Achieve More from Your Internal Market Research and Analytics

In many Pharma companies nowadays, the traditional market research function has evolved into a broader, more encompassing business insights and business analytics role. Unfortunately, in many cases the marketing teams do not take optimal advantage of the power of the data that these groups can offer. Because of their closeness to the brand and therapy area, we often see marketers confident they know all about the product challenges and perceive asking for information in specific areas unnecessary. However, by leveraging these teams more, stronger strategic insights and decisions can be made for far stronger revenue and profit results.

Within most Pharma companies, the market research conducted tends to be fairly standard stuff which, perhaps, is part of the problem. Typically we see things like brand awareness, brand and competitor perceptions, message recall, message evaluation, share of voice, prescription intention, prescription adoption, brand share, brand switching behavior, brand loyalty, detail follow-ups, quality and quantity of calls, call satisfaction, rep quality perceptions and company image perceptions. While all of these are of interest and have their place, they are not going to solve the marketers’ real problems i.e. what do I have to do specifically to gain market share against my competitors – and by how much – to achieve a specific positive result. However, the same research could be done in a slightly different way by the internal market research teams, then more sophisticated algorithms could be applied to the data, and the power could be logarithmic compared with what it currently provides the marketing teams. When we did this for one of our Clients, they described it as ‘Market research on steroids’….and it is.

How can you do this? Firstly, with market research – as in marketing – it is always best to begin with the end in mind and decide on the goals of the research. Is it to test an assumption in the strategy? Or is it to get the best messaging mix or segment your targets better? Or is it simply routinely to track basic information? If so, the existing approaches may be fine, but a waste of an expensive resource that could be far better utilized. Ensure you keep the rationale clearly in mind when defining the areas to test.

If you are using it to gain a competitive advantage, as you should, and clearly delineate exactly what the marketing team needs to do to grow market share and revenue profitably and to become or remain market leaders, then simple tracking-type studies do not give you the valuable insight needed. The same research, while answering questions in these existing benchmark areas, could be designed to answer more strategic questions as well. Therefore, the marketing and market research/business analytics teams need to determine exactly what information the marketing teams need. It is far cheaper to do one lot of research that answers queries in multiple areas than to do basic research and then redo it again to populate your analytics model.

Secondly, let’s look at the data itself. One of the biggest challenges for marketers and market researchers is data quality. The problem is so great that, recently, several large Pharma companies have had to divide their market research/business insights teams into data and reporting teams so that the data team is able to focus on ensuring strong data quality.

However, let’s assume that your team understands the issues around this and have them in hand. The second challenge with the data itself is ensuring that the right data is collected to answer the key challenges faced by the marketing teams. It must also be collected in the best manner/medium to fit the needs, and it must be designed to be broad enough to capture the benchmarks wanted but narrow enough to capture specific issues that need understanding.

We have tested many formats and channels for data collection over the years and, sadly, we have not been able to get good quality from online or telephone data collection. Another thing to be wary of with respect to data collection and interpretation is that the data and research should not simply be designed to reinforce the existing views (as is often done) but to really get ‘under the hood’ of the issues to shed new light on issues previously not fully understood.

Perhaps you are conducting research to confirm your suspicion that you are losing market share because you have stopped a particular program. Make sure you do not make that the only thing you examine in the research as you may find you get confirmation bias. Ensure that you put in all other programs being conducted/used as well as what is going on in the market and what’s happening with your competitors to ensure you are being fair to the marketing team and uncovering the real cause of the problem at hand.

Or maybe you need to look at broader target groups, such as Pharmacists and Insurers, as maybe what is causing your issues has nothing to do with the Physicians. We saw this in a project in the USA. We included Managed Care companies in the project and found that the reason the client’s brand was not taking off was largely due to it not being covered anywhere near the extent to what the Client brand marketers thought. By addressing that issue, the brand was able to really grow in the following year.

In every project we have conducted, no matter how long or how well the product team knows the market and therapy areas, we always find nuggets of information that are novel news to the team and, invariably, these nuggets are always the things that are the critical factors to growing the brand much faster. Real opportunities for growth lie when you examine factors in new ways.

Give all the questions being researched the “So what?” test before you begin. Ask yourself, “If this shows x, y or z, so what? What would that mean for what I am doing?” I remember conducting a successful project for a Client in the USA and the brand grew dramatically. The company then put in another 3 brands for analytics. The marketers for the additional 3 brands consulted the first brand team and asked, “What is the most important thing to consider when conducting these analytics?” The first brand team succinctly answered, “Just ensure that the questions you ask are actionable.” I think that is great advice. Clients obviously want answers to many questions but if you can’t do anything about the answer, is it the right question – “So what?”

Thirdly, let’s examine data ownership. Sometimes market research is initiated by the market research department and the marketers refuse to believe the results. This happens when the market research team has not involved the marketing team enough in the design of the research project. Data used and research done to assist sales and marketing teams should always include them.

I can think of a situation in Japan where the analytics team in a company decided to conduct research and analytics to help the marketers. However, at no stage were marketing ever involved in the project apart from being given the results. This is a recipe for disaster and for wasting a whole heap of money! Always ensure that the people who the research and analytics are designed for have a hand in designing it for their needs.
Lastly, let’s discuss communicating and implementing the changes found. It is all well and good to uncover insights that can change the fortunes of a brand; however, for these to have any impact, they must be acted upon. We had challenges with this in past years and then found that by doing training before the results were shown, and then running promotional integration workshops after the results are seen wherein the marketers have access to the results in our Portal (where they can move sliders for a recommended change and see what financial impact that will have on their brands), these issues dissolved. We have discovered that the most powerful way to incite change is to see the direct revenue and profit result of an action.