5 Tips To NOT Become A One-Person Healthcare Marketing Department
Recessionary times, call for recessionary measures – and for marketers in the healthcare industry, this is NO exception. I know. I lived through this at Johnson & Johnson as a healthcare marketer before joining Appature.
Pharmaceutical and medical device companies faced with flat to shrinking budgets and job layoffs are forced to seek new methods to increase market share and boost top line sales growth.
The industry has experienced upwards of 6,000 job cuts in September alone primarily from sales forces. Though the industry has shown slight improvements in job loss since February (loss of 17,687 jobs), September’s drastic job loss totals have put the pressure on healthcare marketers to maintain their marketing performance with diminishing resources.
Top Five Industries
- Pharma Layoffs By Month
Resources that once included a sizeable sales force, a large marketing team and a substantial budget, are no longer readily available. Healthcare marketers need to find alternative tactics or methods to maximize HCP marketing reach and effectiveness.
So, here are 5 tips to increase your marketing team’s effectiveness:
- Healthcare marketers need to make “Super Sales Reps” to ensure that whatever sales force remains, is optimized. They must realign if necessary. This includes calling on doctors with the most potential to grow business, not just simply by decile deployment. These “super sales reps” also need to be equipped with great tools to carry their messages, and a strong awareness of the marketing team’s current campaigns so that they can bring fresh content to their HCP conversations.
- Healthcare marketers need to start a conversation with HCPs that are not covered by sales reps and engage them with low cost marketing solutions such as Direct mail, email, conference invites etc. These tactics are still effective means of marketing.
- Healthcare marketers should focus on a few “big ideas” to drive home 2011 brand goals. Only by ensuring that all “sleeves” of marketing are executing those ideas, can a healthcare marketer provide true surround-sound brand management.
- Healthcare marketers need to make sure they are managing what they measure — or whether they are measuring anything at all! What do they want to have happened in order to hit their 2011 brand goals? It is important to set up measures, incentive comp plans, and forums to review dashboards in order for the marketing team to see a comprehensive “scoreboard” at the beginning of the year. This is vital because healthcare marketing teams need to know what metrics to achieve in order to be able to see any visible progress.
- Healthcare marketers need to use their budgets responsibly, but gut check everything. Why would an agency charge $50K for a sales piece that seems repurposed? Why give another $100K to maintain a membership you’ve had for 10 years? And most importantly, does every dollar spent actually drive sales?
As more patents expire, healthcare legislation gets worked out and the shift to consumer decisions making around healthcare increases, the industry will continue to change the required headcount to run their business units. The numbers may stay constant, or we may see more layoffs, or huge hiring spikes. I don’t see the day where the marketing department will be 1 person and the sales effort is 100% virtual, but it’s time to seriously think about a more effective marketing methodology that does not entirely depend on people resources.
What do you think?
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