Problem:
A top-20 biopharma company consolidated its “mature” brands under a single marketing team to improve focus and squeeze more value out of the portfolio. However, due to big organizational changes the small team was staffed with junior marketers uncertain of how to approach the annual planning process and engage external partners, and with limited resources for product promotion.
Approach:
Drawing on decades of experience managing biopharma brands of all sizes, the Health Accelerators’ team helped the client’s marketing team prioritize the products in their portfolio by US sales, profitability and competitive pressure, and select three brands to actively promote. The team also prioritized healthcare professionals over patients based on the size of the budget and MLR capacity to review and approve new creative assets in a timely manner.
With no Field Sales support, we focused on digital channels to deliver messaging for the three late-lifecycle products about clinical parity to the category leaders and affordability due to a superior copay assistance program. We also used precisely-timed geotargeting for one of the respiratory products to boost awareness just before and during allergy season across regions of the US.
Results:
In addition to new prescriptions (NRx), KPIs included website copay offer downloads and subsequent refills (RRx) for those patients using the copay card. NRx for the two non-seasonal products exceeded forecast by 14% within the first 6 months, and for the seasonal respiratory product NRx exceeded forecast by 17%. Our recommended approach yielded financial gains for our client as well as lessons that were shared with other product teams about their efficient, integrated and accountable digital marketing ‘system.’