Flowtown has a terrific (and large!) graphic entitled “The New Marketing Trifecta.” The trifecta refers to the three ways companies should (or could) be marketing their products and services. These are eMail, Mobile Devices, and Social Media.
This trifecta is clearly an approach that pharma/biotech companies will have to use in order to reach physicians with their messages. Indeed, the increasing number of “no-rep” physicians has been well documented elsewhere. So a lower-cost, digital approach makes sense (although whether pharma can be successful is an open question). What we notice from the Flowtown graphic is:
- 91% of companies surveyed are using Facebook as part of their marketing efforts. This is interesting because we tend to view Facebook as a “personal” networking tool, rather than a professional tool (cf., LinkedIn). Will physicians allow pharma/biotech companies to intrude on their personal digital space via Facebook?
- Using the trifecta to increase brand awareness is consistent with pharma/biotech objectives. But, how can companies use social media to convey sophisticated, sometimes nuanced clinical information? Video (YouTube) is one approach. As mobile devices become faster and more sophisticated, we believe short videos will become an increasingly important way to convey short bits of complex clinical information.
We believe that the use of this trifecta will extend beyond the company-physician relationship. In our field (business development), we already see a number of small innovator companies who are using social media to “promote” their technologies and projects. Their aim, in part, is to establish themselves in the eyes of potential licensing partners and even future acquirers and investors. In fact, we typically advise our clients to develop a social media strategy for the company and their products or services as early as possible. This gets their names into the digital information flow, and can result in inquiries from all over the world at lower cost.
Hat Tip to Karl Schmieder and our friends at Bridge6, who discuss this graphic in their most recent newsletter.