A B2B Pharma Market Research Guide To Ensure Your Marketing Campaigns Can Succeed
A basic guide for your methodical pharma market research tasks (essential to the success of your marketing campaigns).
Market research. The concept sends shivers down the spines of most pharma marketers as it is generally considered laborious, even monotonous.
It’s the first step in any marketing campaign or before a new pharma product is launched. A step that must be completed to ensure the success of the future marketing activity, begin a review of the current situation, and from a marketing perspective, an examination of the current (or previous) marketing plan and activities.
Subscribe for marketing insights via email
The process also involves gathering, recording and analysing information about customers, competitors and markets in a systematic way. So, if the marketing plan/activity involves launching new products, repositioning an offer within a market or to refine a marketing plan, this will always be the first strategic step. An important one at that as it predetermines everything that follows.
In healthcare or big pharma, market research will look significantly different to that within the B2B pharma supply chain. The former will relate to drugs prescribed by doctors or medical devices or OTC products from chemists where the latter will involve the various manufacturing methods and implications of the above that is also related to research, packaging and distribution, which will be the primary focus of this post.
Read on for a basic guide on the suggested market research methods within pharma.
CONDUCT RESEARCH EARLY IN THE DEVELOPMENT CYCLE
If you are researching the market for your pharma products and services, be sure to do so early in the development cycle. An article in PharmaVOICE states that doing this early helps organisations to shape a product’s positioning and message early in the process, which will also mean that that message is likely to resonate better with the market.
The article quotes the CEO of a market research company worth of repeating: “Everybody says they do market research early in the process. But what they’ve really done is a market sizing exercise, which should be done. What we’re talking about is market research that is brand-specific, therapeutically relevant, and designed to help the early design and development teams understand what doctors need. This enables a unique positioning for the brand when it comes to market.”
UNDERSTANDING THE LAY OF THE LAND
Fully understanding the marketplace, and what goes on within, is the critical first step within the research task. Getting an idea of market facts and events (such as sales data) and the factors that contribute to those facts (such as the causes for a growth/decline in sales) is the first port of call. You may wish to start with the governing authorities, competitors or customers, but either way, we need to understand what is going on from a sales/marketing perspective.
Next, is to find out the implications for the organisation, directors or stakeholders - you will likely uncover opportunities or threats here. Understanding the general lay of the land in this way can give you a general feel of the direction in which your marketing efforts (from a strategy and tactics perspective) will go.
CONDUCT A SWOT ANALYSIS
There is a reason that the SWOT analysis framework is still used in organisations around the world since it originally appeared in the 1960s, and that’s because it is extremely effective in what it looks to achieve within the research process from an internal and external perspective. A SWOT analysis, briefly, helps marketing managers or organisations identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. All four areas are considered highly important during the planning phase.
Strengths relate to characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others, where on the flip side, weaknesses relate to the characteristics of the business that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others. Opportunities will identify the elements in the environment that the business or project could exploit to its advantage with the threats identifying the elements in the external environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.
This process will generally look at the clients and their needs (the physicians, patients, pharmacists or the organisations), competitors (generics, biotech etc.), intermediaries, as well as the regulatory bodies (EMA, FDA etc.).
DETERMINE THE SUCCESS OF PAST CAMPAIGNS
Should we embark on a new marketing campaign - be via traditional marketing methods or digital methods - for a new client, we always ask questions and request access to data on past/current campaigns. We do this to determine the specific strategy or tactics for future campaigns. This sort of research gives us an idea about the route in which to take for these campaigns; should similar campaigns have failed in the past, we would be looking to freshen up the approach and introduce different (potentially more innovative) ideas.
MARKET/MARKETING INTELLIGENCE
I always feel that a market or marketing intelligence system can greatly help pharma marketers with their strategic decision-making. For example, we hold and manage a central repository of all of the major pharmaceutical publications - spanning across the sub-sectors - and all of the adverts featured within each publication. The reason we do this is to be able to inform our clients of competitor adverts within those publications. Other organisations, publications and pharma intermediaries will hold similar intelligence-based information which can inform your campaigns.
From a digital perspective, should you want to keep an eye on your clients' and competitors' website traffic volumes, referral sources and website "stickiness" you may want to invest in software such as SimilarWeb. Intelligence reconciles what pharma marketing managers what to have to inform them on an on-going basis and the specific data helps the overall market research task. The sources of the information might even sit internally, with your sales teams or with your subject matter experts within the lab.
Perhaps the tools and process you have already are enough, but it may be the case that you need to use these older - tried and tested - tools more creatively.
