Facing the Reality—Not all Customers are Good Customers

When it comes to marketing pharmaceutical products directly to potential customers or existing patients, there is one important lesson that is often overlooked: not all customers are good ones.

The truth is that within our acquisition obsessed industry, many companies don't recognize that nonselective targeting can lead to problems down the line. Getting anyone on your Brand is not always a good thing—you need to try to segment consumers before a prescription is ever written to determine who is likely to end up being an advocate and not an adversary.

We recently conducted a consumer segmentation and positioning study for one of our Clients with a product for women's health. The results of this quantitative initiative showed that a segment of women currently taking their product were actually damaging the Brand with physicians and other potential patients. Truthfully, they should have never been placed on the drug in the first place.

Armed with this understanding, the Client was able to implement the segmentation model with the field force by creating rich, tangible patient descriptions that target physicians could identify in their offices. So rather than placing all eligible candidates on the Brand, physicians could now select those who were most likely to succeed with treatment. Now that's a reality that's not too hard to face.

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