There have never been more ways to reach HCPs, yet it’s never been so challenging to effectively engage them. HCPs now choose when, where, how, and if they interact with pharmaceutical companies. This white paper proposes a new model, the Physician Value IndexTM, which integrates four key aspects of how a physician interacts with a pharmaceutical brand—presence, participation, influence, and sentiment. Reading this white paper will show you how to: Incorporate this new capability model Better measure marketing performance Drive business value Justify spend through real-time, data-based insights

1. A Medikly White Paper
June 12th, 2013
The Physician Value Index™
A Framework for Optimizing Marketing Performance
and Spend in the Digital Age
By Venkat Gullapalli, MD, Mark Goldstone, and Nita Nehru
Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals

2. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
Executive Summary
The “Age of the Empowered Physician” represents a contradiction of sorts for pharmaceutical companies—there
have never been more ways to reach healthcare providers (HCPs)—yet it’s never been so challenging to effectively
engage them. Driven by the decline in face-to-face interactions and the increasing availability of on-demand access
to digital channels, HCPs now choose when, where, how, and if they interact with pharmaceutical companies.
With more than $60 billion being spent annually on marketing and communications to HCPs, pharmaceutical
marketers need to reinvent how they allocate, optimize, and justify spend through real-time, data-based insights
and intelligence.
We propose a new model, the Physician Value Index™ or PV Index™, which integrates four key aspects of how a
physician interacts with a pharmaceutical brand—presence, participation, influence and sentiment. Using the PV
Index™, pharmaceutical marketers can now incorporate a new capability model of measuring marketing
performance, and its contribution to driving business value.
Target Audience
This white paper is intended for pharmaceutical marketers to discuss and agree on an appropriate set of metrics
that will demonstrate marketing performance while driving business value within their individual organizations.
© 2013, Medikly, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
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3. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
Does Pharma Need to Change How It Values Physicians?
The traditional view of the HCP has been—for the last two decades—based primarily on face-to-face interactions
by sales reps, by mail, and in call centers. Fast-forward to today, when 95 percent of HCPs get necessary and
relevant information online through various digital touch points on their desktops or laptops, and 87 percent use a
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smartphone or tablet. These two systems (old and new) often exist in parallel silos without exchanging
information, giving marketers an incomplete view of the HCP. In the past five years this view has fragmented even
further due to multiple new mobile, social, and other communications platforms and channels. Connecting these
disparate channels is crucial for not only understanding, but also predicting HCP behavior.
This digital evolution has changed the fundamental skills and technologies required for pharmaceutical marketing.
Excelling at one marketing capability or channel is no longer acceptable. As Accenture points out in its recent
survey of over 200 pharmaceutical sales and marketing executives, “…[A] customer engagement revolution in the ‘new
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normal’ demands entirely new capabilities from pharmaceutical companies’ sales and marketing organizations.”
Figure 1: Trends and Challenges
Brands must better
understand how to manage
and integrate new channels
NO HCP ACCESS
Decline in sales rep access
force brands to rethink how
they approach marketing
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!
30+ CHANNELS
!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!
!
!!!!!!
!!!!!
BIG DATA INSIGHTS
Need faster way to sort,
analyze, target and segment
the HCP digital footprint
SPECIALTY MARKETS
Sophisticated Rx criteria and niche
segments create need for
personalized and targeted content
MARKETER!
Source: Medikly, Inc
New Trends and Challenges
The Pharmaceutical Sales Force is Evolving. One of the biggest changes facing pharmaceutical marketers is the
evolving role of the sales force in the marketing mix. Powered by the decline in face-to-face interactions,
pharmaceutical organizations are now looking for other ways to determine who their target HCPs are, where they
active, what conversations they’re having and with whom.
Traditional Marketing Tactics are Producing Less and Less ROI. A decade ago, sales reps, print mailers, brand
reminders, and banner ads were the norm. And they were incredibly successful. But we’re in a fundamentally
different environment today: Restrictions on rep activity are increasingly stringent, and due to their declining
numbers, it is increasingly difficult to generate as much frequency as is optimal. As a result, the sales force is
becoming increasingly expensive for a much smaller ROI.
