A Secret in Pharmaceutical Marketing

Are you up to date with how customer brand engagement is transforming in our ever-evolving world of AI, cord cutting, streaming, and e-commerce? These tech-driven changes are leading to new consumerism behaviors that are spilling into healthcare, which pharma marketing teams may consider keeping a pulse on.??

Right now, pharma marketing strategies typically focus on raising disease awareness, leveraging clinical profiles, focusing on provider and patient segments, and improving access and reimbursement experience - but is there an opportunity to strengthen alignment with consumer behaviors, potentially leading to better marketing performance?

You may want to consider learning about the tech-driven strategies implemented by software product marketers. It’s a completely different mindset compared to pharma marketing, one that is data dependent. SaaS marketers focus on product market fit, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and more. What’s fascinating is their goal to create network effects for platform-based services and/or products. This well-established concept may help pharma marketers uncover valuable data, generate actionable insights, new partnerships, and initiate dynamic brand building initiatives. Network effect refers to an environment or platform where a rise in the adoption of a specific service creates more value for all members on that platform. Discovering the power of network effects is a hidden treasure in pharma marketing and an opportunity to take a fresh approach to customer brand engagement and brand growth strategies.?

Network effects are powerful forces that can create immense competitive advantage, so you might be wondering, “Should every Rx brand create a platform to benefit from them?” Don't worry, the idea isn't to create a platform, but to think like a platform. So, here are the most important components of network effects to consider:

• Direct Network Effects: The more users on the platform, the more value for each ?of them.
• Indirect Network Effects: Increased usage of one product drives use in others.
• Two-sided Network Effects: Value extends to other stakeholders beyond the primary users like vendors and developers to create a symbiotic and complementary value.
• Switch Costs: Users integrate products into their workflow making it difficult to defect to another product.
• Brand: More users of the product increases brand awareness and loyalty.
• Data: More data generated leads to insights that elevate the user experience and lead to other product enhancements.
• Economies of scale: The user value increases faster than the costs to create the value.

By applying these philosophies, marketing teams can reframe their approach and inject new strategies and approaches that are more aligned with contemporary customer behaviors. The consideration is not meant to eliminate existing strategies but to look at the brand with a different mindset. Will there be challenges? Will people say pharma marketing is completely different and this is a waste of time? Yes, but the risks are too high not assessing this framework.?Moreover, the potential payoff of strengthening marketing performance is worth the investment.

Let's start with direct network effects - HCPs want their treatment recommendations to be trustworthy. So, the more healthcare providers who are using your brand, the more it lends credibility, confidence, and comfort. Here are some thought-provoking questions to consider:

• Are you collecting HCP data, feedback, and experiences across every touchpoint?
• How are you leveraging existing user-generated content?
• Have you considered and mobilized brand advocates beyond the traditional, e.g., KOLs, advocacy groups?
• Are you tracking the progress of this data and network effects?

Next up, indirect network effects suggest that marketers should have a wide-angle lens approach when observing the effects of a brand. It may lead to discovering unanticipated new opportunities. Pose these questions to yourself:

• What are if any the 2nd and 3rd order effects of my brand beyond the TA?
• Regardless of your DTC, are you viewing the disease through a consumer lens?
• Are you identifying atypical partners who can help accelerate growth?

Two-sided Network Effects

Have you ever thought beyond the walls of the healthcare ecosystem to consider the market forces at play? With tech companies making greater forays into healthcare, it's imperative that decision-makers have a deep understanding of the potential threats and opportunities that arise. Delving into these questions can help you gain insights into the changing healthcare landscape, while also exploiting the opportunities at hand.

• What tech companies are entering your therapeutic area?
• Are there potential new threats looming?
• Is there potential for data sharing with new partners?
• Are you using analytics to accurately measure the impact of collaborations and partnerships?

Switch costs

Do you want to make your brand so tightly woven into doctors' workflows that it's hard for them to pull it out? This is especially important in markets where clinical differentiation is minimal. Think about how you can either get your product to fit into an existing workflow or create a new one. Appreciating the amount of effort and money it takes, ask yourself these questions before you take the plunge:

• Is leadership up for this endeavor?
• Is workflow integration or creation even possible?
• Given the level of effort and monetary cost, is it worth it from a LOE/LCM perspective?
• Do I have the budget and time to make it happen?

?Brand and Data

How can pharma brands create a powerful emotional connection with their customers, drive performance, identify cost-effective solutions, and maximize ROI? With healthcare marketing being ultra-competitive, the answer lies in fast adoption of technology and leveraging advancement in data and analytics. To do this effectively, marketing teams should ask themselves key questions like:

• Do we have a data-first mindset?
• Are we collecting and using powerful mining models?
• Do we have the right partners on board to unlock market-moving insights?
• Are we measuring every activity to assess performance?

Moreover, economies of scale are not just about reducing cost. To maximize ROI, brands should link cost mitigation to increasing customer value. Consider these questions in your analysis.

• Is cost-cutting reducing customer value?
• How can cost mitigation be linked to increasing customer value?
• Have you looked within to identify activities in the same TA or beyond that can be leveraged?

Finally, as big tech companies such as Apple and Amazon penetrate healthcare, brand engagement is becoming more digitally entrenched. To stay ahead of the curve, pharma brands may want to have a deeper understanding of network effects and other digital marketing models - this could lead to new strategies and approaches that drive brand growth. For an in-depth understanding of network effects, we recommend visiting https://www.nfx.com/ - we have no affiliation with them. I find their thinking to be fresh and applicable to many areas in healthcare marketing and beyond.??#pharmamarketing #martech #networkeffects #strategy #marketresearch