Just like every contractor needs an architectural blueprint, and just like every cook needs a recipe every pharma marketer needs a marketing plan. Good marketing plans are there to help pharma marketers anticipate, prepare a build a road map to success.
A healthcare marketing plan is a carefully developed strategic document that should lead to the achievement of business goals and objectives. So if you haven’t made a marketing plan yet, you better get onto writing write away.
Not sure where to start?
Don’t worry. By the time you finish this blog, you’ll know all you need to know about planning your healthcare marketing campaign.
Here’s how to start.
Determine your target audience
Establishing a target audience is the first step in the creation of a successful marketing plan. Gather as much info about your target audience as you can. Get an array of demographical, geographical and behavior data.
Where do they live? What is their age? Which are their main informational sources? What is their RX behavior? Use all this information to create a physician persona – a fictional representation of your ideal HCP.
Good target marketing is crucial for reaching healthcare professionals. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it is to connect and communicate with them.
Analyze the competition
Maybe you don’t like your competitors. Maybe you wish that they would vanish into thin air. But though you may dislike them, you must confess that they are probably doing at least something right. Nobody achieved success by ignoring their competition.
And if you want to succeed, you must pay attention and learn the best practices from them. There are many ways to research your competition.
From analyzing their website with an array of online tools to keeping your ears to the ground and analyzing your own data for comparison purposes.
What are your goals?
In order to easily achieve your goals, you need to set up goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based). Setting up goals that are specific will help you stay focused and motivated.
And if you make them measurable, you can always stay up to date on your goals and continuously track your progress. But you also have to be realistic and set up goals you can achieve. Having ambitious goals is nice and fine. But setting up goals you can’t reach just means that you’ll be spending your time and resources on something you couldn’t possibly accomplish.
Ensuring that goals are relevant means that they are not only important but also aligned with other goals of your company. Speaking of measuring your success, it’s also important to keep your goals time-based. This will keep you in the same rhythm as other people in your pharma marketing team, and it will help you measure your achievements over time.
Set up a budget
Maybe you are quite determined about your goals. But you’ll have a hard time achieving them without setting up a budget. A pre-established budget resource is vital for your marketing strategy.
There are many budget models you can consider. A pharmaceutical company can simply set aside a percentage of its overall budget for marketing.
Or create a special budget for every objective and task. You can base your budget on the expected ROI or on a personal perception of the amount of money you need. But a budget must be established.
Create a marketing system
Now that you have your budget and investments all lined up, it’s time to establish your marketing system. Or in other words, determine who’s in charge of what.
In order for the execution of your healthcare marketing plan to go smoothly, you’ll need to determine exactly who’s doing what and at what time.
Who’s writing emails? Who’s making videos? Or nurturing leads? You’ll need to set up a precise, structured system where everyone, and I mean everyone, knows their place.
Now that you know all elements of your healthcare marketing plan it’s time to stop wasting time and start planning. And if you ever get stuck or simply want to know more about healthcare marketing sign up here to stay in touch. I’m happy to help.
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