23 March, 2010- As in other industries, marketing plan for advertising or promoting products is crucial to pharmaceutical industry too. However, the pharmaceutical marketing strategies (as well as advertising strategies) are different from other businesses because pharmaceuticals or drugs can negatively affect both- the end consumers or the patients and the health care profession. Also, the advertising strategies included in the marketing plan of any pharmaceutical company is not 'direct to consumer'. Any pharmaceutical marketing strategy targets the health care professionals or the Doctors who in turn prescribe the drugs to the patients (end consumers) liable to pay for the products. However, a few countries (till date two countries- New Zealand and United States) allow Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC advertising) for pharmaceutical products.
The pharmaceutical companies traditionally adopt four major marketing strategies for promoting their products-
While most of the pharmaceutical companies successfully employ a host of marketing strategies to target various types of customers, the current business and customer trends are continuously creating new challenges as well as opportunities for increasing profitability. If the pharmaceutical companies want to improve their Return-On-Investment (ROI), they have to adopt new communication technologies (digital media) along with their conventional sales force of medical representatives. They really need to adopt this multi channel marketing strategies for the following reasons.
The right marketing strategy for any pharmaceutical company would be to build on proven strategic marketing principles, along with a focus on changing customer behavior. Use of digital media through Internet marketing plan is the best marketing strategy that can provide the basis for a changed business model. However, there should be some planning for using digital media for marketing too. It should be a multi channel marketing strategy but should identify the target audience. Every digital media used for all people can not be called the right marketing strategy. The focus should be on the high value customer segment for pharmaceutical products.
To formulate a marketing strategy, it is also crucial to know the existing markets as well as emerging markets of pharmaceutical drugs. Read Pharmaceutical Market Trends 2010