Pharma 20/20: Marketing the Future

Not long ago, PriceWaterhouseCoopers posed the question: Which path will you take?

According to PWC, by 2020 the current role of the pharma industry’s sales and marketing workforce will be replaced by a new model as the industry shifts from a mass-market to a target-market approach to increase revenue. They issued a report that highlights some fundamental dynamics that are reshaping the pharma marketplace:

• Chronic disease is soaring
• Healthcare policy makers and payers are increasingly mandating what doctors can prescribe
• Pay-for-performance is on the rise
• The boundaries between different forms of healthcare are blurring
• The markets of the developing world, where demand for medicines is likely to grow most rapidly over the next 13 years, are highly varied
• Governments are beginning to focus on prevention rather than treatment
• Regulators are becoming more risk-averse

PWC believes that, to be successful, companies will need to stop the aggressive marketing focusing only on the product of the current model and:

• Recognize the interdependence of the payer, provider, and pharmaceutical value chains
• Invest in developing medicines the market wants to buy
• Adopt a more flexible approach to pricing
• Develop plans for marketing and selling specialist therapies
• Manage multi-country launches and live licensing
• Form a web of alliances to offer supporting services
• Create cultures that are suitable for marketing specialist healthcare packages
• Develop marketing and sales functions that are fit for the future and a knowledge-based commercial organization

To download the full report, click here.

Trigger Marketing: Is It for You?

An emerging trend in pharma marketing is the use of market, clinical, or sales triggers to identify the most opportunistic moment to contact a target prescriber. If you’re not using your data to leverage this type of program, you may be missing opportunities to grow your brand. 

Lately we’ve been seeing success with trigger marketing programs where we leverage patient-level data to coordinate non-personal communications and call plan activities. For one oncology brand, we track prescribing behaviors and then align messaging with ideal times to communicate with targeted physicians, ensuring the brand remains top-of-mind and is considered at appropriate patient treatment milestones. We also arm the sales force with actionable reports, empowering them to focus their conversations and positively influence prescribing patterns. It’s a powerful one-two punch—and it’s working. 

Other examples of trigger marketing strategies include:

• Sales Force Triggers – When reps fall below call goal, we can complement their efforts with a non-personal message based on past behaviors to individual prescribers. Vacancy programs are also examples of trigger marketing.
  
• Clinical Triggers – We can track observable titration of a competitor’s brand, indicating a need for a new drug therapy, or we can monitor for drugs often used concomitantly with your brand, which may indicate that your brand is under consideration for patient therapy.
  
• Market-Related Triggers – During the launch of a competitor, we can monitor switching behavior and respond immediately to prevent continuation, or we can implement proactive touch points when a competitor receives a black box warning and opportunity exists to gain market share. Managed care contract changes may prompt pull-through messaging customized to the prescriber based on how many of their patients are impacted by the care plan.
  

Could trigger marketing be right for your brand? Post a comment here to let me know your thoughts on this subject, or e-mail me at awestmeyer@rmarketing.com to request a case study about the oncology brand I mentioned above. 

Turbulent Times

One of my favorite people has authored a whitepaper on how to succeed in turbulent times. He’s someone who has been in sales during two different recessions and has made keen observations on what works. 

1) Feast or famine is a result of where you focus – have a mentality of abundance, not one of scarcity. It’s all a state of mind.

2) Figure out how to take advantage of the recession – the economy will weed out competitors and there is still demand, so now’s the time to acquire new customers. Adversity is the breeding ground for opportunity, but you have to slow down enough to notice it.

3) Know your leading indicators – what key measurements, if taken in real time, will tell you the direction you’re headed?

4) Care enough to communicate more – now is not the time to cut travel expenses. See your people more often, not less!

5) Find out what you are doing right and do more of it – success is all about finding the right fit for you and your business.

6) Focus on solidifying relationships – sales is about focusing on effectiveness, not efficiency. Genuine relationships are the only way to grow and thrive.

7) Quit focusing on products and services and instead build value. There are three levels of value: a) What your product does; b) The experience your product creates; and c) The transformation your product produces.

8) Control the things you can control. To be in business, you have to transfer an idea. To transfer an idea, you must sell your idea, and selling is nothing more than a transfer of confidence and enthusiasm. Control the things you can, making your confidence the most important thing to control.

Click here to read the complete whitepaper.

Author: Jim Lobaito, Owner and President of the Performance Group