Life sciences and pharmaceutical companies invest massive funds to attract the right patients and providers via digital advertising and TV — in 2023 that amount totaled over $7B. For a significant portion of that spend, the endpoint is often a website that isn’t optimized for ideal engagement and today’s consumer expectations; this is where the road ends for many customers. However, conversational AI transforms the brand.com landscape, enabling 1:1 customer interaction at scale and enhancing the static website with a real time brand.com virtual agent available 24/7/365 for patients, providers and caregivers to interact with.
Predicting and interacting with audiences
The more specific a brand’s audience, the more likely it is they will convert. It’s no longer best practice to blanketly target, but instead use smart technology to reach, attract and engage with the right people. Through AI and real world data, it’s possible to target ideal audiences at all phases of the health journey, from pre-diagnosis to living with the condition, those about to progress to another therapy, or those highly likely to become non-adherent. Once these de-identified patients and their associated providers have been located, they can be served highly precise advertising across channels and, as every marketer knows, the higher quality an audience, the higher the conversion rate.
But what happens next in the customer journey? In most cases, it’s visiting a website, albeit one that looks (and works) similar to those of 10 or even 30 years ago; the first website came out in 1991. It’s a sub-optimal search and scroll experience that’s difficult to navigate, find relevant information and, ultimately, results in a high bounce rate.
The result: Visitors don’t get the information they seek, the brand isn’t positioned as the treatment of choice, and all those valuable marketing dollars spent to get the customer to the brand.com go to waste. Most importantly, scripts are not lifted.
There is an alternative, however. By implementing conversational AI, customers now have an outlet to actively engage with the brand, creating an invaluable channel that leads to increased high value activity and Rx lift.
Bridging the gap between pharma and customers
Equipping the healthcare advertising space with conversational AI agents creates a crucial bridge between a brand and its customers, allowing for 1:1 human-like virtual communication that answers pressing inquiries in the moment of need in place of site abandonment and looming questions.
Swoop conversational AI is MLR-compliant and trained on more than 1.3 billion medically relevant conversations in the field. Though built on highly sophisticated large language models to ensure understanding of user intent (i.e., the questions being asked), only compliant and approved answers are provided, unlike with generative AI, meaning it will not “hallucinate” or go off-script, which limits risk — ideal for the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry.
The AI agents are able to engage in dialogues that span the breadth of healthcare topics, from discussing medical conditions and product information to navigating coverage options and exploring wellness programs, and providing a level of interaction that traditional brand websites rarely achieve. The result is not just enhanced user engagement but also a tangible increase in prescription lift. The flexibility of the AI agents, which are available 24/7/365, means that crucial health conversations can occur when they are most needed. This level of accessibility and convenience contributes to a deeper and more sustained engagement with the brand.
Creating a new first-party data source
Beyond these touchpoints, the AI agents also serve as a rich source of first-party user data, giving brand marketers insights that can be gathered almost instantaneously, including the most frequent questions and common pain points that patients may not ask their physicians and physicians may not ask their reps (when they actually do speak). This allows marketers to make real-time decisions to help optimize the future of a campaign, its messaging and target audience.
And results speak for themselves
Conversational AI represents the future of brand.com, with results to demonstrate the immediate impact they can have on a marketing program. One Swoop customer saw more than an 800% increase in high-value activity by patients and consumers through the agent, and an over 400% increase by physicians, as compared to their prior website engagement. Additionally, these live, tracked virtual interactions reflect high satisfaction levels among users (97% trust the information provided), strengthening patient and HCP relationships while also supporting the success of brands throughout the commercial lifecycle.
Innovating for better outcomes
Swoop is the first to pioneer this innovative AI specifically for the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. By moving beyond the traditional brand.com experience, health marketers can maximize advertising budgets while creating enduring connections that increase Rx lift. Enhancing the user experience and driving better health outcomes using interactive conversational AI should be a cornerstone in pushing healthcare marketing further and spending more effectively.
