Data in Healthcare Marketing: How to Unlock HCP Insights

Healthcare professional (HCP) perspectives are the missing piece for many pharmaceutical companies. HCP insights can completely transform every aspect of your pharma marketing strategy — from messaging to content to events.

In this guide, we'll walk through how to engage HCPs, ways to collect quantitative and qualitative intelligence, and tips to incorporate it into your marketing plan. By the end, you'll have practical techniques to gather HCP data and turn it into a strategic advantage.

Key takeaways:

• Well-rounded HCP insights require both qualitative and quantitative data. Methods like surveys and interviews provide in-depth intelligence.
• Healthcare providers increasingly prefer virtual interactions. Prioritize video conferencing for data gathering and virtual events for marketing.
• Incorporate HCP insights throughout your marketing strategy. The intelligence you gather can inform everything from messaging to event planning.

What are HCP insights?

HCP insights are a collection of data points that reflect healthcare providers' behaviors, preferences, and clinical activities. They reveal HCPs' needs, challenges, and goals. And they offer visibility into healthcare providers' decision-making processes.

These insights are particularly valuable because they help pharma companies:

• Guide HCP engagement strategies and build deeper relationships with providers
• Align pharmaceutical product development with physician and patient needs
• Create pharma marketing strategies that truly speak to providers

How to gather intelligence from HCPs

Successful pharma companies use both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data from HCPs. While methods and tools vary, most organizations aim for a hybrid approach that combines in-person and virtual interactions.

Create surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are two of the most effective methods for collecting quantitative data on the HCP experience. They're helpful for learning:

• How HCPs access and review medical information, including preferred sources and formats
• Which treatments providers prefer to improve patient outcomes
• Where HCPs have training gaps and need additional education or support
• How industry trends or regulatory changes have affected providers

To gather more valuable data and glean more actionable insights, develop questions about specific scenarios and treatments. Aim to keep surveys or questionnaires brief. Limit them to 10 questions or less to secure as many responses as possible.

Monitor trending topics

Directly asking HCPs about their perspectives is just one way to gather quantitative data. You can also track the topics they engage with and then gauge the popularity and sentiment related to these themes.

Use social media listening tools to analyze relevant conversations on platforms like LinkedIn, X, and Facebook. Follow topics like therapies, patient care trends, and emerging digital health tools to glean HCP engagement data and learn what providers are saying and how they feel.

Review your company's digital marketing analytics to identify the topics that resonate with them. Check metrics like email click-through rates and organic page views to see which issues or therapeutic areas are most popular with your audience.

Interview HCPs virtually

Set up one-on-one interviews to gather qualitative data. By talking directly with HCPs, you can ask more in-depth questions and get more nuanced perspectives on relevant topics.

While you can certainly conduct in-person interviews, virtual sessions are often faster and easier to organize. And in many cases, healthcare providers prefer a digital option. 84% of physicians want to maintain or increase virtual interactions with pharma companies, according to BCG.

The right online meeting software makes the interview process simpler. Livestorm makes it easy to set up secure meetings that HCPs can access from their browsers — no app download necessary. And with convenient tools like calendar integrations and email reminders, Livestorm helps scale your interview program as needed.

Establish HCP focus groups

Connect with multiple HCPs at once by setting up focus groups. Organize small groups by therapeutic area and facilitate in-depth discussions about clinical data, marketing campaigns, or upcoming events.

This HCP model lets you collect qualitative data more efficiently, and it can also provide richer intelligence. Instead of receiving a single answer to your questions, focus groups are more likely to offer responses that build on each other to create a more complete picture of opinions and sentiments.

Similar to individual interviews, focus groups work well as either in-person or virtual conversations. With Livestorm, you can easily organize secure video conferences for focus groups of any size, including breakout sessions for discussions on specific topics.

7 Ways to use HCP analytics in your marketing strategy

Use these ideas to start implementing your HCP market research data.

