News from UCG Marketing

Determining where to allocate your marketing dollars is in large part a function of determining which influence-points most heavily weigh on your consumer's purchase decision. So, to start your spending allocation process begin by determining if channel partners and retailers - and in the case of pharmaceutical companies, physicians- are pushing product into the hands of our consumers or, alternatively, if customers are pulling demand through the channel. Push or Pull?

Adept pharmaceutical marketing leaders are evaluating purchase decision challenges every day, asking, "Are physicians defining product options for patients, aware that they are now highly informed with internet research, or are patients the ones pulling prescription demand through my channel by asking physicians for specific symptom treatments? In either case, do physicians really care about or value the suggestions of patients? And if so, how do I best inform physicians about my compound's efficacy and differentiate from branded competitors, generics and OTCs?" As you can imagine, the answer impacts how you allocate your marketing and sales support dollars. Given that resources - not to mention your product's lifecycle - are limited, every dollar you allocate to your marketing mix is critical. Getting it right means market share. Getting it wrong can result in a very costly mistake. Push or Pull. Start with this simple evaluation.

Know how purchasing decisions regarding your products are made

To help determine points of influence during the product evaluation process and consumer procurement effort we define the consumer decision making process within a transaction map. Mapping your brand impressions to purchasing decisions allows you to identify key influence points and flags competing branding messages. Transaction maps are an effective tool allowing you to think about how to optimize your marketing mix by associating and focusing brand impact and marketing influence messages at critical junctures.

Think of the decision-making process a standard patient, your customer, goes through. Like any consumer, he or she either receives a message prompting need (symptom relief) or awareness (condition) or exhibits a symptom/condition that prompts medical advice or treatment. After doing a haphazard internet search to self-diagnose, he or she will visit a physician's office with their outstanding need nicely defined. Will they actually pull demand of your product through the physician, resulting in a script? Unless you are fortunate enough to be marketing a large scale retail or blockbuster drug we doubt it. , the consumer won't be pulling demand for your product.

Why? The research says it all: physicians may give lip service to the sanctity of the patient's input but, iin the end, the physician is making his or her own decision regarding prescriptions. A recent study by the Tufts Center revealed that physicians only rely on medical education (67%), peer insight (43%) and payer policies (37%) in making script decisions. dDirect information from pharmaceutical companies accounted for onlyabout 13% and patient input followed pharma company detailing.[1] So if such findings match the hypothesis, where would you spend your marketing dollars? Are you a large retail drug or mid market compound? Map it.

[1] Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development Outlook 2008