Pharma Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Pharmaceutical marketing has always been challenging. Changing regulations, new marketing technologies, and shifting paradigms around patient-driven healthcare all shape how pharma marketing is currently executed.

Throughout this evolution, we have found that common issues continue to exist among drug makers and medical device manufacturers. Here are some of the biggest mistakes brand managers make.

Off-label marketing

Despite firm FDA rules against off-label marketing, brands continue to create misleading ads – particularly in their DTC advertising. For instance, new brands, in their excitement to launch their latest products, may misrepresent benefits or make non-FDA-approved claims. This can end up costing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

A gray area lies in the fact that physicians are legally able to prescribe drugs to treat conditions that the drug is not FDA-approved for, but pharma brands cannot promote that drug as a treatment for those conditions.

Notable cases of off-label marketing include:

• The 2012 GlaxoSmithKline $3 billion case promoting Paxil, Wellbutrin, and Avandia in unlawful ways
• The 2013 Janssen Pharmaceuticals / Johnson & Johnson $2 billion case following illegal promotions for Natrecor, Risperdal, and Invega

Drugs promoted for off-label uses can have detrimental effects – including death. Therefore, off-label marketing is among the most problematic marketing blunders a brand manager could make.

Poor audience segmentation

As a marketer, you’re familiar with audience segmentation. The practice of segmenting audiences has been effective for companies across many industries. Unfortunately, there are times when pharma brands avoid segmentation and try to reach a broad audience with “catch-all” messaging. While doing so may improve awareness, that messaging doesn’t necessarily translate into sales (more on the awareness metric later).

But even brand managers that segment campaigns may end up missing the mark. For instance, some in the industry look at segmentation by trade class – retail pharmacy vs patient care center – or by specialty, such as pediatrician vs primary care physician. But the true advantage of segmentation is to target those most likely to respond to messaging, no matter which trade classes or specialty they work in.

Overuse of reminder ads

Using reminder ads can be an effective method of marketing to healthcare professionals (HCPs). But relying on them as a primary communication method can end up wasting your marketing spend. As a marketer, you want to get your products into an “evoked set” of drugs an HCP will consider. This evoked set is the group of treatments most likely to be purchased, narrowed down from an “awareness set”.

Reminder ads are intended to reconnect a physician with your drug. However, if she or he hasn’t chosen your product as a member of the evoked set, no amount of reminder ads will help to change that. Pharma brands should reconsider this approach if they hope to move from the awareness set to the evoked set.

Reminder ads can be effective for the right audience. The key is to define that audience properly – reinforcing the notion of segmentation.

Making awareness a key metric

As a corollary to the earlier point about segmentation, the metrics that brand managers choose to measure success have to be meaningful. While audience awareness should be one of your metrics, it’s more of a “vanity metric”: a message has been received but hasn’t led to action. Marketing agencies have been known to focus on awareness metrics, leaving brand managers to question ROI.

Creating awareness simply means that your campaign made an impression on an audience. For your HCP audience, that may only get your product into the awareness set mentioned earlier. For your consumer audience, awareness may be fleeting with so much competition for consumers’ attention.

Sticking with ineffective channels

Finally, there is the mistake of sticking with what you know, even if the results aren’t spectacular. Some drug marketers continue to rely on old-school tactics, such as physician visits, to increase sales. However, the digital age has improved marketing opportunities through multimedia publishing, education portals, and web-based advertising.

Keeping ahead of competitors means adopting the most effective and efficient channels available. In this mobile-driven world, pharma brands that ignore recent advances in digital marketing may find themselves missing sales forecasts.

Contact Elsevier today to explore the leading advertising opportunities in the healthcare industry.

Article Written by: Alex Brown