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Who is the Marketer of the Future?
Preparing for Biopharma Marketing in 2020 and Beyond
Our industry operates in a constantly
evolving landscape yet many companies persist with skills/competency surveys of
their people and processes which define their capability level in terms of the
last 12 months to today. This provides a
healthy base-line, but does little to prepare for the future. Looking retrospectively over the past 12
months performance means the data is already out of date. Companies should be establishing a future
marketing framework of role profiles, skills and competencies to address future
talent gaps, not past performance. This
can then drive internal professional development, training needs and
recruitment strategies, helping to identify where companies need to invest in
order to prepare ahead and ensure marketing teams are fit for purpose in the
future.
So, what are the big issues that
marketers need to address for the future?
1) Broaden your scope of thinking beyond today’s Insights to the
future’s Foresights
Firstly Pharma needs to take a
step back. Clearly, it is essential to
invest in research or competitive intelligence to assess the current
landscape. Whilst useful and necessary,
just looking in the rear view mirror at where you have been doesn’t get you
very far at looking into the future.
Some companies use a corporate
PEST analysis but don’t link it to anything, so it becomes purely a ‘tick-box’
exercise. Applying SCEPTIC in
combination with your patient journey, patient flow or treatment pathway allows
you to gather the foresight needed:
S – What are the SOCIAL trends
and counter-trends that are beginning and will affect your market? eg
individuals and businesses proactively joining together to pursue the practice
of ‘Betterness’, a new openness and social responsibility that drives positive
impact for the greater good of all. Will
the pharmaceutical industry capitalise on something like this?
C – How are CUSTOMERS evolving?
We have already seen the significant shift where prescribers have less
authority and payers much more impact – now it is time to explore the patient
voice, their carers and other social influencers who will also carry enormous
power in the future.
E – What ECONOMIC changes impact
the market? We all know that there is an aging population globally, but we have
to investigate and understand the drivers of innovation and reform that will
make healthcare spending more efficient. What are the implications for your
brand?
P – What is happening in POLITICS
that could change the landscape? Are we going to be constantly locked in the
ideology battles of Europe with austerity and cost savings versus driving
growth and investment? And how will this play out in your market?
T – What role will TECHNOLOGY
have? The changing landscape of the
digital environment – not just in terms of tracking but mobile technology – where
patients now have the ability to analyse their own healthcare metrics. Think of how the launch of Smart Watches will
affect the future, where software will allow people to volunteer to join
medical research studies.
I – What is happening INTERNALLY
and beyond your control in your own organization? How can you plan for it?
C –Which COMPETITORS are changing
the game in the future? We will need to understand
new non-traditional Pharma companies entering the biosimilar space who bring a
completely new way of thinking. Furthermore, we must understand the business
principles of the small, start-up Biotech companies and the innovation they
will bring to the market. What shake-up to the market will this bring?
2. Understand which patient populations are most meaningful to payers
Think about payers, their
financial considerations and their needs.
Marketing can no longer default to other functions such as ‘Managed
Care’, ‘HEOR’ or ‘Market Access’ to deal with payers.
The reality is that not all drugs
can be covered within constrained budgets and payers have to choose between
therapies and patient populations. Payers
already have the future thoroughly mapped out, know what is coming up on the
horizon and have made assumptions about where your brand fits within their
system. Although you may think your
brand is the best and most effective treatment option, you need to ensure that
you are aligned with payers. It is
essential that meaningful discussions are held very early to ensure that your
drugs fit into their future budget plans.
Discover what is of value to them.
What are their pressure points and where are they likely to be able to
cover the patient populations we are talking about - demonstrating how your
drug fits with clearly defined, identified patient populations or segments.
3. Be able to move away from a one size fits all global or national
marketing approach towards more localized segments and sub groups of customers
Intellectually, marketers
recognise that all customers are not the same, but often they don’t act on it
and create ‘one-size fits all’ marketing solutions.
The future requires a deeper
understanding of customer segmentation, beyond just behaviour, to fit with the
complex and diverse needs of different segments. Identify those customers who are
trending towards or away from you and link marketing solutions that truly
resonate with them. It is no longer good enough for companies to segment the
market in the way they have traditionally done (e.g. high, medium, low
prescribers OR early adopters, fast followers, laggards etc). Companies will need to segment by patient
population in line with payer expectations i.e. companies need to view the
disease in the way the payer views the disease (who they can or cannot justify
funding for).
4. Understand how to gain traction and become a leading voice among
multiple channels of communication
We need to catch up with the pace
at which information is now expected. Outside the constraints of our industry,
other people can write what they want about our brands, so how are we going to
drag ourselves forward and get involved in the multiple communication channels
available to us? It is not about
digital, it is about being ever present! It is not simply about digital
promotion, it is about the different ways of communication people have. How will you plan for and work with the
constant presence of social media? Look at your smart phone now - you probably
have 100+ apps that allow you to connect with a range of people; friends,
people you know, people you don’t know and all in an immediate way – so do your
customers.
Our industry works totally differently
to these new ways of communication.
Traditionally, we pursue the time consuming method of getting our data
written up, internally approved and then published and/or presented via the
usual peer review process. In the past getting 1-5 articles a year published
and obtaining good congress coverage in Europe and USA was considered successful. However, with the immediacy and pervasiveness
of social media, we now MUST have 100-200 articles, statements and opinions
ready to go every month in a variety of different lengths and formats. From 140 words via Twitter to blogs, online
features, print articles and manuscripts.
It is therefore essential for us
to have resources and people dedicated to developing content constantly and who
are able to think ahead of the game. We
need to have the capacity internally to approve and get the information out –
otherwise bloggers and social media opinion leaders will control the
information. They are a new breed of non-medical
KOLs we need to interact with – those with thousands of followers whose opinion
is listened to, quoted and acted upon. This represents a substantial change in
the current mind-set but equally, an exciting opportunity to engage with the
voice of the customer.
So, who will be the successful Biopharma
marketers of the future? Perhaps those who:
· Think towards the future, applying the
foresight of how the future changes insights of today
· Segment the market by patient population in
line with payer expectations and financial viability
· Prepare to act at a much faster pace and are willing
to engage with non-medical KOLs
· Shift from a ‘one-size fits all’ marketing
approach towards a more segmented market beyond prescribing behaviour.
About the author
Russell is Managing Consultant, Brand and Portfolio
Services. He can be contacted at rpowter@cellohealth.com
Side bar
For the marketers of today, we
need to remember:
Every marketer in our industry
today was a “marketer of the future” 1 or 5 or even 10 years ago.
The marketer of the future will
have the same core tool kit as those of the past. The challenge will be to
apply those tools to make sense of more complex customer and competitive
environments.
As a rookie marketer in the
early 90’s I had my sales audit books, limited market research and a
traditional marketing mix to juggle and implement. Today/tomorrow I believe that the skills and
instincts required of the marketer of the future will not be any different,
but, there will be much more information to digest alongside a vastly more
complex compliance and marketing mix.
Isaac Batley, Joint Founder and CEO,
iS Health Group (a
Cello Health business)