Engaging patients along their healthcare journey: How to improve audience quality

The pharma industry spends millions each year on TV and other mass media with the aim of creating brand awareness. But while those channels reach large numbers of consumers, they don’t always get their message through to their intended patient groups.

How can brands tailor content that resonates and deliver it to the right patients at the right moment? Investing their first dollar in the point of care is a strong place to start, new data shows. Explore key insights in this infographic.

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Engaging patients along their healthcare journey: How to improve audience quality

The pharma industry spends enormous sums each year on television and other mass media with the aim of creating brand awareness. But while those channels reach large numbers of consumers, they don’t always get their message through to their intended patient groups or reach them at the right moments in their healthcare journey. So how should you rethink spending priorities if mass media isn’t connecting you to high-quality audiences with the right content at the right time? Investing your first dollar in the point of care is a strong place to start, new data shows.

The industry spends millions each year on mass media…

$1.68 billion—spent by top-10 brand TV ad media buyers in 2022¹
$316 million—spent on TV ads by AbbVie’s Rinvoq, which was the highest-spending pharma brand in 2022

…but awareness is still low. For example:

8M+ TV ad impressions² yielded 7% migraine brand recall³
After 21B+ TV ad impressions in asthma, 31%⁴ of patients couldn’t recall any brands⁵

Many mass-media engagements are playing to the wrong audiences—and sometimes to no audience at all. More than three-quarters of patients say the healthcare content they see on TV is rarely, if ever, relevant to their needs and experiences, according to a recent Phreesia survey taken by nearly 7,500 patients as they checked in for their doctors’ appointments.

How often is the medication information that you see on live TV or streaming services relevant to your healthcare needs or experiences?

44%—Never
34%—Rarely
17%—Sometimes
3%—Most of the time
3%—All the time

Additional insights:

Nearly 40% of digital media budgets are wasted on the wrong audiences⁶
1 in 3 TV ads may be playing to an empty room⁷
42% of patients feel negatively about medication content on TV

Instead, patients want tailored content that’s relevant to their specific needs.

71% of consumers expect personalization, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t find it⁸
51% of patients consider content to be more memorable when it is relevant to their medical condition⁹

While digital channels hold promise for delivering the right content, identifying high-quality audiences is getting more difficult with the phaseout of cookies and new privacy restrictions from Apple, Google and others…

69% of industry professionals say that phasing out cookies will have an impact on their brand or organization¹⁰
50% Life sciences brands expect to have 50% more traffic blocking third-party cookies versus other industries¹¹

…but there are still successful ways to deliver the right content to the right patients, particularly at the point of care, that go beyond building brand awareness and support patient activation.

78% of patients value point-of-care media at their doctor’s office or hospital¹²
2x more trust— Patients are twice as likely to trust medication information presented in their doctor’s office over content shown on mass-media channels like TV
36% of patients say drug ads make them feel more informed when discussing treatment options with their doctor¹³

Point-of-care solutions that can identify clinically relevant patients—and reach them digitally and on mobile, in particular—can be even more effective…

39% of patients pay attention to health content during appointment check-in—the highest of all point-of-care messaging sources

…and motivate patients to take action in their treatment journey.

2 in 3 adults who saw or heard healthcare messaging at their doctor’s office took some action¹⁴
Among them…

76% more likely to visit a website recommended by their doctor
39% more likely to switch to a different prescription

In summary…

Activating clinically relevant patient populations will require rethinking your goal of reaching the greatest number of patients, to instead focus your energy on reaching the right patients with tailored messages that resonate with them. Advertising through mass media, while also making investments at the point of care, can help achieve that goal and supercharge your overall messaging strategy.

In addition, despite the phaseout of cookies and the emergence of new privacy restrictions, you can still improve audience quality by connecting with patients digitally and on their mobile devices to ensure they get relevant content tailored specifically to their healthcare needs.

Find out how Phreesia can help you reach clinically relevant audiences and activate the right patients just before their medical appointments.

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