Explosion of Digital Channels. In the “Age of the Empowered Physician,” over 95 percent of physicians are digitally
savvy and connected with each other through numerous new channels and touch points. With this hyperconnectivity come new behaviors and expectations on how they access and consume content from pharma. This
evolution is challenging marketers to integrate these channels into their marketing mix while providing
personalized and coordinated brand experiences to physicians and other HCPs.
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4. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
“Big Data” Brings New Opportunities. With the explosion of new channels and touch points, there is a
tremendous increase in the volume, velocity, and variety of data being generated. This data, generated in realtime, needs to be captured, sorted, and analyzed to enable marketers to make informed, real-time decisions on
optimizing their audience, channels, and content. This data provides insights into the needs, interests, behaviors,
and preferences of HCPs, helping marketers better understand the specific triggers that influence prescribing
decisions.
The Era of the Blockbuster Drug is Over. With the business model that drove the pharma’s “blockbuster era” no
longer viable, marketers must now market drugs geared toward specialized patient populations, where the HCPs
that prescribe these drugs have very specific information needs. And when combining fewer addressable markets
with dwindling budgets, generic competition, reduced R&D budgets, lower revenues, and reduced profitability,
marketers are ultimately put in a position to do more with a lot less.
Physician Value: A Whole New Dimension
While the above trends and challenges may seem insurmountable at first, they give pharmaceutical marketers the
opportunity to think and act in entirely new ways. In fact, the evolution of digital now allows them to better
understand the behaviors and preferences of their physician audiences and take appropriate action.
All Physicians Are Not Created Equal. Given that technology and social media are playing such an integral role in
how HCPs interact, it is important to note that from a marketing perspective, each individual HCP does not hold
the same weight. In the old world, a disgruntled physician or nurse practitioner simply did not prescribe the
offending product. In today’s digital world however, a disgruntled HCP has the ability to tell 2,000 of their friends
via social media how unhappy they are, which can be very detrimental to a brand and its sales. Alternately, even a
low prescriber can be tremendously valuable to a brand, as they may positively encourage their networks to
consider prescribing as well. In this model, positive influencers are valuable and should be seen as brand assets,
whereas detractors must be managed and neutralized.
Managing a Pharma Brand Now Means Managing an Audience. Social media has opened the door to a brand
new marketing channel—the HCP audience. Traditionally, a brand manager’s role was to ensure that all
messaging, advertising and media was uniform, consistent, and “on
brand.” In the new digital world, branding is frequently outside of the
“…even a low prescriber can be
brand’s control and must be shared with multiple audiences. In fact,
tremendously valuable to a brand, as
a report by McKinsey & Company states that “…marketing
they may positively encourage their
management…has become more complex through the emergence of
networks to consider prescribing as
online tools—especially social media—that are shifting the balance
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well.”
of power to [customers].”
Once branded messaging or content is on the web, users can comment, add their opinions, and republish.
Goodbye months of careful brand planning! Thus the pharmaceutical marketer’s role now must include
understanding and managing their audience as another brand media channel.
Current Systems and Databases Exist in Silos. Pharmaceutical organizations today utilize different platforms,
systems, and databases, each with their own set of analytics and metrics, to gain insights into HCP behaviors and
preferences. These systems are rarely integrated nor automated, and to gather any real insights, pharmaceutical
marketers must manually aggregate and analyze the data generated—a prohibitively costly and time-consuming
task—in a market that requires real-time decision making.
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5. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
Existing metrics and models do not capture these new realities. While technologies have advanced
tremendously, metrics and application of insights have remained largely unchanged. “The metrics of yesterday just
don’t do a good job of capturing the insights necessary in our
new digital world. The more digital channels there are and the
“The metrics of yesterday just don’t do a
more transactions physicians perform in them, the higher our
good job of capturing the insights
expectations should be of what we can measure,” says Eric
necessary in our new digital world. The
Pilkington, Executive Vice President at McCann Health.
more digital channels there are and the
more transactions physicians perform in
them, the higher our expectations should
be of what we can measure.”
