On average, pharmaceutical marketers develop healthcare professional (HCP) target lists that contain 7,000 to 20,000 HCPs. But that poses a problem if you want to be precise about your HCP targeting, especially if adopting an omnichannel approach. So, you’ll need to use the best segmentation to get the best results.

Find out how correctly leveraging a unique method of segmentation can significantly improve your omnichannel marketing.

 

What Are the Common Segmentation Methods in Pharma?

1. Deciling

Typically, pharmaceutical marketers segment their HCP target lists into ‘deciles’ based on perceived or reported patient volume for each physician. Doing this allows them to determine prescription (Rx) potential and prioritize accordingly.

For example, in an HCP target list of 10,000 physicians, 100 may be in the first decile, 2000 may be in the second decile, and so on. These first two deciles may have the highest volume of patients combined than the other eight deciles. So HCPs in deciles 1 and 2 might be selected as targets.

2. Strategic Segmentation

Strategic segmentation involves dividing an HCP target list into strategic groups — typically three or four groups. This helps the pharma marketing team prioritize targeting. Usually, pharma marketers segment their HCP list based on factors such as physician specialties, past prescribing behaviors, practice type, etc.

The downside to both deciling and strategic segmentation techniques, however, lies in the fact that most pharma marketers haven’t adapted their segmentation approach to non-personal promotion (NPP). So, they apply the existing segmentation method to their entire target list for NPP as they would with pharmaceutical reps on the field, resulting in poor engagement results.

How Double-Deciling Elevates Your HCP Targeting

Although an HCP may have a high patient volume, they may not be predisposed to prescribe your brand to their patients.

For instance, an HCP may be so loyal to the competition that the amount of sales effort your sales rep would have to expend to convert them would make that HCP no longer profitable. This is where double-deciling can help.

Double-deciling allows you to segment your HCP target list into deciles based on Rx potential and digital affinity. Digital affinity refers to an HCP’s inclination to use digital channels and the likelihood that those interactions will drive an increase in prescription rates. 

Simply put, instead of segmenting and identifying HCP targets based only on Rx potential, double-deciling helps you also consider your target’s likelihood of responding to your marketing effort.

With this HCP targeting and segmentation approach, you can prioritize your spending on targets with high digital affinity. You can also keep an eye on targets with large patient volumes. What’s more, it also helps your field force know which physicians are most likely to respond to them.

For example, suppose a decile has a high patient volume and digital affinity. In that case, you’d want to invest your maximum budget in that decile and adopt an omnichannel marketing approach to reach out to them.

However, to achieve results with double-deciling, you need precise data on patient volume as well as digital affinity. PharmaForceIQ’s proprietary HCP affinity data provides the industry’s best source of US HCP digital affinity data. It’s also layered on a self-service campaign tool.  It can help deploy your omnichannel marketing campaigns to HCPs with high digital and field force affinity.

How to Implement the Double-Deciling Segmentation Approach in 3 steps

In summary, the following steps will help you achieve the double-deciling segmentation approach for HCP targeting:

  • First, segment based on Rx potential (which is the traditional approach).
  • Secondly, determine which HCPs have a high, medium, or low digital affinity.
  • Combine both to determine your marketing tactics and investment level for each double-deciled segment.

Improve Your Marketing ROI with PharmaForceIQ

As the industry’s only true digital omnichannel marketing and sales platform, we streamline your pharma marketing efforts by leveraging channels that physicians on your target list use.

We use advanced NLP capabilities to maximize the potential of every touchpoint by ensuring all your marketing messages are personalized. We also boost the productivity and efficiency of your field force by directing them to physicians in real-time who have potential eligible patients.

With PharmaForceIQ, you can identify physicians with eligible patients and also understand their marketing preferences.

Get in touch to request a demo today.