The 7 Psof Digital Pharma

Marketing

Tughan Demirbilek

tughan777@gmail.com@tughan777

About the 7 Ps of Digital Pharma MarketingThe 7Ps of Digital Pharma Marketing is a summary of some important things Ive learned over years in

practice. I hope you find them useful. Please feel free to share with others and contribute your ownlearnings and experiences.

About meI am a designer, a strategist and a marketeer.

Ive been in pharma marketing for over 15 years and have been working on digital marketing projects forover 10.

Ive worked for Pfizer, IMS Health, Herbalife and BMS in local and regional roles. I studied architecture in Istanbul and business in London, and I reinvent my career every ten years.

PS: The 7Ps originally started as a training slide set of 5 topics and evolved to 7 over time. And yes 7Ps is probably easier to remember than4Ps 2Ts and 1S or something like that.

PEOPLE

100% of customers are people.

Simon Sinek

We need to start withpeople because 100% of our customers arepeople.

But not all people areyour customers.

Whos your customer?You need to know whoyour customer is .

You actually have todecide to focus on a group of customers thatyou want to and can serve best and stick withthat group for a longtime.

Insightsbe there

be curiousbe open minded

be modest

Then get real insights about them. This is the somewat hard part. You really need to be there, amongthem, like one of them, live theirday, their week, their months. Be curious, like this young lady here clearly demonstrates. Be openminded, allow your customers tosurprise you, forget what you thinkyou know for a while. Adopt a zen attitude and repeat to yourself youknow nothing and youre here towatch, listen and learn.

Whatdo they reallywant?InsightsResearchCustomer personasCustomer journey mapsPain maps

Now you need to pull it alltogether.

Analyze and synthesise whatyouve learned.

Get all your smart mindstogether and figure out whatyour customers really want toachieve and how can you helpthem.

PURPOSE

Chooseyour

purpose A dolphin is purpose-built. So is a tiger. They are fast, powerful and graceful allat once. Thats why theyve survivedand thrived over millenia.

Our digital marketing programs andprojects must be purpose built too.

Choose what your purpose is. You cantbe a dolphin and tiger at once

Inform

Educate

Enable

Entertain

There are 4 possible genericpurposes for a digital marketing project.

They are: Inform, Educate, Enable (buying, doing etc) or Entertain.

You may choose any one or two orthree of these as your purpose. Themore the better. Just like propellorblades, two, or more work better.

Add ValueBut the key is that whatever youdo you must ADD VALUE to thecustomer.

This is the one question youshould ask yourself and yourteams constantly.

If youre not adding value, forsure, your program or project willfail and fall into obscurity, forsure.

PLAN

Relevant?

Important?

Urgent?

New?

Credible?

Emotional?

AddValue

There are multiple aspects to plan for yourdigital marketing program or project. Yourmessage is top of the list.Your message needs to be: Focused on a single topic, sufficiently Simple to be understood easily by all, Short enough toensure enagement.The criteria you need to judge if yourmessage is good are: Is it relevant to yourintended audience, important for them, urgent enough to merit their attention, new otherwise youre wasting their time, credible so they can trust you andemotional.Why emotional you think? In his bestsellingbook Daniel Kahnemann states that contraryto widespread rational expectations thatpeople Think-Act-Feel they actually Feel-Act-Rationalize their actions. So if your messagedoesnt strike an emotional chord with youraudience you wont get too far.And finally, dont forget, check to make sure your message ADDS VALUE.

Timing Flexible Shared

Budget Long-Haul Secured

Timing and Budget are two other criticalaspect to plan ahead for.

Digital marketing is a continuousexperiment, so plan for flexibility. Shareyour timing with all internal stakeholderswhose support youll need and avoidsurprises as much as possible.

It takes continued and persistent effort toget a digital marketing program to buildtraction. If you run out of budget and stop investing what you gained through blood, sweat and tears will be gone in the blink of an eye. The most typical example for this in pharma are websites that are built andlaunched to great fanfare, attract audiencesone year, only to be abandoned because theproject owner moved to another role or youstop adding new content because you ranout of budget. Your audience will not loveyou for that and they will remember you forit.

Integration Organization Brand plan Other channels Prior programs

And one other critical bit of planning should gointo integrating your program or project withinthe organization (i.e. your sales force, legal, medical, access, corporate communication, HR). Digital marketing programs should never be theremit of a special team or department. Theyshould be integrated into the strategic plans at all levels, down to the brand plan and owned byrelevant people in the organization. They shouldalso be integrated with other channels youalready use like congresses, print media, salesdetailing materials, the corporate website and soon. And finally, getting traction in digital is hard already as it is, so dont forget to integrate withearlier digital or traditional programs that havebeen succesful.