If traditional marketing methods and systems are losing their
utility and the audience has become another media channel to
be managed, what must pharmaceutical marketers now do to
handle this shift? We propose a new metric for pharmaceutical
marketers to measure marketing performance by—the
Physician Value Index™.
Eric Pilkington, EVP of Digital Strategy,
McCann Health
The Physician Value Index: Pharma’s New Marketing Metric
The PV Index™ is a weighted aggregate measure of the presence, participation, influence, and sentiment a physician or
other HCP generates as they interact with content, a brand, or messaging over time.
The PV Index™ does more than just gauge reach and frequency; it gives marketers real-time insight into the impact
an individual HCP can have on their brand. This value in turn, enables marketers to understand who is worth
talking to and who is not, who must be neutralized and who can be a brand asset.
Once understood, physician value can then be used to define the ROI metrics relevant to one’s own brand and
organizational goals. Ultimately, the objective is to help pharmaceutical marketers better allocate their time,
money, and effort in the most efficient and effective ways possible, and to generate ROI.
What is Physician Value?
The PV Index™ covers four broad aspects of how an HCP
interacts with a brand, with each of these aspects broken
down into various aggregate measures combining online and
offline data, eg, information gathered from sales calls, live
meetings, and sample requests.
“The PV Index™ is a weighted aggregate
measure of the presence, participation,
influence, and sentiment a physician or
other HCP generates as they interact with
content, brand, or messaging over time.”
By combining these measures, pharmaceutical marketers can
now identify the various elements of physician value that drive marketing performance and ultimately
demonstrate business value. The four aspects of the PV Index™ are below.
•
Presence – Presence is a measure of one-way activity that an HCP has with a brand at various touch points.
Metrics to track include unique visits, average number of page views, average duration of visit, downloads,
logins, time spent per page or per web property, the number of different assets touched, frequency—the
number of times each HCP sees branded content—and other similar quantitative metrics. While only
providing a partial indication of content, message or brand reach, these metrics are crucial to track and
understand, as they provide insight into the initial interaction and growing awareness the audience has
with a brand at a specific touch point.
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6. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
•
Participation – As the word implies, Participation is the intensity of interaction an audience has with the
content, brand, or message at specific touch points. Participation is a two-way street and includes metrics
such as the frequency and quantity of reading and writing of content on a branded digital property. Metrics
to track include scroll depth and speed for text-based content, and quality and quantity of user-generated
content (UGC). This is a much stronger measure of how engaged an audience is with a brand than the
transactional metrics of Presence. We can equate Presence with the breadth of interaction an audience
has with the brand at multiple touch points, whereas Participation is akin to the depth of each interaction.
•
Influence – The metric of Influence is binary, tracking both the influence of the brand’s content on the degree
of change in an HCP’s knowledge, skills or behaviors pre- and post-content, and the degree of influence a
particular HCP has on the brand through sharing, suggesting, or recommending that content to their
network. To understand Influence, key metrics include shares, likes, recommendations, suggestions of
brand content or messaging to other physicians, and how those metrics are attributed back to the original
HCP. When measuring influence, marketers need to also capture the type of influence an HCP has on a
brand. For example, influence can be either positive or negative, allowing an influencer to be either an
advocate or a detractor.
•
Sentiment – Sentiment is the final yet crucial component in building the PV Index™, as it enables us to
discern affinity, assigning separate values to HCPs who hold positive or negative perceptions about the brand.
Sentiment can be tracked by analyzing words and context in user-generated content. Tracking sentiment
in real-time can be critical in acknowledging and addressing any potential problems, or better yet,
opportunities facing the brand. Measuring sentiment can also be an ideal way to assess brand equity or
affinity among HCP audiences.
Dr. Jim Golden, Managing Director, Accenture Analytics, adds that “By leveraging a PV Index™, pharmaceutical
organizations can segment and manage their audience and make strategic decisions regarding where to spend
their time, money, and marketing resources.”
“By leveraging a PV Index™,
pharmaceutical organizations can segment
and manage their audience and make
strategic decisions regarding where to
spend their time, money, and marketing
resources.”
