How Pharmaceutical Company Market Can Their New Products

Pharmaceutical companies are companies that produce, import or market a drug or medical equipment. That can be an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), a medicine or any medical equipment. Before any company will venture into it, they carry out many analysis. They find out about other products in the market, market share, profitability, etc.

To source for the above information is not easy. That is why they normally pay other companies who already did those analysis. The pharmaceutical company now uses those data to decide whether to venture into production or marketing or what they may need to tweak to attract sales. That is, they use it to plan marketing strategy. Any company that fails to put this into consideration may not survive.
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For a pharmaceutical company to succeed, their product must be effective or of quality. Without this, any other marketing strategy will fail. The marketing approach for a company producing API is different from that of a finished product. This post will focus on marketing a finished product, medicine.

Steps To Market A Product

Marketing Strategy

Siting Factory

The first thing a company consider is the target market. For a start, you can't target the whole world. From knowing your target audience it is now time to decide where to site the factory.

The major constraint in siting a factory is production and importation cost. If the target audience is across several countries, two things come to mind. They are the tax and ease of doing business in the country and the cost of exportation to other countries. For example, most companies prefer to site their companies in Ghana and import the product into Nigeria. The reason they gave is that the cost of production is less in Ghana and high in Nigeria. And the import duty value is not that high to cover for the cost of production in Nigeria. That is even though Nigeria is their main market.

Team

The next step after production and maybe importation is to employ and train competent hands to handle the various aspects of marketing. There are three sets of people who can successfully run a marketing campaign. They are;

1. Product Management Team (PMT)

They are at the top of the campaign team. They have a greater impact in the success story of the products. They are made up off season marketers with years of experience or highly skill in the field. They are not all pharmacist. In it you will find pharmacist, medical doctors, accountants, market analyst, lawyers, internet experts, etc.

They make plans and strategy to get medical doctors and pharmacists attention to the product. They are responsible for branding. They organise medical conference for healthcare personnel or better still how to meet them at their various annual conferences like the pharmaceutical society of Nigeria (PSN) yearly meeting. During such gatherings, they detail the benefits of the products to those in attendance. However, they have to pay to get such an opportunity to speak with such a large gathering of season learned professionals.

They formulate the distribution of duties to the other teams. They strategies on how well to advertise their products to their target audience.

Plans

This team carries more responsibility. A marketing approach that favoured a company in the past may not today. With this in mind, they should sit down and plan well to avoid unnecessary expenses.

There are laws guiding pharmaceutical companies around the world. It is an offense to break any which can affect the product. Any plan at all must put that into consideration.

Medical Conference Or Annual Gathering

If the product is an over the counter drug (OTC), there are less stringent laws unlike prescription only (POM) or controlled drugs (CD). For POM, the best way to increase sales is to target community pharmacist and medical doctors. Using medical conference or professional annual gathering will work well. In such gathering, the product is detailed to all in attendance.

Social Media And Website

Another approach that has work overtime is using social media. Most medical doctors and pharmacists are found in social media. They use these sites to reach out to their customers. They are also on the lookout for newer better alternative means of treatment. Creating a strong social media presence can push the product into their minds without knowing.

A simple way to do it is by having a page or group or anything that can grow people on social media. Regularly update it with health tips as well as the benefits of such products. Add up health care professional and contact them.

That is not all. Social media alone may not do the trick. To show your products in search engine like Google, it is best to create a website. For companies doing importation of product, they may think there is no need for that of the home companies already have one. There is still a need for an indigenous website. The parent company website may contain some products you are not importing. The indigenous website should focus on only the product you are importing and the content should be written with your target audience of which the parent company did not out into account.

