Embracing a Tailored Approach to Payer Marketing

Though my current New York City address wouldn’t indicate it, I’m a huge Red Sox fan; I practically grew up inside the friendly confines of Fenway, taking in thousands – maybe even hundreds – of games while straining my neck to catch every pitch (while trying to eat as many Fenway Franks as humanly possible). While I may have moved 200 miles down I-95, I haven’t stopped following the home town team, even this season, despite a miserable showing between the foul lines. Well as it turns out, because of said miserable showing this season, the Red Sox recently decided to fire their pitching coach.

Not a baseball fan? Don’t worry, seems like most people aren’t these days anyway, but bear with me, there’s a point to this, I promise.

So, the Sox fired the pitching coach and the reports from the Boston Globe seemed to indicate that all year, he was at odds against the analytics, and so next season they’re going in a new direction: selecting a pitching coach who is in alignment with the front office’s analytics-oriented philosophy. It appears the main area of disagreement between pitching coach and front office was over the use of advanced analytics as it pertained specifically to batter versus pitcher: it wasn’t enough that Batter A was bad against the slider and Pitcher B had a devastating slider. The analytics were pushing for Pitcher C, who, on paper, may not have matched up well against Batter A for one reason or another, but because of advancements in pitch tracking technology, the analytics indicated that Pitcher C’s slider would – for reasons having to do with arm angle, spin rate, etc – be better off than Pitcher B when facing Batter A. In short, the Red Sox want to move in a direction that is specifically tailored for each match-up, batter versus pitcher. Swing-path versus spin rate.

More and more we’re seeing teams in baseball go beyond the simple right versus left match-up. As technology and data analytics break new grounds, so too do the approaches to in-game match-ups, and the attempts therein to gain as much an advantage as possible, even slight advantages at the margins that hopefully over the long run will bear fruits in post-season success. We’re seeing that this October, with small-market teams that have been on the cutting-edge of the tailored analytics approach, (Houston, Oakland, Tampa, Minnesota), all make the playoffs with much lower payrolls than my Red Sox.

In an era where competition is increasing, oceans of information just a simple search away, and budgets ever tighter, a tailored approach to anything seems to make the most sense for realizing those advantages at the margins, however slight they may be.

An Evidence-based Approach to Payer Segmentation

In pharma, the one-size-fits-all approach to marketing your products to key payer customers is becoming more and more outdated: plans in the US are becoming increasingly segmented into varying types of plans. Certain plans are being more innovative with their contracting, setting up various risk-sharing schemes with manufacturers (OBAs, VBCs, etc). Some plans are more willing to accept new pricing schemes, like annuity payments, or even a “Netflix” model. We’re seeing some plans beginning to adopt other ways beyond clinical comparative effectiveness methodology for evaluating products for formulary inclusion and positioning –namely, some plans are beginning to look more closely at cost-effectiveness and other value-based appraisal methodologies, especially in specific disease states that may yield themselves to heightened emphasis on economic value arguments. Depending on disease state, the argument of a “tailored approach” may manifest around differentiation and tailoring for variables such as: patient population, payer archetype, inclusion of physician-led groups, and general preference for most appropriate evidence types with respect to your target indications.

The point is, once we know what drives certain plans’ decision making, we have the opportunity to market our groundbreaking therapies to them in a way that aligns with their priorities. With so many regional plans and disparate drivers of formulary management, the prioritization of your value messages certainly becomes more impactful when the value story is tailored for the specific payer audience.

Taking an evidence-based approach to your customer segmentation is a critical first step in efficiently deploying your field teams and working with your key customers to align on shared priorities, which ultimately will prove fruitful for optimizing formulary review and positioning of your therapies. At Certara Evidence & Access, our team of US access consultants have conducted robust payer segmentation work, which has helped our clients reprioritize their value stories and messaging.

But once you’ve segmented your market, how can you best deploy your field teams and have them leverage the specific content that’s going to move the needle with certain payer segments? The answer is having a flexible, agile platform in the hands of your field teams who can rapidly and seamlessly adapt your FDAMA 114 content to meet the needs of your payer segments.

The Value Communication Tool for Tailored Content

Here at Certara Evidence and Access, our BaseCase Interactive SaaS solution empowers your field teams to engage with payers, providers, and KOLs in a more dynamic way than through traditional, static content. BaseCase serves as a streamlined hub for your FDAMA 114 content and allows for:

1. Tailored, interactive value stories and communication tools
2. Personalized calculators, budget impact models, and other health economic analyses
3. Perform live calculations and present personalized ROI analyses 
4. Data-driven presentations and visualizations
5. Dynamically generate personalized PDF leave behinds and send them from within your presentation
6. Cite references from an in-app database and provide links to full-text PDFs or sources

What makes BaseCase such a powerful tool for your field teams is how flexible the tool can be and how seamless the process is for adapting your content, which is a critical element when creating tailored content to different payers. You and your teams can home in on the content that moves the needle with certain customers, all with a level of interactivity that brings your tailored content to life in a more dynamic way than through traditional/legacy methods of payer marketing. 

The elements that make BaseCase such a seamless tool to use include having the ability to create modern, interactive mobile content using a powerful browser-based, drag-and-drop editor; easily converting existing static PDFs into user-friendly, interactive, feature-rich sales tools, and having the power to modify you content at any time, and distribute updates to field teams. With BaseCase, you’ll also have an ease of use factor when it comes to compatibility across devices while having the ability to use your technology both online and offline.

With an ever-changing payer landscape, arming your field teams with the agile tools necessary to nimbly modify your customer-facing content is a necessity; with the BaseCase Interactive all-in-one technology platform there is no better way to align and tailor your content with the decision-making priorities of your key customers.

Interested? Let’s schedule a quick chat. Feel free to shoot me an email to learn more. [email protected]