Bob Harrell, IMS-Appature

 through personal promotion, together with more empowered and informed audiences, continues to pressure the industry to engage customers more effectively. The advent of IDNs (Integrated Delivery Networks) and ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) is also making commercial teams rethink how best to deliver value beyond traditional personal selling.

As a result, marketing is undergoing a wide-scale transformation to enable individual customer-driven interactions, automated cross-channel campaign management, and rapid feedback loops. The current transformation also affects how sales is incorporated into overall marketing delivery. Systems and processes that treat non-personal and personal promotion plans as loosely connected, parallel activities are no longer workable. Healthcare marketers are challenged to bridge that gap with what technology now makes possible, converging to deliver comprehensive management of campaigns, customer experience and optimization.

		Key capabilities are necessary to make this shift happen:

			Data for all personal and non-personal activities integrated by customer

			Campaign management serving as “air traffic control” to direct all tactics, including sales calls

		Many companies are leveraging cloud-based tools that provide flexibility to integrate new vendors, data, and features quickly into the marketing process. This, combined with digital tools such as iPads in the hands of the reps, is enabling a new kind of flexibility in the commercial model.

Making the leap: three-step process to change

		Appature developed a Marketing Maturity Curve to help organizations make sense of the new environment, evaluate what’s appropriate for a particular product given the market situation, and understand the decisions necessary to advance up the Curve.

STEP 1: Take stock of your current approach to marketing

		The Marketing Maturity Diagnostic helps marketers see quickly where they are in terms of needs, capabilities, and gaps, and bolsters the case for taking action. The diagnostic helps marketers analyze each brand across four categories: customer data & segmentation; customer experience; marketing analytics; and marketing technology.

			Levels of granularity for customer definition

			Frequency of data use to refine/reassess segments

			Degree of integration of customer data sources

			How the brand team plans and executes campaigns

			Timeframe for analysis and optimization decisions

			Basis for future marketing investment decisions

			Use of marketing tools and systems—e.g., 360 customer database, campaign management and execution, centralized reporting

			Integration with other company systems—e.g., sales force automation, call center, finance, market research

STEP 2: Evaluate the fit to the market situation

		The self-assessment gives marketers a general idea where they locate along the Marketing Maturity Curve’s multidimensional approach. Is the brand suited to traditional tactic-driven marketing? Does it represent a foundation for a new approach in development? Has true customer-centric marketing been achieved? Have marketers advanced to the stage of insight-driven informed marketing?

		Keep in mind that the most advanced stage is not necessarily the best choice. Calibrate the approach to each brand, fine-tuning it using real-world and real-time information wherever possible.

		These four stages form the basis of the Marketing Maturity rating:

		This traditional approach involves creating and deploying tactics to a broad target audience, with limited coordination of tactics or use of technology and little or no access to information about what’s working and what isn’t. It is well suited to brands with low ROI pressure, a less complicated customer base, less need for customer engagement, and an established market base.

		Brands in this category use tactic-driven marketing while doing initial groundwork for advancing up the Marketing Maturity Curve, putting in place operational investments to enable a future state of more insight-driven marketing. This stage fits with brands under ROI pressure or serving a more complex customer in a more complex media landscape.

		This is a necessary stage, providing the “plumbing” for future changes, but no intrinsic business value. Many companies get stuck here, caught in a vortex of data collection and system building, often taking on large “on-premise” (not cloud-based) infrastructure that move slowly. Brands at this stage are in peril unless marketers develop clear, time-bound plans for moving to Stage 3.

		Brands in this stage are beginning to truly organize campaigns around the customer. Marketing campaigns for these brands are executed across channels and provide at least some effectiveness information for more informed decision-making. Brand marketers have developed close partnerships with IT and/or external providers, and are beginning to leverage technology to deliver on their goals. Multiple channels are used to create a coherent customer “journey.” At this stage marketers still may lack 24/7 access to campaign data and continuity in the customer journey, and encounter gaps during the loyalty phase.

		If the brand has a competitive market, complex customer base, sophisticated multi-channel campaign or faces financial pressure to deliver efficiently, keep reading. The brand belongs in Stage 4.

Stage 4. Insight-driven, informed marketing

		Marketers whose brands reach this level on the Marketing Maturity Curve have achieved real transformation. Their capabilities to use real-time information to drive marketing campaigns enable them to deliver high-value, personalized experiences for their customers, be more informed in their optimization decisions, make changes while campaigns are still ongoing, and exhibit more agility.

		This is the new “holy grail.” Marketers and operations leaders who understand and can implement this transformation will be ahead of the curve for the brand, the company, and their own careers.

		If marketers and operations teams fit this description, they are truly leveraging information to personalize the customer experience, partner with sales, create multiple unique experiences for the customer, optimize campaigns mid-stream, and use cloud-based tools to develop insights in real time.

STEP 3: Create a plan to move up the curve

		Three interconnected components—skills, processes, and technology&mdash;are essential to implement meaningful insight-driven marketing that integrates all personal and non-personal channels.

Articles

Given the profound changes in the pharmaceutical commercial model, sales and marketing must deliver integrated customer experiences across channels and adapt through real-time insights