SURVEY THE INTERMEDIARIES
An industry as large as the pharma industry will bring with it a range of intermediaries across the whole supply chain. Most of the pharma organisations that we work with are in fact intermediaries (organisations who act as a link between other organisations). We, as a marketing agency, are also an intermediary just as our partners in the media are.
To help understand the pharma, and therefore, pharma marketing landscape, it’s important to engage with such intermediaries to (who also work or are aware of your clients) help you understand those clients and their preferences without having to ask them yourself. This is one of the most effective channels to help understand what drives your clients to be able to enhance your offering for them.
BUT SPEAK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS
Contrary to the last point, interviewing and surveying current customers and clients direct is a highly valuable market research option. You will get interesting responses to your questions and you can also look to gauge an understanding of their general behaviours towards the market and your organisation and its offering, as well as its motivations.
Provide a variety of ways for customers to share their comments. Offer several feedback channels to improve both the quantity and quality of the feedback from this particular research method. Make feedback an integral part of the business/sales or marketing operation (with KPIs) so that it is clear that the management team has given the programme its full backing. Feedback can make a strong contribution to the development and evaluation of new initiatives, and is integral for the market research process.
ALWAYS BE BENCHMARKING
I also am a fan of benchmarking to gauge all kinds of aspects related to campaigns, such as on processes, tactics and for the wider organisation. You may not feel that assessing your competitor’s organisational headcount or resource allocation, or even marketing tactics and or CRM choice or traditional/digital media is important, but I can assure you this sort of information is gold.
We operate within a competitive landscape and even the slightest bit of information may give you the upper hand so that you can be one step ahead of your competitor’s moves. And there’s nothing unethical about accessing publicly accessible data on those competitors, just how you decide to use it. Benchmarking, as a research tool, can give you an overview of where you sit against your competitors and where you need to improve.
Other elements to benchmark: sales team size, historic sales numbers, revenue, R&D/clinical studies, training and commercial excellence. Whatever you feel can help you make informed decisions, benchmark them.
HIRE A SPECIALIST MARKET RESEARCHER IN-HOUSE
If you are a pharma marketer reading this and thinking that you have no time to conduct the tasks from the guide above, then you should be looking to hire an internal member within the organisation. Such a specialist can help guide market research so that it is faster, less expensive and provides richer customer insights.
Should this be out of scope for your organisation, look to organise a group of people internally that can analyse and make decisions about marketing investments. Should you be the person leading the market research, identify a minimal standard for excellence to ensure the information you are gathering is up-to-date and useful for future decision-marking.
QUALITATIVE OVER QUANTITATIVE
We are fast becoming a generation of marketing professionals obsessed with big data. Qualitative data as such is highly useful once the vast amounts of data has been analysed, interpreted and used to make sound marketing management decisions. But the difficulty is to make sense of that raw data yourself to make marketing decisions.
Should you have your work cut out and need to gather the data yourself, look at qualitative primary research methods such as focus groups, surveys or interviews and ensure that more than one person is in charge of interpreting the results of research to ensure that personal bias and individual personalities do not skew the results. Away from the B2B space, for example, conduct physician satisfaction surveys as well as store/hospital and patient surveys.
Ron Brand from IMS Health, however, provides a gentle warning: “The key is integrating data from various sources to gain a big-picture perspective.”
SHARE ALL EXISTING INFORMATION
If you work for a large pharma organisation, it is likely that some of the information you are looking for has already been acquired by someone past or present in your organisation. Or, that person has data in their possession that can significantly help the market research process. This is why the distribution and sharing of market research is hugely important - especially within the complex pharma industry where information as such is available is in abundance.
MARKET RESEARCH: A METHODICAL PROCESS
Methodical market research can identify ways to lower costs and improve revenues because it informs future activities and campaigns. That methodical process involves (1) Problem and research objective definition, (2) Research planning, (3) Data collection, (4) Data analysis, (5) Data interpretation and finally, (6) Reporting of findings.
This process will achieve a number of insights to drive your marketing, such as identify a real customer need, determine the competitive market landscape as well as address compliance regulatory factors that could affect your marketing campaigns. As a precaution, be sure you understand the environment you operate within (markets to assess) the best research methods to adopt that will provide the most useful data and build an environment that can handle and interpret the data you collect.
So whether you are looking to create a new marketing plan or conduct pre-launch studies or researching into price, or even looking to understand patient, physician and pharmacist habits, ensure your market research plan is up to scratch. Use this guide as an overview of the kinds of market research you can conduct - should either of the points be relevant to you, dive deeper.