1. Fine-tune your value proposition

The insights you gather from interviews, surveys, and focus groups tell you exactly what healthcare providers care about. Use their insights to rethink your value proposition and weave in what matters to your audience.

For example, suppose HCP research shows that patient education resources are more critical than you thought. You might make educational resources a key part of your brand offerings and highlight them in your messaging.

HCP data can also help you differentiate your brand. Listen to how your target audience perceives competitors and find opportunities to make your brand stand apart.

2. Customize marketing content for HCPs

As you interview or survey HCPs, pay attention to the needs they have and the challenges they struggle to address. Then, create marketing content that aligns with their preferences.

Keep in mind that providers in different roles or therapeutic areas might prefer different kinds of content. For example, pediatric physicians might want preventive care content and patient success stories. Oncology specialists might prefer peer-reviewed research or webinars that offer learning opportunities.

Engagement analytics are particularly helpful for customizing marketing content. Make note of the content assets that generate the most engagement or downloads. Then, optimize your HCP marketing strategy.

3. Host panel discussions with HCPs

Once you've built relationships with HCPs, invite them to participate in your organization's educational efforts. Host panel discussions with multiple providers to share diverse perspectives on trending topics and facilitate conversations that educate and inspire other healthcare providers.

Make these discussions more accessible by hosting virtual events. This way, you can invite HCPs and audience members from various geographic areas to participate without having to coordinate travel or venue rentals.

With Livestorm, planning online events is simple. Use our built-in landing pages and email sequences to collect registrations and remind attendees about the event. On the day of the event, welcome the speakers to the virtual stage and host an informative conversation.

4. Develop thought leadership webinar series

In addition to one-off events, plan a webinar series that provides a reliable source of HCP education and thought leadership. Use the insights you've gathered to guide the themes and topics — such as emerging therapies or training gaps.

Invite HCPs or key opinion leaders (KOLs) to speak or guide these webinars. Host them at the same time each week (e.g., a weekly lunch and learn session) so your audience can easily plan to attend the event. As the Livestorm 2024 Healthcare Webinar Report found, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days for webinars.

Monitor your webinar analytics closely to glean additional data. Pay attention to the topics and speakers that attract the largest audiences so you can optimize your webinar strategy.

For better return on investment (ROI), record each event. With Livestorm, you can automatically record webinars and then distribute the recording to everyone who registered. This is a great way to increase views and make each webinar more impactful.

5. Guide your event marketing strategy

Factor HCP preferences into your event marketing strategy. At a minimum, take time to learn which industry events your target audience plans to attend. This way, you can make an informed decision about which events your organization should sponsor.

If your HCP data supports it, consider organizing your own virtual medical conference. This type of event is ideal for educating providers about new treatment options, discussing industry trends, or collaborating with marketing partners.

6. Inform your product launch strategy

As you plan your next product launch, use HCP data to guide your messaging. Build your product marketing content on the needs and challenges of your target audience.

Let their marketing channel preferences guide your outreach and distribution. For example, focus your launch strategy around email and webinars if your data confirms their effectiveness.

7. Identify emerging KOLs to engage

As you get to know HCPs, aim to identify emerging KOLs. By building these relationships, you have the potential to develop collaborations with medical experts who can become advisory board members, validate clinical trials, and endorse new therapies.

With a thoughtful KOL engagement strategy, you can also gain speakers for your launch events or healthcare conferences. These relationships can increase credibility, expand your HCP audience, and deliver even better marketing outcomes.

Livestorm for virtual HCP insights

The future of HCP engagement is virtual, with more than a quarter of physicians seeking more digital engagement and fewer face-to-face interactions.

With a webinar software platform like Livestorm, virtual interactions couldn't be easier. Livestorm can handle everything from video conferences for data gathering to webinars for education to panel discussions for thought leadership.

Plus, our automated recordings help you get more value from every conversation or event. And our analytics help you demonstrate the value of your efforts and find opportunities to improve.

Ready to see how Livestorm works for your organization? Book a demo to learn more about our enterprise and business plans.