Dr. Jim Golden, Managing Director,
Accenture Analytics
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7. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
Understanding Physician Value Index™
Utilizing the PV Index™ as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) can demonstrate tremendous value to pharmaceutical
companies looking to assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Understanding and leveraging
physician value enables a marketer to make distinct and specific real-time marketing decisions around optimizing
content, channels, and audiences.
Now, pharmaceutical marketers can spend their marketing dollars on the HCPs who provide the most long-term
value for the organization’s goals. Furthermore, the PV Index™ allows for more granular and real-time audience
segmentation and the effective targeting of HCPs based on specific brand goals, whether to raise awareness, drive
prescriptions, or promote brand advocacy.
Let’s take a look at a few ways a marketer can apply the PV Index™:
PV INDEXTM!
86
PRESENCE!
82%
Intensity
PARTICIPATION!
94%
Intensity
INFLUENCE!
SENTIMENT!
78%
88%
Intensity
Intensity
Sarah Chin, MD (HIGH VALUE): Dr. Chin, a much-respected physician with a PV Index™ of 86 is an advocate of your
brand and frequently prescribes your product, as many of her patients have the appropriate disease state.
Moreover, many of her patients take the product and have seen great results, so she is a big fan and is fiercely
loyal. Since she is very actively followed on Twitter, her love of the brand spreads via word of mouth to her 4,500
followers, many of whom are HCPs in her hospital and are members of the same associations.
PV INDEXTM!
48
PRESENCE!
51%
Intensity
PARTICIPATION!
56%
Intensity
INFLUENCE!
SENTIMENT!
53%
32%
Intensity
Intensity
Maria Gonzales, MD (MODERATE VALUE): Dr. Gonzales, with a PV Index™ of 48, is neutral regarding your brand.
She sometimes prescribes your product but also prescribes your competitor’s with similar frequency. She rarely
discusses brand opinions online, though does frequently comment in open forums on the effects of obesity on
Type II diabetes, a relevant topic to your brand. With appropriate and relevant promotional messages, Dr.
Gonzales could be converted into a brand advocate.
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8. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
PV INDEXTM!
37
PRESENCE!
37%
Intensity
PARTICIPATION!
54%
Intensity
A Medikly White Paper
INFLUENCE!
SENTIMENT!
42%
16%
Intensity
Intensity
DAVID CLAIRE, MD, MPH (LOW VALUE): Dr. Claire is highly engaged with your brand but has a PV Index™ of 37. He
visits your e-detailing portal frequently, has downloaded prescribing information, and follows your latest updates.
Despite this level of engagement, Dr. Claire is not an advocate. In fact, many of his patients have complained about
adverse events and therefore he does not particularly like your brand. Moreover, he shares this sentiment via
social media to his 1,200 followers and, given his moderate level of influence, is negatively swaying others.
PV Index: What It Can Mean For Pharmaceutical Marketing
The real benefit of creating a PV Index™ is in its application. As previously mentioned, healthcare organizations can
leverage the Index to make strategic marketing decisions, appropriately target their audience(s), and optimize
spend for a brand’s objective or stage in its lifecycle.
The PV Index™ provides a way to match an HCP’s interactions with the business goals and objectives of a
brand. For example:
Increasing Awareness. To achieve this goal, the initial objective for pharma marketers will be to understand the
best methods to build awareness of their brand among their target audience. To accomplish this, they must focus
on a particular set of KPIs across all of their channels and touch points. Sample KPIs that provide an assessment
into brand health include, but are not limited to, digital share of voice, brand recall, amplification, and brand
equity.
A great example is assessing the effectiveness of a pre-launch, multichannel campaign in a therapeutic category
where there are multiple “me-too” drugs. The effectiveness of these efforts can be gauged by monitoring the preand post-campaign reach, velocity, volume, and amplification of digital share of voice over time, and also the
overall sentiment of those conversations.
