Pharma marketers around the world are looking for a crystal ball or an Oracle to predict their marketing success. In fact, predictive modeling is now a buzz word among Pharma marketers. But, CMO Council State of Marketing Survey indicated that more than 80% of Pharma marketers feel that predicting results is the biggest obstacle for them. It was also pointed out that marketers lack the tools and high level of competency in extracting available insights. Predictive analysis is an even greater challenge.
Creating an effective marketing mix thus becomes a headache. Predictive analysis in a country like India is one of the biggest challenges and unlike western countries is dependent upon crude information as there is no clear metric to measure how the marketing is improving sales. However, the social media interactions have emerged as great tool to analyze and are now providing novel insights for Pharma marketers in India.
Why Pharma Needs a Crystal Ball?
More than ever, Pharma marketers are in desperate need of crystal ball to predict the impact of their marketing campaigns. As rightly pointed out by Mr. Philip Kotler, World’s biggest marketing guru, very frequently the finance department are often in a tussle with marketing departments as marketing departments fall short of justifying their costs compared to the other departments in the organization. Pharma industry is no exception for this phenomenon. In addition, Pharma marketers are always walking on the tightrope to balance marketing activities to comply with regulations and budgets. Pharma marketers need that Crystal Ball which can predict which marketing initiatives will work.
Narrowing it down further, Marketers need predictive models for:
- Designing and Optimizing Marketing Strategy: Targeted and personalized marketing efforts are the need of an hour for Pharma marketing. Blanket marketing efforts are not only ineffective but they are also not cost effective. Targeting is an essential part of right marketing mix. Targeted approach always yields better results for marketing as it connects better with the audience.
- Effective Allotment of Resources: In order to achieve effective targeting and personalization, effective allotment of budget towards addressing the customer needs is important. When marketers understand the importance of activities that generate interests, they can allocate resources much better. Allotment of budgets to right marketing activities can maximize the brand outreach and ultimately the sales.
- Devise Engagement Strategy best suitable for your target audience: Marketing is not just telling about your products. It is also about connecting with your customers, understanding their concerns, and addressing their needs. Pharma marketers need to devise engagement strategy that can effectively engage with the doctors. In order to do so, Pharma Marketers need some predictive tool to understand what brings them great engagement. Digital channels like doctors’ professional platform have emerged as the most effective way to engage with doctors. Moreover, webinars, CMEs are best way to drive the traffics to Pharma’s marketing message.
- Increase the Sales Turnover: Converting your prospective customers to your customers is lengthy process. Doctors need to have trust on you products. In order to check what are the barriers in building the trust, different predictive engagements are required. Pharma should perform mindset change analysis on digital platforms and initiate activities that can drive sales based on the changing mindset.
Where is Pharma’s Crystal Ball?
- Social Media Interactions: Social media interactions are very dynamic and provide real-time assessment of the market. Social media interactions, especially on the professional platform like Docplexus help understand the trigger points that can settle or unsettle the marketing efforts for any Pharma company. These interactions also reflect on the risks that can appear for your product. Marketing professional can address or circumvent these risks and improve the effectiveness of their marketing activities.
- Big Data Analytics: Understanding the dynamics associated with your audience is critical for any Pharma marketing professional. Understanding the behavior of larger audience sets and the predominant trends in the therapy groups helps marketers tailor their campaigns. Not only for short duration, have these trends also provided a strong basis for long-term plans of your marketing and R&D efforts.
- Understand Leads to Conversions: Expectations from pharma marketers are increasing day by day. Marketers cannot just stop at lead generation anymore and they are expected to track the conversions as well. It is important to know that which leads were actualized and the reasons why they were actualized. The understanding of this journey from lead to conversion gives more predictability to Pharma marketers. Cross referencing your digital marketing provides you pin-point accuracy in measuring your conversion funnels.
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