Advertisement

OTC medication can be advertised on the internet, radio stations, television, print media, etc in many countries. If the target audience are medical doctor and pharmacist, health journals kills it. If it is the general public, the use of national television or radio station does the trick. Pick on the one that is affordable that can get to your target audience. Produce a simple and captivating graphic. Always sublet some of these services to professionals. The messages on such advertorial should specify the problem in layman's language and not in some ambiguous terms that only few will understand. Use questions to draw out the attention of the viewer. That will make the person starts to reason about the problem. Finally proffer a solution with the product. For example;

For those of you suffering from insomniaWorry no moreUse my product

Will not get much attention. Instead use the phrase below

Do you have difficulty falling asleep at nightAre you lacking a good night's restWorry no moreThis product does much moreView this for a solution (link)

Each advert should always contain a call to action usually in the form of a link to the companies website or social media page. And that is where a social media presence or website comes in. A good company first marketing drive is to create a social media presence and a website. Both should contain research articles and valuable content of the products. Any person visiting the page or website should find every information needed. And such a website should be well built and optimize for search engine (SEO). That way, the product shows up whenever someone go to any search engine to make a query of the product. Navigation of the website should be easy too.

Logo

Who thought of opening a company without a logo. As simple as a logo design is, it speaks volumes. It is the first step to branding. The logo can be imprinted into gifts given to medical doctors and pharmacists during campaign. Some of the places the logo can be added to include the website, social media handles, gifts such as pens, etc.

Grants To Health Advocacy Organisation

Very beautiful point I must say. Just imagine an organization endorsing your products. They will use it at their health outreach and always tell people who the sponsors are and what product they sell. The word will go wild.

Gift

Design small gift to give to sales team, medical doctor and pharmacist. The two most common ones are pen and jotter. Jotter is better because it is wide enough to include graphics. Some companies even add some few details of their products in some pages. Another type of gift that works is sponsoring health professionals on health course within or outside the country. To me this is too much to bear for a new company.

Free Samples

Who no like free thing. But the truth is that nothing is free even in Freetown is true here. Give medical doctor and pharmacist free sample. Some will give it to their customers to try it out for them to trust the product. However, what most pharmacists and medical doctors do is that they sell it to customers and pocket the money. In both, the aim is achieved; to get the patient to try out the product. They may come back someday for it again. And guess what? The money for the free sample will always be paid for in the paid ones.

Influencers

This is perhaps the best method to get to so many people. Influencers are popular people whose opinions hold water in the eyes of many. People respect and listen to them. They are mostly found on social media. Lookout for influencers in the country. Things to consider before choosing an influencers is the product and the audience. If the target audience are diabetes patient, you can use an influencers that is known diabetes. Simply taking a picture when swallowing the drug or even a picture with the product at the background can speak volume. It is not a must to make a post about it or even talk about it.

Also, you can use medical personnel that is an influencer. They can simply endorse the product and see how sales increase. A good example is using popular pharmacists that are well known in the country by both pharmacist, pharmacy students and the government. However, none of these marketing strategy comes cheap.

Visual Aids

We are moved by what we see and hear most times. An appealing video and graphic images about the product is very important. Go to YouTube and see videos of how to use some of the popular inhalers we have today. Look at the video and image quality. These videos and images can be used in advertisements or displayed to medical doctor and pharmacist by sales representative at a medical conference or at their office using mobile phone, laptop or pad. Upload them to the company's website, social media page and if possible YouTube. Design leaflets with premium looks. Distribute these to your target audience.

Messaging App

You can get the contact (phone number or email) of medical doctors and pharmacists but will be useless to you if you don't know what to do with it. These contacts can be added to special messaging apps. These apps are designed to send update information to the contacts inside using data or credit. These timely reminders go along way in increasing awareness of the product to the recipient. A very good example of messaging app is a chatbox. Chatbox are designed to reply to messages in a coordinated manner answering questions using artificial intelligence (AI). The person asking the question may not know they are chatting with a machine because the machine has been programme. However, it is not yet 100% effective.
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2. Sales And Marketing Team (SMT)

They are more directly involved with medical practitioner and even customers. They meet with medical doctors and pharmacists to detail the product. They move from place to place convincing potential buyers and prescribers.

They carry out most of the marketing strategy of PMT. Some include speaking at seminars, distribution of gift items to pharmacist and medical doctor, sending feedback to PMT on the product, etc.

Plan

They like to follow up on the job of the PMT. They build a relationship with customers. It has been observed that community pharmacists and medical doctors prescribe a product of a sales representative that they know and trust.

3. Distribution Channel

They supply the product to patient and hospital.

Plan

Prompt supply or required product is very vital. They should learn on how to transport the product with damaging the product pack or the product itself. Return all product not supplier back to the warehouse.

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