Keys to Successful Product Launches

The following points are the most critical approaches that can facilitate a successful launch: 

• Brand leadership must create a master brand in which future indications are mapped out and clearly support overall brand positioning. The goal should be to tell an increasingly compelling story that builds the brand and expands the market’s understanding of the product’s uses, benefits and contribution to an improved patient outcome.

• Product differentiation has to extend beyond catchy slogans about efficacy to broad-based programs that demonstrate commitment and success in improving patient outcomes. Launch brands have less to invest in traditional channels and are shifting their money toward developing more integrated patient treatment programs, often relying on mutually beneficial relationships within the treatment ecosystem. Successful marketing should emphasize how a product and its ancillary services improve health outcomes to drive top-line growth.

• Brand resource allocation decisions should be based on a deep understanding of current market potential. Pharmaceutical companies have volumes of data. They must embrace advanced analytics to increase launch uptake and Return on Investment (ROI).

• Effective launch strategies focus not just on tracking, understanding and targeting the physicians who write the script. They must also focus on a much broader group of people who influence the script—including patient advocates and social media Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), such as conference speakers and specialists. The key to success is to build a robust KOL network that extends beyond the top 20 most well known national KOLs into the top 100 regional and local KOLs as well.

• Brand teams must identify gaps in their launch plans from the start. Unidentified launch gaps can be more difficult to address as the launch date approaches. When the gaps are discovered, the organization must have the fortitude to hold the correct people accountable for closing those gaps.

• Organizations with project management discipline can consistently deliver launches that are on time and on budget, making project management a source of competitive advantage. Dedicated launch management is essential given the complexity of today’s accelerated launches. Without a single, senior program management lead and integrated launch plan tracking issues and risks, a complex launch plan with multiple dependencies can quickly grind to a halt. Oversight is unrelenting, but necessary, work.

• The traditional zero to 12-week “blackout period” post-launch combined with the intense energy launch brands pour into pre-launch objectives explains why some brands lose focus after launch. Savvy, guarded physicians and aggressive competitors can quickly stall launch momentum. For instance, one brand launched into a very competitive environment recognizing it needed to find ways to measure performance immediately post-launch and overcome the traditional blackout period during the first 12 weeks of launch.

Successful brands must harness advanced performance monitoring to make needed adjustments immediately - and then continue to monitor and adjust for months to come. Changes that have occurred in the pharmaceutical industry have had an irreversible effect on product launches. With both the time to achieve peak sales and peak sales themselves significantly reduced, launch brands must adopt new launch approaches to make the most out of their limited windows of opportunity.

Drugmakers can succeed by understanding the advantages they can readily gain by making better use of existing data to develop rich insights into both stakeholder needs and launch performance. This enables them to develop more meaningful relationships with a broader and new set of stakeholders and rigorously follow through and monitor launch brand performance, making adjustments long after the flurry of activity over the official launch has ended.

(Abstract from the source:  “The Op-Ed: A Paradigm Shift In Launching Drugs” by Ed Silverman | Pharmalive.com - The Pulse of the Pharmaceutical Industry | 01/08/2013)