For years agencies have behaved as though identifying Key Opinion Leaders (“KOLs”) was a one-size-fits-all process. I’m not sure if that was ever true, but it certainly isn’t in a post-pandemic digital world. The process of identifying the right influencers should be as customized as your business needs. Would you look to the same doctors who work in medical education to advocate for market access and pricing? Or to be your advocates in an online campaign? Not likely.
The first step in identifying the right influencers (and note that I am shying away from calling them KOLs – the reason for which will become apparent) is to be very clear about your business objectives. Are you looking to identify advisors or speakers? To launch a new product or enter a new market? To optimize your commercial organization or prioritize marketing initiatives? To facilitate connections with patients and advocacy organizations? Starting with the outcomes can help you to find the RIGHT people for the job.
Once we’ve been crystal clear about the strategic objectives, then we need to go a little deeper on the doctors we’re looking for by asking 3 simple questions:
What are they influential about? This is their Subject Matter Expertise, and can be very, very detailed. Their field of expertise might include:
- Therapeutic areas
- Procedures/treatments
- Care delivery mechanisms (e.g., cross-functional surgical teams)
- Policy (e.g., access to care; patient safety)
- Economics/Reimbursement/Market Access
- Any combination of the above
What form does their influence take? This is their Functional Expertise, or the means by which their influence is exhibited. For example:
- Research & publication leadership
- Successful at enrolling for & completing trials
- Pushing scientific boundaries
- Participation/leadership in writing treatment guidelines
- Treating high volumes of patients
- Contributing visible thought leadership (e.g., mainstream/online media)
- Any combination of the above
Who are they influencing? This is their Audience Relevance – perhaps the most important and overlooked question today. Some audiences you want physicians to target might include:
- “People Like Them”
- Academics/Researchers
- Treating/Community physicians
- Hospital/Health system leaders
- Policymakers/Advisors
- Patients/Advocacy organizations
- Scientific media
- Mainstream media
- Healthcare Industry
- Specific markets/areas of geographic focus
- Any combination of the above
This might be as simple as picking one example from each category – but it doesn’t have to be (and almost never is in “real life”). We may want to look at several different types of influencers, and the overlaps between them.
As you can see, some of the people we identify through this process may be KOLs in the ways you traditionally think about them – that is, they publish relevant articles in good journals, they run clinical trials, they speak at conferences. But it might be that the right influencer for your use case is an online influencer. Or a policy influencer. They may not be a doctor at all, but a researcher, another type of clinician (e.g., nurse, PA, infection control specialist, etc.). That’s why “Influence to Purpose” is so important. It helps you to identify and segment the people who can influence the right behavior – among the right audience – on the right topic(s) – to meet YOUR business objectives.
To learn more about HealthQuant’s unique methodology and how to make it work for you, see our solutions page, or contact us here or via email at info@healthquant.com. Follow HealthQuant on Twitter at @HealthQuant
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