Bayer Leverages Patient Marketing
Data to Drive HCP Engagement

When it’s time to get therapeutics into the hands of the right patients, there is generally a two-pronged approach to educate both the relevant prescribing healthcare professionals (HCPs) as well as their patients. While many biopharma companies are starting to think about the holistic experience of both HCPs and their patients, these activities are often executed separately.

Both patients and doctors participate in exam room conversations. When patients do online research before visiting their HCPs, they are more likely to ask for and receive specific medication. When HCPs have had recent exam room conversations with informed patients, they are more primed to receive brand messaging from the field. Yet it is often hard to coordinate a patient’s media exposure and a call on their prescriber.

A unique opportunity to synchronize DTC marketing and field force activity

Nick Lucente, executive director oncology patient marketing, and his team at Bayer wanted to prepare both HCPs and patients for those exam room conversations. Partnering with Veeva provided the unique opportunity to connect their direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing data back to the field force to deliver timely messages to HCPs.

Leveraging Veeva Crossix HCP Trigger Data, Bayer can identify HCPs treating patients who have visited their branded site after being exposed to media. Every month, they receive a data file of these HCPs, at the NPI level, based on activity from the previous month. The team then implements various business rules and processing to determine who are the most relevant HCPs for the field team. This leads to a suggestion directly in Veeva CRM for Bayer’s field team to act on. “This is the first time we’ve been able to marry our DTC marketing and field force HCP activity by linking a patient who’s seen our advertising and then talks to a doctor about it,” said Lucente. “Now our sales team can use that data to prioritize their sales efforts to HCPs who are hearing brand requests from patients.”

Setting up the organizational foundation

Lucente was excited to introduce this patient marketing data initiative to the field. To make it work, he knew he would need to get their buy-in and approached them with the idea. “We’re doing all of this excellent work with patient marketing. Wouldn’t it be great to connect some of these insights and let you know about the doctors who are engaging with patients that see these campaigns?”

Setting the team up for success required collaboration across the organization. Lucente brought together a cross-functional team that included the sales, data science, brand, and analytics teams, along with regulatory, legal, medical, commercial, and operations.

To execute on this first-of-its-kind initiative, the team was willing to step outside of their comfort zone. Everyone agreed to employ a test and learn mindset. They clearly communicated measurement plans and key metrics before roll-out and decided that initial alerts were only for HCPs on the call plan. The team was ready to be nimble and either scale back or dial up the field suggestions based on feedback and results.

Empowering the field team to create timely opportunities with their HCPs

Once the foundation was in place, it was time to set the idea into practice. Over 800 suggestions were generated in a 3-month period which translated into a few suggestions per field team member. “The sales team was engaging in new conversations and speaking with some HCPs that they weren’t able to engage with previously,” said Lucente. “We saw high engagement with the sales team taking action on the suggestions and we had a lot of positive feedback.”

Positive momentum was in motion but the important question remained, what was the business impact? In one month there were five new writers and a strong positive ROI. “In the oncology space, for the product we have, this was huge for us. Getting new writers was a top goal of ours and exciting to see,” said Lucente.

The power of connected data to execute omnichannel activations

After seeing such strong results, Bayer is looking forward to connecting more data and implementing new integrated, omnichannel activations. “It’s one thing to provide insights to the sales team about patient marketing plans,” said Lucente. “Now we can help the sales team understand when HCPs are talking with patients and if those patients have engaged with brand messaging.” With the ability to know the right time to have an impactful conversation, the sales team can prioritize their sales activities and have meaningful conversations to drive results.

Learn more about ways to synchronize sales and marketing in the 2023 Trends in HCP Omnichannel Engagement.