PLATFORM

Choose andcombine forpurpose

A place foreverything andeverything in itsplace

There are many possible platforms whereyour program or project may come to life. Each platform also has a natural media, customer segment, tone of voice that youneed to respect and understand. Chooseand combine to suit your purpose. A formaltone on Twitter wont work and YouTuberequires attractive video, Facebook coversbillions yet the younger generation are on Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat or the latestplatform you havent yet heard of. A Michelin starred restaurant cant be withouta bread knife and a burger joint withoutketchup.

PITCH

2

1

3

Agitate-Impact

Educate-Communicate

Activate-Persuade

Now that youve preparedall your material, you needto pitch it to your audience.

The 3 steps to pursue areconstant.

They are:Agitate, Educate, Activate.

1Agitate-Impact

The purpose of the Agitate step is tograb your audiences attention. Itslike shouting Hey! to someone in a crowded place.

Once you have their attention youwant to Educate or Inform themabout whatever it is that yourefocusing on.

Here are some examples of Agitate.

3Activate-Persuade

You got their attention, and told themwhat you wanted to tell them, nowclose the sale, call them to action.

If you can actually get your audienceto do something physical as part of your call to action thats even better. Because people will remembersomething much better and be muchmore inclined to change their futurebehaviour if theyve involved more of their five senses into it.

1

1 2 3

3

3

3

3

3

Heres a good example of how the three steps couldbe used in an email.

AgitateEducateActivate

2 2

William Bernbach DDB

"It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.Creativity is a process to

have original ideas that have value.

Sir Ken Robinson

After seeing these examples you might have started thinking that this is somethingfor your creative agencies to worry about and figure out for you. I think otherwise.

Sir Ken Robinson who is a thought leader for creativity, defines creativity as a process to have original ideas that have value. I believe original ideas come fromdeep insights. If youve followed the 7 Steps as described here youll be in the bestposition to have those insights for your intended audience and best positioned todevelop original ideas from them. This is fundamentally important as William Bernbach of DDB states that will be the only legal unfair advantage over yourcompetitors. And mind you your competition might not be who you might think it is. Encyclopedia did not fall victim to Larousse but Wikipedia.

Content

PeoplePurposePlanPlatformPitch

These first five steps arewhat make up your content.

And content is king foranything digital.

PROMOTION

Launch

EarlyAdopters

Champions

A digital marketing program or project is just like a new product or brand. It needs a launch. Makesure you launch and launch well. IMS Healthsrecords Show that almost no pharma product thatfailed in its first six months ever made a comeback again. Why should it be any different fordigital pharma marketing programs?

Identify and pursue your potential early adoptersfervently. They will help you learn what works, what doesnt and guide you in improving what youhave on offer. If you dont have any, stop and goback to the People step.

And finally, aim to cultivate champions of yourprogram or project who will spread the word aboutyour program or project a lot better than you ever can on your own.

PERFORMANCE

Observe

Measure

Set thresholds

Set targets

Fine tune

Pivot or persist

Save the knowledge

Track your performance. Most of these are self-explanatory, so Ill explain only those that might not be.Set thresholds: Set minimum clicks, visits, usersetc. as success milestones you aim to hit. This willensure you dont invest time or effort if somethingdoesnt work.

Pivot or persist: You cant always know how thingsturn out. If things are not going to plan eitherchange the plan radically according to new insightsyouve gained or if you are certain your convicitonsare true then persist until a given deadline ormilestone. If persistance fails then you inevitablyhave to pivot or quit.

Save the knowledge:Dont forget to record whatyouve learned and gained for the future.

Add valuefor your

customer

People

The 7 Psof Digital Pharma

MarketingTughan Demirbilek

tughan777@gmail.com

@tughan777

Purpose

Platform

Plan

Pitch

Performance

Promotion

The 7 Ps of Digital Pharma MarketingSlide Number 2PEOPLESlide Number 4Slide Number 5Slide Number 6Slide Number 7PURPOSESlide Number 9Slide Number 10Slide Number 11PLANSlide Number 13Slide Number 14Slide Number 15PLATFORMSlide Number 17PITCHSlide Number 19Slide Number 20Slide Number 21Slide Number 22Slide Number 23ContentPROMOTIONSlide Number 26PERFORMANCESlide Number 28Slide Number 29The 7 Ps of Digital Pharma Marketing