Increasing Brand Preference. A marketer tasked with building and measuring brand preference must track how
HCPs are engaging with their brand, content, or message across multiple channels and touch points. This requires
utilizing attitudinal-based KPIs that capture metrics such as the percentage of HCPs willing to consider or prescribe
their brand, and utilizing surveys to capture preference or the number of likes, shares, and recommendations
combined with sentiment of comments and posts on social media.
For example, assume that after the launch of a novel product within a new therapeutic area, it was found that the
efficacy message was not believable or not resonating with the target audience. A way to address this is to create
multiple mechanism of action videos that tie to the brand’s efficacy message, and then track the real-time change
in consumption among their HCP audiences.
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9. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
Driving Prescriptions. Marketers can leverage the PV Index™ to understand the impact of various channels on
prescribing behavior, as well as how different types of content influence an HCP’s intent to prescribe. With today’s
technology, marketers can now attribute specific channels to particular actions, such as tracking the impact of
social media on prescribing.
As an example, marketers interested in understanding the effects of social media channels on script lift can
measure the number of prescriptions generated from a specific user in select social channels, as well as the
growth of sales over time and the increase in repeat number of prescriptions from that HCP in that particular
channel.
Creating Brand Advocacy. Creating brand advocacy as a business goal requires the support and dedication of
HCPs that can act as brand ambassadors without having any official affiliation with the brand. Brand advocacy
allows pharmaceutical brands to extend their reach beyond their immediate spheres of influence by taking
advantage of the virility of social networks. Among the many KPIs that indicate the overall health of brand
advocates are active advocates, advocate influence, and advocacy impact.
For example, a mature product that’s facing patent expiration and has no new clinical data or announcements will
need to be seen as a trusted and quality source with significant brand equity. By monitoring conversations and
segmenting influencers into advocates and detractors, a brand can identify what specific key messages set it apart
from competition, while simultaneously building a stable of genuine interest amongst HCPs by tapping into their
respective areas of interest. This will allow the brand to create future marketing programs incorporating these new
messages, in turn creating more loyal users and brand advocates.
Conclusion
Today’s successful marketers realize that we live in the Age of the Empowered Physician, where there is no “onesize-fits-all” marketing approach. They understand the value of their HCP audience as a media channel—whether
positive, negative, or neutral. They know that creating
meaningful relationships with their HCP audiences is the new
imperative
because
those
deep
connections
drive
“Until the use of the PV Index™ becomes
engagement, loyalty, and ultimately prescription decisions.
widespread, those that apply first it will
most certainly have an unfair advantage
Marketers and brands that utilize the PV Index™ as a key
over their competitors.”
corporate asset will be able to leverage it to drive media
planning and budget optimization decisions. They will develop
deeper audience relationships with their audiences by offering
relevant, personalized, and timely content in the channels preferred by individual HCPs. They will have the unique
ability to understand exactly where, when, and how to allocate resources to achieve business objectives and
improve ROI on marketing campaigns. Until the use of the PV Index™ becomes widespread, those that apply it first
will most certainly have an unfair advantage over their competitors.
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10. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
References
1.
Google/Manhattan Research. Screen to Script: The Doctor's Digital Path to Treatment.
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/uploads/940659.pdf. Published June 2012. Accessed June 9, 2013.
2.
Accenture. Survey Results: Life in the New Normal: The Customer Engagement Revolution.
http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Life-Sciences-Life-in-the-New-Normal-theCustomer-Engagement-Revolution.pdf. Published 2013. Accessed June 9, 2013.
3.
Haas S, McGurk M, Mihas L. A new world for brand managers.
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/a_new_world_ for_brand_managers. Published April 2010. Accessed
June 13, 2013.
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11. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
A Medikly White Paper
About Medikly, Inc
Medikly helps pharmaceutical organizations better reach, engage, and understand HCPs by gaining insights into
the HCP journey through various digital touch points and highlighting how these touch points impact the
behaviors and preferences of HCPs and their intent to prescribe.
Contact Information
st
th
35 East 21 Street, 5 floor
New York, NY 10010
USA
Phone: 212-951-1525
Email: info@medikly.com
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12. Intended Audience: Pharmaceutical Marketing Professionals
© 2013, Medikly, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
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