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Every year, many life sciences organizations host speaker conference events, or speaker programs, across the globe. These speaker programs are one of the most successful sales and marketing strategies used across the industry. For most companies, these events are a beacon of product launch announcements and promotion, executive networking (on technology, patient care strategies, and synergy avenues), and balanced information exchange between industry representatives. Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) and Healthcare Professionals (HCP) interact with one another to discuss relevant subjects such as therapy areas, drug development, clinical outcomes, patient population trends, and patient interests. The expected results of such events include appraising HCPs of the latest industry developments, educating them, and retaining them as customers, as well as new lead generation, and an overall increase in sales productivity and marketing ROI.
With the increase in the number of touchpoints for a Healthcare Physician (HCP), it has become more important for pharmaceutical companies to personalize marketing efforts at the HCP level. Segmentation forms the backbone of customized marketing and is a critical step in converting brand strategy into actionable tactics. A robust segmentation process enables effective targeting – a potential group of customers receiving communication through preferred channels from the pharmaceutical companies.
Integrated Healthcare Groups can be segmented (targeted) based on several criteria/factors such as size, # of hospitals, # of admissions, # of employed HCPs (hospital and community-based), etc. When analyzing IHGs it is also important to assess their true level of integration. Several large IHGs (i.e. Carolinas HS and Novant) have grown rapidly through acquisition however they do not have common systems in place across their network, therefore the level of “integration” is somewhat weak. Conversely IHGs with more established systems (i.e. Kaiser, Geisinger, etc.) have infrastructures in place that position them to drive a high level of control and track, measure and reward performance.
