PR In Pharmaceutical Marketing – Gaps Galore and What Can Marketers Comprehend?

It’s time to tweak our mindset

Friends in the industry frequently express about cross-functional legal or compliance teams often being at loggerheads when PR activities come in. Although regulations in pharma must be followed, there is still a lot to learn if you read between the lines of PR principles and use. Legal or regulatory teams, in my opinion, are not the main barrier to adopting PR in pharmaceutical marketing. Many pharmaceutical marketers are unable to apply or even understand PR methods since they have long been followers of the "Push" school of thought. Pharmaceutical marketers believe in "the Push," which is utterly at odds with how PR operates on "the pull" approach.

Let’s get the basics clear

The distinctions between public relations (PR) and advertising are clear. PR stuff is the process of publicizing and communicating to create favourable perceptions and raise awareness of something, whereas advertising encourages customers to choose your product over competing ones. Few pharma marketers or brand managers try to take advantage of PR's numerous attributes. By temporarily letting go of conventional pharma marketing assumptions and gently piercing through the PR's epidermis, these outstanding qualities might be discovered. When utilized creatively within the bounds of compliance, PR could positively affect the patient experience, medical judgement, improved brand memory (the purpose of the pharma), and higher awareness of therapy or molecular relevance.

The evolution of digital media has set new standards for PR in the pharmaceutical industry. More so, has increased the rivalry for attention and increased the difficulty of message management. Public relations will soon be a requirement for all executives, not only cluster leaders or marketing leads, due to the rise in marketing literacy among marketers and its usage in pharmaceutical marketing. In the early 20th century, corporate PR teams first appeared and media relations were used to improve brand recognition.

Approach

I feel the Indian pharmaceutical marketing community needs to increase its PR literacy since India is seen as the "Pharmacy of the World".

Companies still deal with brand availability or under-awareness among pharmacists and healthcare professionals (HCPs) even a year or two after the launch. When 200-odd new brands or SKUs enter the market each month with significant launch costs, companies are figuratively "kissing too many frogs to find their prince" since the enthusiasm for these products quickly wanes among HCPs and field teams. Even now, many famous marketing strategies, and campaigns either on purpose or by chance had incorporated a substantial component of public relations.

A large part of PR activities may not be relevant to pharma marketers, but still, it has a lot to learn to incorporate some PR principles into their marketing tactics.

A report from 2019 said, 7% of Google's daily searches and 70,000 searches each minute are on health or medical content. What do you think people are seeing? That’s the opportunity digital give for brand managers to build therapy footprints. I'll simply share a few basic ideas with you before letting you explore the PR's Pandora box on your own.

• Announce your arrival before you even do so: The first area that PR should be put into is the brand plan. One can utilize physician-specific physical or digital platforms to provide a specialized preamble in advance. Deliver context-setting collaterals, such as talk shows, message boards, online conversations, articles, and incidence vs/or ignorance data, a month or two before the actual launch of the brand/campaign. These normally don’t exist, but then brand managers need to develop them. This will create a space in the public's (doctors' and patients') minds pre-hand and facilitates when you launch your brand. Include your internal staff as well to strengthen this.

• Sell the problem for which you have the solution: Whether the brand or campaign is important to the firm or is in a market with high growth, determine or create some larger purpose or goal and take it into consideration via a media briefing or a press release if need be. You should use PR strategies to widen the market rather than compete for a bigger share. Your upcoming launch will make a bigger impression. It's crucial for brand managers to know what is unneeded when crafting brand messages, thus it's excellent to tell doctors through the appropriate channels doctors use.

• Conversation starters: Consider the possibilities for conversation-starter content if your brand targets some sharp indication or market group. See if you have content with keywords that fit your objective that is available on genuine portals, especially since doctors trust trustworthy sites and brand managers need to be succinct given their hectic schedules. With the customary visual aid, sample, and LBL (leave behind literature) after the fact, straightforward pre-launch PR announcements can be made to select doctors and pharmacists through email and newsletters.

• Therapy development: Now, KOLs are approached as the top-down technique from which more specialities are reached. Authentic, cited research content that is relevant to the therapy around the brand or molecule to doctors would undoubtedly be advantageous. This should also be widely shared, along with compliant patient awareness and discussion-related information. Brand managers can use PR tools to "PULL" first so that sales teams have the ease of "PUSH" marketing afterwards.

• If anyone searches, are you visible? > 90% of people do not go beyond the first page of a Google search. If you have a new supplement or treatment brand, a lot of molecular or therapeutic information on digital platforms is necessary. The burden of market expansion falls on the leader; as a result, think about prelaunch and post-launch content on Google-indexed platforms, journals, blogs, medical association websites, and therapeutic websites. It will assist to target healthcare professionals with SEO and content promotion.

• Microsite with indexing: Search for your brand on YouTube. You'll see that it has received a lot of misinformed or unqualified reviews. Are you okay with people seeing that? Many doctors whom you might not reach through sales teams can be reached through the appropriate educational online page. Such a page ought to be accompanied by the appropriate disclaimer message encouraging patients to see their doctors or a page only can be firewalled as “only for qualified medical practitioners”. Investing in search engine optimization (SEO), social media (where appropriate), and others should be used to monitor and maintain a brand's or molecule's online reputation and establish acceptable imprints.

Many more things are possible. PR started to receive greater attention in pharmaceutical marketing as it transitioned from a sales-driven to a purpose-driven. The ultimate objectives of any PR plan in pharma should be better patient care and memorable for doctors. Certain residual consumer and community behaviours will eventually turn into new habits after every shift, transition, or crisis. For example, during the pandemic, when face-to-face sales had long been the cornerstone of the pharmaceutical industry, digital became essential and almost everyone was forced to adopt it. The next in line is PR. Get media training. Put "PULL" before "PUSH" by using PR.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are of the author and not of Medical Dialogues. The Editorial/Content team of Medical Dialogues has not contributed to the writing/editing/packaging of this article.