Anti-corruption in healthcare has dominated social feeds for many days, with articles appearing constantly. Terms such as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Supervisory Commission, which usually felt distant, suddenly seem much closer. "Deeply carrying out systematic governance across all areas, chains, and coverage of the pharmaceutical industry" and "concentrating efforts to investigate and handle a number of corruption cases in the pharmaceutical field to create deterrence": a major crisis is sweeping the entire industry.
Churchill once said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."
So we need to first ask whose crisis it is and whose opportunity it is, then consider how to seize the opportunity and accelerate development during industry reshuffling:
- For products that lack unique clinical value and clinical advantages, it is undoubtedly a crisis, even a major one.
- For products with distinctive features and clinical advantages, it is more of an opportunity, with a better promotion environment and a larger market.
01 The Storm Has Arrived
The force bringing the storm is anti-corruption.
Clearly, the target of anti-corruption is corruption, not promotion, and not marketing itself. Even after the storm passes and the overall industry environment changes dramatically, one thing will remain unchanged: good wine still needs to be known beyond a deep alley. Marketing cannot stop.
However, marketing in the new environment will inevitably differ from previous marketing and will see some changes:
1. Previous business models will be forced to change. Compliance will become the top priority. Non-compliant visits and academic meetings will become heavily affected areas, while also freeing up a large market and creating major opportunities.
2. Resources will no longer be the key. Pharma sales models may shift from resource-based sales to professional sales. In the near future, persuading target physicians will require compliant promotion methods and personalized presentation of real, valid research results. This creates higher requirements and capability challenges for enterprises.
3. Passive academic meetings will become history. Next, enterprises should think about how to implement truly academic meetings and how to build enough attraction for physicians to participate without financial incentives.
So how can pharmaceutical companies seize the lever and rise with the wind?
02 A Three-Part Marketing Approach to Seize New Opportunities
Part 1 Customer visits must emphasize value
For frontline representatives, when non-compliant methods can no longer be used for visits, showing value to customers in a short visit will become crucial. In other words, why should customers accept a representative's visit?
a. Representatives may not improve clinical knowledge quickly, but they can provide industry updates that interest customers.
b. They may not answer a customer's question immediately, but they can quickly find answers from complex enterprise content and respond rapidly.
c. They can start conversations in the right way, at least knowing what report the customer recently published and which meeting they attended.
d. They may not know everyone in the customer's circle, but they can still talk about those people and events.
For enterprises, as visits become increasingly difficult, the first step of finding the right people becomes even more critical.
More cost needs to be spent on identifying precise target physicians, while professional content must help frontline representatives communicate with physicians through targeted, high-value professional material.
Part 2 Academic meetings must emphasize personalization
The strict scrutiny of academic meetings has likely caught the industry most off guard. According to incomplete statistics, since August, at least dozens of academic meetings, including those hosted by the Chinese Medical Association and others, have been postponed. Many medical institutions have even received notices to review five years of data.
The impact of anti-corruption on academic meetings needs little explanation. But let us look at the upside: without conflicts of interest, passive academic meetings will disappear, and academic meetings can return to the essence of academics.
At the same time, one-size-fits-all meeting content will be increasingly unable to attract physicians' attention. In the future, enterprises need to provide more personalized and valuable content to attract physicians to attend. To achieve this, they must first understand target physicians' mindset stages, needs, and preferences. Only by offering what they need and prefer can ideal meeting results be achieved.
Part 3 Speaker verification must be fully compliant
To implement truly academic meetings, who should serve as the speaker? How should meeting topics be set? These are challenges many enterprises will soon face.
Simply put, speaker verification has two major steps:
First, set grading standards for speakers, usually based on academic title, academic society positions, journal papers, and even past meeting speeches, clinical trials, funds, and other profile data.
Second, based on grading standards, combine profile data with customer qualifications in the internal CRM system to conduct speaker verification.
In short, pharmaceutical companies need to quickly make correct people-selection decisions so they can deliver diagnosis and treatment concepts to suitable physicians as soon as possible.
In fact, MeDomino has been helping many pharmaceutical companies do these things for several years. Our original intention has never changed: to use legal, compliant data and technology to empower pharmaceutical companies dedicated to drug R&D, support physicians focused on medical research, improve diagnosis and treatment across the healthcare industry, and ensure every patient benefits.
