More Choice Isn’t Better for the Prescriber

October 21, 2011

Prioritizing ‘Launch’ Website Over Traditional Tactics

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Professional Marketing,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 5:00 pm

This is going to be heresy, but I’m going to say it. Upon brand approval your top priority tactic should be your Brand.com.

Why? Once the press release hits the wire, where do your potential prescribers and patients look to for information about your product? In the last century, it was exclusively the sales representative. Today, it’s your Brand.com site. It sounds reasonable and I’ve got the Google Analytics data across a bunch of recent approvals to prove it.

So why does the launch website content consistently play second fiddle to the traditional tactics, including the detail aid, dosing card, slim jim, patient education brochure, etc? You’re laughing, but I’ve witnessed first hand the prioritization of launch tactics for MLR or PRC push the web content review to the bottom of the list.

Sure you get out your ‘thin’ launch website, but one physician in recent market research summed it up nicely, “If I wanted to get the PI, I can go to dozens of other sites to get that. I want you to tell me about your drug first, then maybe I’ll invite the rep into my office.” In today’s environment, sales and marketing should be pushing to have a robust website available simultaneously with the launch field materials.

You only get that one chance to make a first impression with a potential customer. Do you really want it to be based on your brand’s label and not the marketing story you’ve spent months or years preparing?

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October 13, 2011

Inertia is the Competition, Not Another Drug

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Professional Marketing,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 10:56 pm

When you’re thinking about the competitive set for your brand, you should ask yourself two very important questions:

What are the products that your brand directly and indirectly competes with for market- and mindshare?
What other factors influence physician decision making as it directly relates to your brand?

Let me tell you a little bit more about this second one. A key pattern that we are seeing here at ROF over the last 12 months across a number of our clients is that the major competitive threat in their category is NOT another drug, procedure, or device. It’s inertia.

Whether it’s physicians, patients, or managed care, the power of ingrained thinking is a significant challenge to most brand teams. It can be seen across a range of categories such as RA where anti-TNF cycling predominates and asthma where step therapy is dictated by the guidelines.

It is critical that you consider these alternative external influences when thinking about the competition for your brand. They can have a significant impact on your strategy, objectives, and even messaging.

Who is your brand really competing against?

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October 8, 2011

More Choice Isn’t Better for the Prescriber

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Professional Marketing,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 4:56 pm

Physicians are experiencing new prescription product overload in categories ranging from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) to Hepatitis C. While this is wonderful for patients, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for prescribers to keep track of all these new products and subsequent clinical findings.

The absence of any product sequencing data makes prescribing decisions even more challenging as both patient and prescriber wonder what opportunities they may be sacrificing down the line based on their initial product choice.

This brings me to my point that having more choice isn’t always better. An often-referenced choice study, most recently cited in the book Paradox of Choice, demonstrated in a grocery story experiment that while a tasting display of 24 jams generated more traffic, a display with only 6 jams generated more sales.

It’s believed that as choices increase, consumers make up mental short cuts called heuristics in order to streamline selection. In categories like RCC, it would be critical to understand the heuristics Oncologists have developed to decide between Afinitor, Avastin, Nexavar, Sutent, Torisel, and Votrient. Remember, these are mental short cuts, NOT paragraph-long positioning statements.

Taking a step back, the Oncologist is not only balancing these 6 advanced RCC treatments, but another 200 – 300 other products for various other tumor types, which makes industry insights about the mental short cuts used even more important. Can you articulate the heuristics in your category and for your brand?

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