What is the Importance of Pharmaceutical Marketing?

For many years, pharma has accomplished great and has improved discernment among patients’ lives.

To achieve success in Pharma requires empathy towards a patient, product messaging, distribution of the product through mediators and sales, pricing and the brand itself. Pharma Company’s marketing department always worked towards these. 

From this, you can estimate the importance of pharmaceutical marketing.

In the pharmaceutical industry, more market share is seldom achieved without marketing.

The marketer’s efforts not only provide more sales but establishes a reputation in the market, enables penetration into more stores and new geographies, and also helps in the retention of existing customers. And a successful pharma marketer does it gracefully.

To achieve all these requires an effective marketing plan and not just an idle plan. 

SIGNIFICANCE OF PHARMA MARKETING 

Although there are many regulations, complex payment cycles and involvement of multiple decision-makers, pharmaceutical marketers never fail to impress with innovations.  

In some countries, pharmaceutical Marketing is also known as Medico-Marketing. 

It starts with the identification of the customer need or demand then goes on until patients’ or doctors’ tell the product benefits to more consumers or customers. It does not stop with the fulfillment of the customers’ needs or demands. 

Doctors, pharmacists and other health care providers (HCPs) on a frequent basis see the promotion of pharmaceutical products through different medico-marketing activities.

– SEO and Paid Internet Marketing

– 1: 1 Promotion

– Provide free samples of the product

– E-mailers

– Sponsoring Medical Education Courses 

– Give out coupons and discounts via pharmacies

– Direct-to-Consumer Marketing 

As the patient can only access the prescribed drugs through doctors, surgeons and other health care providers (HCPs), pharmaceutical marketers always try to convince them by suggesting the best possible drug for the welfare of patients through different mediums.

What pharma marketers do?

1. PHARMA MARKET RESEARCH

Pharma marketing incorporates frequent analysis of the market, arranging and execution of strategies to attract prospects that constantly accomplish company goals.

As consumer inclinations change so do the partnerships, acquisitions, consolidations and outsourcing within the production chain. 

H/she is involved in pharmaceutical market research which is a tedious and complex process.

In pharma market research, marketers have to define capacity, need, demand and supply and the motivation of the specific set of customers require effective methodologies, strategy and budget.

It consists of problem identification and research objective, research plan, data collection and analysis, interpretation of data and research findings.

In case as a pharma marketer you are planning to start your pharma market research take three components into consideration: demand, price and product offer. You will succeed in it.

2. PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE (PLC) MANAGEMENT

Pharmaceutical Marketing has the capacity to improve drug or device position that drives growth. 

Pharmaceutical products go through 3 different stages of the life cycle. Every stage requires different plans and strategies at different intervals if growth and profits are to be efficiently figured out. Pharma marketers identify these stages for successful pharmaceutical marketing management.

Introduction is the phase of slow growth, product acceptance by the audience is in doubt or trial stage. Profits are often negligible due to expenses. In this phase, the promotion revolves around different factors such as product, price and distribution factors. During the growth stage, improvements in profit are observed. Up-gradation of product in the form of new features, development of new market segments, selective demand stimulation; and price changes takes place. In the next phase, which is maturity, there is competition to retain or expand the company’s market share; each marketer tries to develop effective pharma product promotion. You may like to learn about creating brand promotion for your help.

After the growth phase, there is a decline phase, which may be steep. It does not mean that profits will move away as there are chances the competitor may have removed by this stage.

3. MAINTAINS PRODUCT POSITIONING

Like any other product-based company marketer, pharma marketers also make significant efforts to differentiate a lifesciences marketing product, brand or service in the market. H/she does all this to get the desired outcome which are more sales, product recall, etc. 

Positioning shows what the product purpose is and how the customers should assess it and the process sometimes depends on competition, market segment, category, product quality or price.

4. PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCT PRICING 

In India mainly there are 3 product pricing strategies in pharmaceutical marketing 

Marginal-cost pricing

In this pricing strategy the company uses its resources for extra production where profit on sales remains equivalent but chances of extra margin may increase. 

Penetration strategy

At high sales volume, this technique is beneficial and supportive in the development and maturity period of the product life cycle (PLC). Here, the customer base is exceptionally high and the benefit is low or marginal.

Skimming Strategy

This strategy works at the initial stage of the product and helps to recover the cost development of the product.

Pharmaceutical marketers have to be actively involved in all these pricing strategies. So that investment made on making products or devices can be justified.

Also, there are few factors that affect the product pricing from time to time 

Factors which affect the pharmaceutical product pricing are:

· Competitor

· Product feature

· Legal issues

· Regulatory issues

· Company objectives

· Costs

· Channel Distribution

· Pricing Objective

· Demand fluctuation

So pharmaceutical marketers have to be updated with socio-economic environment conditions and take marketing measures accordingly.

