12 Ways to Use HCP Online Market Research for a Drug Launch

One of the ways CREATION.co often works with our pharmaceutical clients is to provide insights to support their drug launch strategy either of a brand new drug or of an existing drug in a new indication.

The ability to listen to the views of healthcare professionals during this crucial time is extremely important. If a launch gets off to a slow start it is hard to recover. For most drug launches the trajectory is set in the first 6 months and brands who start work on their launch strategy early are more likely to have increased commercial success.

Monitoring HCP conversations helps you understand what their immediate needs and concerns are, and how they perceive your product in relation to comparatives or competitors. These valuable insights can help shape your pharma marketing strategy and, as the campaign progresses, you can track how your changes resonate with customers and feed this back into campaign planning.

Here are some of the ways to use HCP social media market research during this life-cycle stage:

1. Confirm drug positioning: Find out what is being said about you and your competitors and use these insights to decide the best approach to position your drug. Deep stakeholder insights can truly differentiate your messaging.
2. Understand the views of eHCPs: Hear what doctors are saying about your therapy area; what are their needs and concerns, and how can you address them in your messaging in order to add value and build your reputation.
3. Engage DOLs: Create a list of the key Digital Opinion Leaders in your therapy area who can support your objectives and plan how best to engage with them both on and/or offline.
4. Shape disease perception: how do HCPs perceive the burden of the disease and how can you increase disease awareness and help shape the market? 
5. Find your advocates: Discover which HCPs are advocates of your product and why; What has led them to be advocates and can you discover how to develop others into supporters?
6. Address concerns: Identify any concerns or questions that HCPs have regarding your product, or that of your competitors.
7. Discover digital behaviours: Find out which channels your different HCP role types are using to discuss your therapy area and create a digital strategy that will reach your target audience.
8. Learn from competitor launches: Understand how HCPs responded to the launch of your competitors to see if there are learnings you can use to support your launch. 
9. Track prescribing habits: Understand what is driving HCP and patients’ treatment choices.
10. Listen and course correct: Track your HCP conversations on a regular basis to know how your drug is being perceived. CREATION.co rapidly translates the insights we discover into actions to enable your brand team to course correct or adjust plans. With immediate access to data we can keep our finger on the pulse which is something traditional market research finds harder to do. 
11. Monitoring Adverse Events and Compliance: Monitor social media for mentions of adverse events or off-label use discussions. This can help identify potential safety concerns early and ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines.
12. Geographic Insights: Social media allows for global reach, making it possible to gather insights from HCPs in different regions or countries. This can provide a broader perspective on market dynamics and regional differences in healthcare practices.

When you are planning your launch strategy, the right market research and competitive insights can give you great outcomes.  Listening to HCP conversations on social media allows you to tap into a wealth of insights. You can listen to their organic conversations and hear what they really think.

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This article was originally “7 Ways to Use HCP Online Market Research for a Drug Launch”, written in 2015 by Katie Kennedy. It was updated to “12 Ways to Use HCP Online Market Research for a Drug Launch” in July 2024.