PHARMACEUTICALS:
Precise Marketing Accelerates Profitable Growth

Client Situation

Our client—one of the largest players in the pharmaceuticals world—had recently launched a new therapeutic treatment for glaucoma. Although the client had a first-mover advantage when launching the drug, competitors were not far behind. Early success, as a result of a well-orchestrated and well-funded launch, was surely to be tempered by competing products. The Executive Vice President of Marketing needed answers to a challenging question: "Because this is a flagship product and our annual results will depend on it for a few years to come, how do I accelerate the growth trajectory, growing the category and my market share?"

Results

As a result of working in partnership with Market2Customer^® (M2C^®), our client achieved both a significant increase in sales volume and a reduction in marketing spend, via an original, breakthrough marketing campaign. The focus and message of the entire campaign were re-engineered to positively influence the behavior of both doctors and patients. One year after the completion of M2C intervention, our client's sales were up 40% and associated marketing expenses were down by $15 million. Sales up, marketing expenses down…how did we do it?

The Intervention

The GrowthPath^® approach was essential to the success of our client. Through proprietary qualitative and quantitative research and analysis, the M2C team was able to identify the relationship between a doctor's use of a standard glaucoma test and his or her propensity to prescribe a treatment, and-in particular-to prescribe our client's brand. In essence, we identified that the critical leverage point in the buying process was the physician's decision on whether or not to give the patient a formal glaucoma test in the initial check-up, as opposed to the choice of which brand to prescribe, as was previously believed. On those occasions where a test was performed, our client's drug was disproportionately likely to be prescribed. We also found that doctors rarely administered a glaucoma test unless a patient asked for one or unless physical signs of the disease existed. In order to grow their product volume, our client would have to target their marketing dollars on changing three specific behaviors:

1. Prompting more patients to ask for a formal glaucoma test,
2. Getting doctors to respond and order a test, and
3. Convincing doctors that our client's brand was the best treatment.

Understanding behaviors is one thing; trying to change them is quite another. Determining what marketing messages and marketing levers would work meant digging deep into the psyche of both the glaucoma physicians and the potential consumers. It also meant understanding which segments of both physicians and consumers should be prioritized and targeted. The M2C team used existing and primary research to develop Consumer Portrait^® frames for each of the prioritized consumer segments. The client learned that getting patients to ask for a glaucoma test was difficult due to the fact that most patients lacked familiarity with such tests, believed they were too young to suffer from the disease, and generally had an 'it can't happen to me' attitude. A parallel approach was used to gain similar insights for physicians.

Armed with a thorough understanding of the behaviors we needed to change and the barriers to creating that change, M2C collaborated with the client to develop a detailed marketing plan focused on increasing physicians' use of the glaucoma test, and on motivating consumers to ask their doctors for the test. We worked with our client to develop an innovative print campaign that emphasized that general health is not an indicator of eye health, that glaucoma tests are 'routine' and part of good health maintenance, and that glaucoma has many early and routine warning signs. A similar communication strategy was prepared for physicians and the client sales force that called on them.

With a more targeted message focused on changing the relevant behaviors of consumers and physicians in high potential segments, our client was able to generate more bang for the buck. They were able to identify and eliminate some of the '50% of marketing spend that is wasted'. Sales up, expenses down . . . not a bad accomplishment.

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