5. PHARMA MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS 

 Pharmaceutical marketing involves the actions to create a demand for goods and sales promotion through the Marcom plan. And pharmaceutical marketers use the elements of marketing mix which are 7Ps (Product, Place, Price, Promotion, Physical, People and Process) to meet and exceed the expectations of customers. They consolidate to form the components of a marketing division that need to audit to promote the company effectively.

This would involve the entirety of the customer-facing pharmaceutical marketing tactics that take this product to market and includes advertising, Public Relations, branding, trade channels and other avenues of customer experiences. 

6. Works with Data and Create Reports

Pharmaceutical marketing departments have access to data from marketing efforts, from constantly checking the market just as the data assembled by other departments such as sales, business advancement or customer support. 

Some of the sources of data are:

• Leads from events, seminars, conferences etc. 
• Internet marketing – blogs, webinars, paid campaigns on social media platforms, etc.
• Chatbot on website and microsite

All of which gives important insights to develop an effective marketing campaign in future. Most of this interaction will take a gander at your own showcasing measurements, for example, site traffic, changes and number of leads/deals created yet to have the option to completely comprehend the information you have you should dissect it in various manners. 

Pharma marketers have to create a report from all of this and present it to the management in the most effective way. So, all questions regarding marketing work can be easily answered.

Analysis of data plays a significant role in the management of lifesciences marketing plans. 

7. MARKETING PLAN CONTROL 

The crucial part of pharmaceutical marketing is the control of the plan. Control alludes to the insightful work completed on an everyday and month-by-month premise. It gives an outline of what has not worked so that it can be stopped and what has worked so that such marketing initiatives can be extended. 

Control of marketing incorporates the assessment of the execution of marketing strategies.

The essential boundaries of control are sales, overall revenues and expenses, consumer reaction on new drugs and devices. It allows the organization to decide the adequacy of marketing opportunities.

8. COLLABORATES WITH DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS

Moreover, the marketing person coordinates with the Research and Development and Quality capacities to comprehend the item and any of the subtleties of its utilization. 

Pharmaceutical Marketers work together with the Production and Distribution capacities for arranging item amounts and to guarantee ideal item accessibility in the business sectors. 

Also, Marketers have to inform finance department people with brand-related cost data.

Additionally, the Marketing team works with the Legal and Regulatory team since they offer direction on brand correspondences, which should be consistent with rules and guidelines.

Pharmaceutical marketing never works in silos. As many decision-makers are involved in the manufacturing and selling of pharma products, pharma marketers have to coordinate with all the departments for achieving the common business objective.

A drug-maker company does not always sell directly to the consumer – the product goes through the pharmacy, hospital, retail stores or other mediators.  

And when it comes to liaison with the sales team, pharmaceutical marketers have to provide a good amount of leads to the sales before the competition gets them.

Pharma Marketer has to perform traditional and digital marketing tactics to get leads for the sales team.

When a person as a marketer works in a pharmaceutical company, h/she also has to motivate the sales team and provide them with significant sales or marketing collateral. This helps the sales team to achieve more sales. 

Apart from all this, h/she writes blogs, thought leadership articles, manages and allocates a budget for achieving a maximum return of investment.

From this blog post, you now may have an idea of how dynamic is pharmaceutical marketing. 

How Marketing in Pharma Helps Consumers and Customers?

In the pharma field, sometimes advanced drugs provide patient benefits over existing medications and generic drugs provide gains to the patient at lower costs.

These medications work on the body and at exceptionally high dosages can be life-saving or perilous for a specific disease. 

The decision of medication and the strength of the drug such as 50-milligram or 100-milligram is decided by the doctors. We as typical citizens need more information to comprehend which drug is ideal for us. 

Sometimes patients or health-conscious people do self-medication which is not always good.

In India, to stay away from consultancy charges, patients attempt to purchase medications all alone and chemist or retail store owners sometimes make sale, give them drugs without any prescription. Absence of rigid guidelines regarding prescription permits this to occur. 

To stay away from such self drugs, the public authorities of the vast majority of the nations have guidelines for promoting Pharmaceutical products.

So pharma marketers have to not only enable pharma selling but also educate consumers and end-users by applying different strategies. 

There is always a need for information about breakthrough drugs from consumers and customers. They look out for alternative medicine to ease their pain or to get fully recovered.

And if as a marketer you are working in a drug-making company then it is your responsibility to educate involved parties through the best possible means. You can perform or manage your company’s marketing activities wherever your audience spends time. Educate your audience in a simple way.

If pharmaceutical marketers do their duties well, unwanted consequences of consuming prescribed or non-prescribed drugs can be avoided.

Once you empower your consumers or customers to become an informed decision-maker, you win their trust and which really helps in long-term growth.

Conclusion

From this blog post, you now may have an idea of how dynamic is pharmaceutical marketing. 

A Pharma Marketer is a jack of all trades. 

H/she has to be good with numbers, public dealing as h/she has to deal with agencies, admin, vendor, peers and senior management. 

By doing this, h/she excels in marketing.