AWARENESS CHANGES BEHAVIOUR
Not according to 40 years of HCP media experience
Creating brand awareness may be the first step in your marketing campaign journey, but it’s important to consider that it’s only one element that contributes toward your ultimate goal. Advertising, and awareness alone aren’t going to influence HCP prescribing decisions. We need to better understand the benefits and limitations of an awareness campaign and identify how and where to use it effectively.
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers, in our case healthcare professionals, can recall or recognise your brand or product by its name. The definition also refers to the familiarity of the audience with the product and its differentiation from its competitors. In the consumer sector, it may be possible to achieve each of these goals in a single advertisement, but in our highly regulated area of healthcare, we are constrained in terms of what we can say, how we say it and where we can say it, as well as the format we use to present it.
From an advertising perspective, the space on the screen or on the page is insufficient for us to make a compelling case for an HCP to make an informed and educated decision of whether or not to prescribe or recommend a particular drug. Coupled with the regulatory requirements of what should and should not be included in an advertisement, it is clear that there need to be additional stages in the marketing process to provide the HCP with the evidence and information required for them to make an informed decision.
So, what’s the point in advertising? Well, without any awareness of a product, the HCP cannot possibly consider it. Awareness is essential to encourage the HCP to want to discover more. We can provide a clear call to action to motivate the HCP to learn more, but the evidence shows that few HCPs actually interact directly with print or online ads.
The expectation of many pharma and healthcare companies is that if they put loads of information and data on their websites, then HCPs will visit, and that advertising will drive them there. The reality can be very different on several levels. The GPMS research shows that only 20% of UK GPs find pharma websites useful, compared to 71% who find Medical Journal/Publisher websites useful. In secondary care, the HDMS Hospital Doctor readership reflects a similar sentiment with only 29% finding pharma/product websites useful, compared to 78% finding Medical Journal/Publisher websites useful*. The HCP may see the advertisement on one of these independent sites but encouraging them to visit an external pharma site isn’t easy.
So, we need to ensure that we provide a pathway that leads to the evidence and information which allows them to make an informed decision.
It’s a pathway that needs to be simple and have as few barriers as possible. It also needs to recognise the preferred behaviour of the audience, accommodating their environments and their actions. This isn’t the same for all HCPs. It is certainly easier to direct HCPs to content on the same website as the ad, but to encourage them to visit a different destination needs a different approach.
So, what happens next and how do we keep the HCP on the pathway to enlightenment and ultimately influence their behaviour?
We’d love to discuss this further, so please get in touch. Media is not just advertising, and Brand Awareness alone will not directly influence HCP behaviour. With over 40 years as a specialist healthcare media agency, we can help you separate the reality from the myth.
Andrew King
01932 345519
*GPMS & HDMS 2024 Data
