As regulators continue to apply scrutiny to DTC advertising, pharmaceutical companies must find new ways to enable proactive consumers to educate themselves about treatment options.
Direct-to-consumer advertising works, not just because it fulfills a business objective, but also because it fulfills a consumer need. Patients, faced with the declining attention spans of their doctors, are eager to absorb health information from media sources. They want to understand their ailments, the lifestyle choices that impact them, and the treatments that are available.
Cautious regulation
One of the fundamental objections against DTC advertising is the perception of influence. Regulators look at a marketplace where commercial entities are producing ads that seek to influence an individual's healthcare decisions, and express understandable concern. After all, the purpose of advertising is to trigger demand, and the underlying motivation is not education: it's revenue growth.
Bringing consumer needs back into focus
The aspect of DTC that regulators do not confront is the fact that DTC garners attention from consumers that want this information.
The FDA can feel concerned about physicians being "bypassed", but no federal agency could deny patients the right to be involved in their healthcare decisions. Access to information goes hand-in-hand with the ability to make those decisions.
Proactive versus passive consumers
This dual perception - between conscious, proactive patients and passive, easily-influenced consumers - is not merely a projection of two different world views. These two types of consumers really exist.
When objections against DTC surface, they mostly target TV commercials. The reason for this isn't just that they are highly visible and thus subject to easy scrutiny.
TV commercials target mass audiences who are not thinking about healthcare issues while viewing them. Thus, these commercials are seen as the type of advertising that tries to steer opinions, rather than inform them.
Online marketing targets proactive consumers
In contrast to TV, online promotions present the opportunity to advertise to consumers in a healthcare context. If a Lipitor banner ad appear in WebMD's cholesterol section, who could deny that this is an appropriate information option for patients?
Search marketing is the most proactive environment
One ad medium that is 100% driven by proactive consumer interest is search engine marketing. Search engines such as Google base their revenue model on the ability to match ads to user interest. And search engine users express that interest quite literally, by typing-in keyphrases such as "cholesterol treatments."
For this reason, search engine marketing may be the best long-term option for pharmaceutical companies that are concerned with the increasing scrutiny of DTC advertising and its "influence" on the public.
Search marketing ads deliver information only in response to a consumer requesting it, and interfering with this exchange of information is not a goal of DTC regulations.
Strategy options for pharma companies
To find more more about online strategy options for DTC advertising, please contact NCC. We have a wealth of experience in pharmaceutical marketing, and can help you determine the best approach to your market.
