New technologies and services that lack a coherent marketing strategy can languish for years before they produce a decent revenue stream. Take microdosing services for pharmaceutical development. When this concept was launched commercially nearly 10 years ago it was positioned as a way to obtain an early insight into how new pharmaceutical compounds were processed in the human body (known as pharmacokinetics). Testing could be done with a few volunteers using sub-therapeutic levels of drug (commonly 1/100th of a therapeutic dose), in a sort of “pre-clinical-trial clinical trial”, supposedly cutting the time to obtain data that would reveal whether or not the new compound would be worth pursuing further.
Because it was ground breaking and required a process change in pharmaceutical drug development, the uptake was slow. Many in the industry remain unconvinced that you can administer a microdose and confidently extrapolate that data to a normal therapeutic dose level, a consistent argument against adoption of this technology. Still the proponents of the approach (Xceleron Ltd being the pioneers) carried on, trying to change minds within the regulatory authorities and the skeptical marketplace with some success.
More recently new applications of the microdosing approach have started to gain traction – namely in helping to understand why some compounds fail to achieve adequate levels in the blood stream or produce variable pharmacokinetic data. These new methods get around the extrapolation argument and solve very real questions which animal studies and in vitro methods are unable to address. It’s a shame that it took so long.
It seems to be a normal state of affairs that a biotechnology company develops an innovative approach to “streamline” the drug discovery/development process but it fails to effectively position the new product in the marketplace. As a result it takes years for it to take off – the time it takes for the right people to understand the technology and make the mental leap to apply it to their particular issue.
How do you avoid wasting 10 years trying to convince pharma to adopt your new approach?
Start with a marketing strategy that:
- Defines who will adopt the technology
- Sets out the market positioning and points of differentiation – and tests them out on your chosen target customers
- Clearly states the product and service attributes that address under-served needs in the market
- Assesses the competition and external influences, threats and opportunities
- Identifies the most appropriate marketing channels
- Evaluates pricing options
- Includes effective communications and branding
