.