From Pharmaceutical Executive - May 2008 - (Page 2) Professional Marketing Ready, Aim, Sell Technology isn’t the magic bullet, but it can help you hit your target ecisions. Decisions. Decisions. Today’s multimedia world offers so many choices for reaching healthcare professionals, what are brand managers to do? Ideally, pharma companies can appeal to physicians with a combination of quality, in-person sales calls and targeted marketing outreach. Technology can also be a great asset, but only if it’s leveraged with focus and care. that drives our message. Any successful dialogue has to begin and end with knowing the customer and what he or she wants and expects. Technology: It’s a Beautiful Thing Nothing can really replace good, solid, intelligent, face-to-face interaction in which doctor and sales rep really take time to get to know one another. Today’s typical, 90-second sales calls aren’t exactly ideal, and as sales forces shrink and overworked doctors get busier and busier, those face-to-face meetings are a decidedly rare occurrence. Luckily, with the help of technology we can mimic that type of interaction. Using specialized software and the power of the Internet, we can track each doctor’s preferences. This stands in stark contrast to the far more common, far less intelligent campaign management approach, D Put Down the Shotgun We’re all probably guilty of using the shotgun approach to reaching customers—that is, shooting in all directions in the belief that eventually we’ll hit a valuable target. It’s not just that this technique is unsophisticated; it’s inef cient and prevents the marketer from really homing in on what individual doctors want and need. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies may not all be ready for Web 2.0, but we can do better than the shotgun approach. There are many attractive, ashy new e-marketing tools and techniques available. But if you’re not focused on the right customer base, it doesn’t mat- By targeting the right audience for your message, you improve the chances that the message will be heard or read, and not end up in the trash ter. It’s essential to send the right message to the right doctor in the manner that he or she prefers. Otherwise, you’re wasting the most valuable resource any doctor has: time. GETTY IMAGES Know Your Audience These days, physicians have higher patient loads and more administrative tasks. Despite sales force cutbacks, physicians still deal with plenty of sales reps and read plenty of marketing materials on a weekly basis. It’s critical we recognize the enormous importance and immeasurable value of making communication with healthcare providers worth their while. This is the only way to build the essential trust Anthony Bianciella is vice president, marketing at MTI Advantage. He can be reached at anthony. bianciella@mtiadvantage.com wherein a company pre-sets its communications strategy in advance, and never deviates from the plan. For example, the sales force sends boilerplate email number one and boilerplate email number two, followed by a generic snail mail letter. This “set it and forget it” approach is sub-par. Technology can do what the nownonexistent armies of sales reps used to do. Industry experts have developed systems that combine database technology, modeling technology, and tracking software. Systems like these enable pharmaceutical companies to become more nimble in addressing the needs of their customers. It’s no longer necessary or suf cient to wait until a
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