Scott Burkette

Podcasts leverage the power of what's new, and pharma marketers can use that as a weapon to communicate brand messaging and educate physicians who aren't responding to their sales forces, are skipping live meetings or are simply too busy to listen to in-person marketing messages.

Some forward-looking pharma marketers have already jumped on this trend, leveraging podcasts to reach increasingly elusive physicians who have little time for a conference, continuing medical education program, dinner meeting, or detail.

Medical-education partners can notify physicians when new eCME podcasts are available. These physicians and other healthcare professionals can quickly download the ones they are interested in, and listen to them while they are on the go.

To make the program effective and receive credit, physicians should be provided with a downloadable post-podcast test that they could submit via e-mail to the CME organization.

Online medical conferences Podcasts give time-challenged doctors a high-tech, easy way to participate in medical conferences, all from the comfort of their office or home computer. Indeed, the technology allows doctors to attend live medical roundtables, panel discussions, and conferences happening anywhere around the globe, by simply downloading content. And because podcasts can be archived for months, physicians and other healthcare professionals can experience previously aired sessions, in personal-library fashion, when it's most convenient for them.

In addition, physicians can be directed to secure sites to subscribe to a podcast to peruse remote promotional content. This would be for material that should not be widely distributed to a consumer audience. In other words, podcasting offers convenience and control over audience and distribution.

A Captive Audience

In order to educate physicians, marketers need to engage them first. If marketers can meet that challenge using new technology, they'll create a new avenue through which they can communicate brand messages to the professional marketplace.

Podcasts create a sense of personal attention because the RSS-based subscription model allows physicians to pick what content they want, when they want it, and how often they want it. They can really take control of the information distributed by the pharma company, which helps create a more captive audience for targeted physicians. In other words, podcasts are not just Web-based programs, but rather dynamic, interactive experiences complete with streaming audio and video. Healthcare professionals can come together for highly compelling programs that can be viewed anywhere. Moreover, podcasts can and should be customized to captivate and educate audiences with a genuine one-on-one learning experience.

This more personalized approach can help pharma marketers re-establish personal relationships that have gone the way of the in-office drug detail by pushing new content that's of interest to each physician. This is more effective than waiting for them to find a specific Web site, or other portal, and pulling the information from there.