Recently, digital behavioral health companies have significantly shifted their focus from D2C to B2B.
However, when marketing these services, transitioning between audiences doesn't require a steep learning curve.
Talkspace (Nasdaq: TALK), a virtual behavioral health provider, is one provider that is prioritizing payer and enterprise relationships and doubling down on its B2B efforts.
“It's not really B2B or D2C, it's human-to-human, whether you're talking to someone who's paying out of pocket or someone who's using behavioral health benefits,” said Katelyn Watson, chief marketing officer at Talkspace, during a virtual sales and marketing summit for behavioral health businesses.
New York-based Talkspace offers teletherapy, medication management, and asynchronous messaging. The company has recently stepped up its youth-focused partnership strategy with New York City and California.
“When we talk to HR leaders, organization owners and CEOs, a lot of the things they care about happen to be the same things patients care about: quality of care, outcomes, stories. [it’s key to] Bringing it all together and delivering it to them in one cohesive campaign is exactly what we did,” she said.
Watson suggests that organizations have a marketing toolkit to ensure consistency in messaging, noting that “it drives efficiency and simplicity.”
Still, at the end of the day, what matters most is reaching patients where they are, which may or may not require a corporate partner.
“It's almost like marketers are doing themselves a disservice by creating such a gap between B2B and D2C,” Jenny Friedman, Ophelia's vice president of marketing, said during the webinar. “My view is that you just need to get the patient there. So in the addiction field, if you're in an emergency department (ED) dealing with an overdose, partner with the ED and get that kind of This is classic B2B. [the client] Doomscroll awaits on Sunday night…we want to be there too. The key is to think about how to make sure patients understand where and how they can receive care. And payer coverage is also pretty much the cornerstone of both. ”
Ophelia provides digital medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). We are licensed to provide care in 36 states and accept Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance.
While it’s important to keep the end user in mind throughout all marketing campaigns, payers are interested in specific data.
“I think it’s important to show how much our members are benefiting.” [the service]“…and show cost savings,” Friedman said. “A lot of payers want to know that cost savings are being realized. And for us, [that] It makes a lot of sense. If we have a really good product, patients will stay with us, less likely to end up in the ED, less likely to have other medical problems… then , the payer's money is saved. ”
Watson said Talkspace is well advanced in its payer relationships and currently covers more than 130 million lives. One of the supporting aspects of these relationships is having concrete data that shows the return on investment.
“As an example, if people are matched with their own therapist, the vast majority, roughly 90 percent or more, will stay with the same therapist,” Watson said. “And when you think about it, that's huge in terms of cost savings, because in the real world every time you change therapists, it costs a lot of money to find another therapist. So we First, there are a number of important data points that can lead to cost savings, but cost savings come from care and prevention outcomes.”
