Everything Old Is New Again

Strategies for Promoting Mature Pharmaceutical Brands

Dear House Rules,

Our brand has been around for decades, but it still makes a contribution to our bottom line. How can we continue to promote it, while not compromising our marketing spend for newer products?

Sincerely,

Promoting the Old?

The Value of Mature Brands in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Dear Old,

As the pharmaceutical industry struggles to increase profits in the face of sluggish drug pipelines, tightening regulations, and retiring blockbusters, mature brands offer a significant revenue opportunity as well as a significant challenge. Mature brands are no longer breaking ground or generating the kind of excitement that attracts prescribers’ attention, but they do let companies apply a greater percentage of sales revenue to the bottom line, as most, if not all, of their development costs have been covered.

Cost-Effective Promotion Strategies for Mature Products

Leveraging Established Brand Presence

The key to ensuring that a mature product is profitable is deploying promotional efforts that are cost-effective, complementary, and above all else, used shrewdly. Smart tactics use the mature brand’s established presence and familiarity as the foundation for reminder-style promotion.

Utilizing Physician-Preference Databases

The availability of robust physician-preference databases culled from multiple communication platforms makes mature brand promotional outreach even more attractive and efficient. Now you can pinpoint only those targets that show promise with highly individualized outreach and obtain significant return in Rx levels. Thanks to these technological advances, promotional methods to drive mature brand revenues have expanded, providing us with options unavailable a few years ago. One of the most popular is non-personal promotion.

The Role of Non-Personal Promotion

Targeting Low to Moderate Prescribers

Non-personal promotion can be used for all target physician segments, but it’s especially useful for reaching low to moderate prescribers, no-see or uncovered targets where an aggressive personal promotion spend is not appropriate. The per-effort costs for these activities are a good deal lower than in-person details making the potential payoff upside in maintained or increased Rx activity very attractive.

Tailoring Messaging for Effectiveness

The ability to tailor messaging content to the individual based on the data accumulated through digital collection methods makes e-detailing and other non- personal tactics extremely effective in promoting these brands. In addition, more HCPs are embracing digital technology and have shown a willingness to participate outside of normal business hours or in nontraditional locations, such as their homes.

Unlocking the Potential of Long-Standing Brands

Just because a brand has been around a long time, don’t overlook its potential ability to help your company’s bottom line. To that end, make sure you’re partnering with an agency with expertise in non-personal promotion techniques. You might just be able to turn an “old gray mare” into a potential cash cow for your company.

Categories: branding, pharma marketing,