Pharma Marketing for Newbie UX Designers, Part 2: Marketing Manager
A 4-part series sharing my experience as a UX designer in the world of pharma marketing
Meet the Marketing Manager
The main client we work with is often the marketing manager of their brand.
What is a brand in this context? A pharma company usually has more than one drug to promote. Each drug has its own brand, e.g. “TYLENOL” is the brand name to the drug “acetaminophen”. The drug name is usually decided based on its chemical structure and used by scientists and healthcare professionals. On the other side, consumers would remember the brand name better. The pharma company will try to come up with a brand name that is easy to memorize for the general public.
Early Planning
The marketing manager is responsible for defining marketing strategies and getting the brand out to their targeted audiences. Marketing strategies can range from the value proposition of this brand, the key messages for physicians, the distribution channels (print, TV, websites, social media), and creating materials to support their sales team when talking to doctors.
At the beginning of the process, the marketing manager will start developing these materials that will help our project later on:
- Branding materials (logo, type, color, icon, image use, tone, etc) — Usually created by the “Agency of Record” that we will need to work with.
- Sales material draft — It’s usually a print piece to hone in the marketing messages. Sometimes it’s called white paper, which contains messages without drug name and branding, e.g. “blood cell count increased 12% after 4 months use of product X”.
- Market research with sales material draft — Usually done by a market research agency. They would recruit physicians to review the materials and ask for feedback, such as how effective the messages are. (This is different from a UX research. I’ve never participated in one but based on the final report, it may look like it’s done in a focus group.)
Considerations for Differentiators
The value proposition (or differentiators) of the brand might not always be the efficacy of the drug. (Efficacy means how well the drug treats the patients.) There are other considerations for physicians when they are prescribing drugs, such as:
- Safety: What are the side effects? Are the side effects difficult to manage? For example, if this drug will cause hair loss, younger patients might not want it.
- Dosing: How frequently should the patient take the drug? How is it administered? How easy it is to keep taking the drug on time to maintain patient adherence? If drug A is taken orally, it might be easier than drug B that needs an injection. If drug C requires the patient to visit the physician every week, then drug D that only needs visiting once a month might work better.
- Insurance: Does the insurance cover this drug? Does the pharma company provide financial assistance for patients? How easy it is for the insurance company, the physician’s office and the pharma company to work together on this?
- Logistic: How is the drug delivered? How would the drug get stored? Do they need temperature control?
Enter Digital Agency
Once the marketing manager has planned the marketing strategy, this is when the digital agency comes in. If they need a website (usually they do), they might put out an RFP (request for proposals) to let agencies compete for it.
Basic Project Information Gathering
At the beginning of a project, we gather basic project information by asking the following questions:
- What is the drug indication? What disease is this drug treating? What type of patient is eligible for this drug?
- What is the value proposition or the differentiator? What is the main difference in this brand that sets it apart from other competitors?
- What is the marketing research result for the sales materials?
- What are the business goals (besides selling more drugs)?
- What are the top messaging goals the marketing team would like the sales team to hit?
Learn About the Targeted Audiences: Physicians andPatients
If the brand has been on the market and the sales reps have talked to physicians, they might know a lot about the following questions:
- What are the doctor’s goals in the context of this disease and treatment? What are the doctor’s pain points in treating this disease currently?
- What are the patient’s goals and pain points in the context of this disease and treatment?
Learn About the Sales Reps
If this project is a material that would be used by the sales team, we’ll try to understand their experience:
- What is the sales rep’s experience while talking to their customers?
- What are the scenarios, processes, environment constraints, or time limits?
- What are their goals and pain points?
- If they have used print or digital materials before, what were their experience?
It can be difficult to get all those answers working in an environment that’s more marketing-thinking rather than design-thinking or user-centered. This is when we UX designer shows our values!
When it comes to understanding the sales reps as users, I usually try to first organize interviews with sales reps through our clients. Depending on the relationship between the client and the sales team, sometimes it can be tricky as they don’t work in the same team and the sales reps work flexible hours in the fields (different schedules and time zones). It will require some of your persuasion skills if the client is not familiar with the benefit of having a user interview.
Secondary research from online sources can be useful too, depending on the disease area (less information for rare diseases). Online sources can range from publications, conference talks, patient forums, or support group websites. With this research, it can help you paint of picture of the day-to-day life of a pharma sales rep. If you are interested in learning more about pharma sales reps, part 3 of this series will help get you started!
This article is one of my 4-part series sharing my experience as a UX designer in the world of pharma marketing. See the full list here:
