This post was created in partnership with PulsePoint
For healthcare marketers, can too much data be a bad thing? And what are the best practices for navigating privacy regulations?
During an ADWEEK House Austin panel co-hosted with PulsePoint, industry leaders in healthcare explored the need to balance troves of data with putting the consumer first.
A new metric for audience quality
Jonathan Zile, SVP of data solutions at PulsePoint, moderated the discussion and acknowledged that “there’s almost no limit on what we can do with data in terms of collection, processing, analysis.” He asked if standard metrics like audience quality were still sufficient.
Gozde Dinc, director of strategic partnerships and innovation at Genentech, shared that audience quality is “a helpful baseline” but “a myopic North Star.” That’s because consumers rarely make health decisions in a vacuum, often relying on family and friends for advice.
“I care less about if somebody looks like the patient that I’m trying to reach and more about if they’re acting like one,” Dinc explained. “If they’re acting like they care, if they’re clicking, if they’re downloading, if they’re watching those videos, if they’re asking those questions, who are we to say that’s not a quality audience?”
Innovation with privacy
Zile highlighted that marketers must navigate the tension between patient privacy and the desire to innovate with data.
Tara Sparks, director of paid and earned media at Novo Nordisk, said that while regulations must be followed, marketers can use “proxy data.” She gave an example of Novo Nordisk not having enough performance visibility in social media but knowing that 60% of consumers take advice from social media and 69% of doctors say patients ask for a drug by name.
“Just because I don’t have great measurement on social doesn’t mean that I can’t advertise on social,” Sparks said.
For Bill Lucas, executive director of Sumitomo Pharma, it’s critical to embrace the trust that consumers expect.
“Trust is a component of what we are selling. If we jeopardize that to try to get precise, we’re really running into some issues there. And once you lose that, you start to lose long-term value,” Lucas said.
Different audiences
Marketers also face challenges in designing campaigns for two audiences: consumers and healthcare professionals (HCP).
Eugene Lee, chief operating officer of CMI Media Group, believes it’s possible to combine and optimize them but some factors make it hard. One is speed, since getting a prescription drug is not as fast as buying something off a retail shelf. Another is regulatory, which slows down advertising creative.
