Despite the growing popularity of point-of-care (POC) marketing via electronic health record (EHR) platforms, this channel remains highly fragmented. For omnichannel marketers, that fragmentation can represent challenges in finding scale, transparency, and uniformity in targeting and performance reporting. While it can be tempting to try and identify the one partner that provides the most scale, there are risks associated with this strategy that can impact audience quality, brand perception, and the contextual environment for your marketing.
Audience quality and reputation
The POC landscape is filled with thousands of small EHRs, connected apps, and other clinical tools that promise some level of advertising capabilities and reach. Harmonizing a unified marketing approach across all of them often means finding the lowest common denominator of media, targeting capabilities, data rights, reporting and other components integral to a fully realized marketing plan.
If you cobble these applications together you may find scale, but at what cost? To ensure a high level of audience quality, a savvy marketer should be asking for 100% transparency on the platform supporting your marketing efforts. Alternatively, you can prioritize working with partners that directly own the relationships with the providers you are trying to reach.
Context matters: Where your brand is presented
The quality of the advertising platform is inseparable from the quality of the brand experience. When ads are retrofitted within EHRs not meant to support them or POC apps with limited engagement or oversight, the message may not only be lost but could also inadvertently associate the brand with negative experience. It’s essential for marketers to recognize that their brand’s integrity is reflected in the digital spaces they inhabit. Prioritizing high-quality, reputable platforms ultimately fosters trust and credibility among the recipient of your messaging.
Understanding user base and platform pedigree
It is crucial to understand the platforms where your brand’s messaging is displayed. It’s not just about the visibility; it’s about the context in which a brand is presented. It’s often hard to discern critical information about the user base for many small EHRs and connected apps: How engaged are they? How often are they accessing the app?
In addition to questions about the user base, it is also important to understand the pedigree of these platforms. Are they widely recognized and respected by healthcare providers? Without this knowledge, there’s a risk of diluting your brand’s message on platforms that may not have the reach or relevance to justify the investment. It’s like placing a billboard in an alleyway; the message is there, but who is there to see it?
Navigating claims of scale and reach
The reporting capabilities of an advertising platform are critical for marketers to measure success and optimize campaigns. However, in the fragmented world of EHR and point-of-care media, the claims of scale and reach can sometimes be confusing.
For instance, an app connected to a major EHR’s app store may not be a direct product of the EHR itself. This distinction is critical; while the app’s vendor may claim the ability to reach the scale of the EHR’s provider base, the true reach is often limited to the individual healthcare providers who have downloaded the app and, more importantly, how frequently they use it.
Marketers must navigate this carefully, seeking platforms that offer transparency and accuracy in who they’re reaching and how. It’s not just about the top line numbers; it’s about the meaningful engagement that those numbers represent.
Transparency and ownership
When working with a known platform owned directly by an EHR partner, there’s a level of transparency that is required. Marketers have a clearer understanding of the audience they are reaching and the contextual environment in which their brand is being displayed. This transparency contributes to a safe, compliant, and accurate brand experience. This transparency extends to targeting and reporting, ensuring that your brand’s messages reach the intended audience in the intended manner.
In contrast, when the details of platform usage are hard to discern, it can lead to a misallocation of marketing resources and diminished results. It is important for marketers to seek clarity and precision in reporting to ensure that their brand’s message is not only seen, but seen by the right audience, in the right context, and with the right frequency.
Veradigm Digital Health Media
Veradigm Digital Health Media offers a large, media-accessible healthcare provider footprint via the Veradigm Network of EHRs. As an EHR owner, Veradigm’s first clients are healthcare providers. Our relationship with our HCP base ensures a quality experience and environment for your brand’s message.
At Veradigm, we can help you optimize access to the Veradigm Network through first party, patient-centric provider targeting in a channel healthcare providers use every day – their EHR.*
* The Practice Fusion EHR displays advertisements in an iframe window that is separate and distinguishable from the clinical and practice management workflow within the EHR. No biopharma or device advertisements appear during the prescribing workflow consistent with applicable law.
