For Type 2 Diabetes patients, doctors play a crucial role in their medication journey as 80% of patients are satisfied with doctor’s abilities to intently listen to their healthcare needs. These patients are well-informed when having conversations in the doctor's office, and post-visit they are often exploring social platforms for additional feedback, real-life user experiences and testimonials. Our objective was to help guide communication streams between Healthcare Provider (HCPs) and Consumer/Patient audiences, acknowledging the profound influence HCPs have on treatment decisions. We aimed to discover if a synergistic approach across Social and Programmatic, leveraging insights from highly active HCP prescribers to build innovative consumer targeting models, could unlock a more engaged and efficient consumer audience. Based on strong audience engagement levels on Social and highly targeted strategies via Programmatic, the cross-channel synergistic approach aimed to further drive intentional, messaging-driven engagement based on a deep understanding of key HCP prescribing habits. This strategy sought to create personalized messaging aligning with specific treatment and comorbidity overlays, ultimately driving superior performance compared to traditional methods while also working within staying complaint amongst a highly regulated industry. We wanted to validate this cross-functional collaboration and set a new standard for audience engagement, meeting patients with the messaging and resources crucial for deeper level doctor conversations.
Bringing this ambitious project to life required a seamless cross-functional symphony. Our Social and Programmatic teams joined forces, leveraging a trusted data provider’s capabilities to execute a pioneering audience test. The strategic bedrock was built upon HCPs identified as key prescription writers. From this foundation, we crafted three distinct consumer segments, each layered with specific treatment and comorbidity overlays (including treating with a competitor, treating with Metformin or a comorbidity of either Chronic Kidney Disease or Cardiovascular Disease), relevant to the HCPs' prescribing patterns.
Critical to execution was the bespoke content strategy, ensuring content was relevant, meaningful and impactful. Our creative team developed unique "content buckets" with multiple creative concepts tailored to each segment, ensuring messaging deeply aligned with the overlay/comorbidity to directly provide guidance in ongoing doctor/patient discussions.
The teams also navigated the complexities of comparing campaign performance. A key learning involved careful calibration when contrasting with evergreen campaigns that had significant budget variances, necessitating a refined comparison against similar-budgeted third-party audiences. Our work's uniqueness stems from this innovative fusion – transforming HCP prescribing data into actionable, personalized consumer targeting, thereby fostering a more thoughtful and engaged audience interaction. This collaborative, data-driven approach set a new standard for integrated audience strategy and provides a unique avenue for reaching T2D patients with the right messaging, furthering education, understanding and confidence when conversing with their doctor.
The results of our HCP/Consumer Synergy Audience Test were unequivocally positive, far exceeding initial objectives and solidifying our belief in this innovative approach. On social, our efforts were a resounding success as the synergy campaign segments dramatically outperformed traditional 3P Traffic audiences. We saw a remarkable 39% increase in Click-Through Rate, a 31% reduction in Cost Per Click, and a substantial 44% boost in link click volume. The Programmatic team also observed a staggering 71% more efficient Cost per Qualified Action, proving cost and engagement strengths across both teams.
Beyond raw numbers, the synergy targeting generated demonstrably more thoughtful engagement, indicating we resonated with T2D patients on a deeper level. This test validated our core hypothesis of effective HCP/Consumer audience synergy and fortified our cross-functional partnerships. It established a powerful blueprint for audience strategy, paving the way for further evolution with even more cohesive and complementary messaging that plays an ever-evolving role in the lives of both doctors and patients.
