Gaining Insight

Pharmaceutical marketeers face new and increasingly complex challenges as they seek to maximise market share and return on investment for their products. Gone are the days when the physician was the sole focus of marketing and communication strategies, now the spectrum of interested parties and influencers is far more extensive. However, this is also a world of new opportunity, in which harnessing cutting-edge digital tools may enable market researchers, product managers and business developers to get closer to and collaborate with their increasingly fragmented customer base, which in so doing will help them gain a competitive edge .

Using the most highly regulated marketplace of all - the UK - as an example, Andrew Forman, from global marketing research agency Insight Research Group, discusses how companies can gain insight that will provide effective marketing strategies for their product portfolio in the kinds of increasingly fragmented, policy driven and pressurised marketplaces that their clients compete in.

Radical Change
In the UK, the structure and dynamics of the NHS have undergone radical change in recent years. This has had a knock-on effect on the industry's product launch and marketing environment and the knowledge of who wields influence within the marketplace. Although the four nations (Department of Health, NHS Wales, NHS Scotland and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland) share some common themes, it has become more challenging to gain specific intelligence and insight that will deliver sustainable competitive edge from a product marketing perspective.

This fundamental shift away from the purely clinical towards cost benefit and strategic priority based decision-making has left a layer of people, pressures and policies that will have a greater influence on whether or not a medicine gets approved and widely used than may have been the case in the relatively recent past. So be it government policy, regulatory and economic pressure, or carefully monitored performance management, product marketing and market research need to be more targeted in its approach to deliver tailored messages from key decision makers. The goal? To allow marketing professionals to make the most of the opportunities there are for their brands in a variety of locations in the UK.

Micromarketing, micro-level research
There exists a whole array of influencers and stakeholders that hold different responsibilities and authority as decision makers in the various nations. When speaking to the recruiters of respondents for market research projects and pharmaceutical companies, it is increasingly clear that knowing who makes the decisions can only be understood at a micro or local level. So when launching products to market or planning product marketing strategies, there is a divergence of customers and stakeholders to target, and there will be a limit on the extent to which we can (or should) extrapolate one experience/opinion to be 'typical' of others. A good example here is that the views of decision makers in NHS Wales, will not be necessarily be the same as those decision-makers in Scotland.

So in the UK, it is now more important than ever for companies to have intelligence at a localised level to capture insights on required evidence-based models of care and the decision-making process. Job titles and roles vary across PCTs, which can lead to confusion when targeting a group of HCPs for focus groups. On top of that, people can change jobs or roles frequently, new decision-making bodies are introduced and policies change, it can seem, on a daily basis.

It is an ever-evolving landscape, but remains one in which market research can give valuable insight into product development and marketing strategy by seeking out the relevant audiences, targeting decision-makers and reviewing market needs. It does however necessitate thinking differently; businesses must approach their market research agencies with clear priorities, adapting their brief to account for the localised nature of decision-making.

With this in mind, two 'strands' emerge as being the best way to develop and deliver a compelling marketing strategy. The macro 'big picture' plan for the brand, allowing the most persuasive case for the product to be widely and convincingly communicated; coupled with the micro 'multi local level' variations that allow marketeers and regional business managers to develop appropriate local market access plans to maximise product uptake.

So what of the new opportunities presented by the current UK market 'landscape'? (We have found these to be just as relevant internationally - but let's stay with the UK as an example). Market research is a discipline that must be at the cutting edge of technology. This helps companies maximise collaboration between the client and customer in order to gain deeper and more valuable insights that will best help develop compelling brand strategy. These developments will significantly increase the likely success of new products as they come to market. To this end the market research industry is creating new avenues and approaches in the digital domain. These techniques are designed to target the right people and create secure and enabling research environments that allow doctors, patients and other relevant stakeholders to generate deep and increasingly valuable insights.

What role does digital research play in offering more opportunities for product marketing?
The terms 'digital' and 'co-creation' are currently causing ripples in the world of pharmaceutical marketing. Companies want to know how both can be incorporated into the development of their marketing strategy and what approaches and techniques are available to target patients and Healthcare Professionalss in the most effective way.

In an age where the internet has created a space for consumers to discover unlimited information and knowledge at the click of a button, healthcare researchers have harnessed this capability and overcome the sensitivities that often come with healthcare research. Web 2.0 has facilitated the growth of co-creation activity and has opened up new technologies and innovative approaches in research.

An innovative example of these developments is eVillage, Insight Research Group's online community research tool that provides a safe platform for doctors, patients and other healthcare professionals to share knowledge, thoughts, concerns and issues about any particular topic under investigation. It is a pioneering research tool for clients to combine the best of traditional qualitative research in a different and often more convenient environment. The community can be used for a whole host of collaborative activities and is particularly well suited to the development (or co-creation) of enlightened communication campaigns that really resonate with the target audience.

Encompassing a wide range of traditional qualitative techniques and more, eVillage allows both healthcare professionals and patients to take part in a series of activities, designed to heighten engagement and creative thought, such as interactive discussions, online bulletin boards and web-assisted materials assessment. eVillage is also a place where clients can maximise multi-media opportunities via video logs, patient diaries and picture uploads.

An example of the eVillage in action can be drawn from the domain of public health (see box). The eVillage successfully helped NHS London create a new communications strategy designed to tackle the issue of late diagnosis in HIV. Crucially, the community can collaborate for a far more extended timeframe than traditional research techniques would allow, providing greater depth, quality and quantity of understanding than can generally be gleaned from the more traditional snapshot in time.

Importantly, respondents or 'eVillagers' have online anonymity, which allows freedom of expression, honesty and reveals deeper insights from all participants. eVillage is a virtual rather than physical tool, making it ideally suited to bring together a geographically disparate group of interested parties, many of whom are typically hard to reach.

Conclusion
Online research is certainly giving companies more insight into what customers think.Developments such as eVillage are leading the way in making research among HCPs more collaborative and creative. However, the issues discussed in this article show that in the UK at the moment to develop products that will engage with PCT's and HCP's nationally and locally, the pharmaceutical industry must also adapt, prioritise and diversify its requirements from research in order to target and engage the right influencers.