Going Hyperlocal: The Next Big Thing For India’s Pharma Industry

Following the pandemic, there has been an increasing concern in every Indian household vis-à-vis the risks associated with the lack of proper health and hygiene. This new dynamic has resulted in high demand for healthcare products and services, thereby giving players in the pharmaceutical industry a catalyst to broaden their target market. This is to say that the new surge of demand for healthcare products and services has resulted in the emergence of new markets that pharma players can target and leverage.

Up until now, the potential stagnation of pharma players can be attributed to the less-than-effective, old-time spray and pray marketing model that lacks the conciseness of target audience, leading to a diverse target landscape that yields little in the way of Return On Investment (ROI). For starters, medical representatives follow an approach targeting doctors based on intuition or heuristics and face an inevitable loss of opportunities. In the meantime, there is a massive dearth of predictive analytics to understand consumer behavior to streamline OTC product marketing, especially FMCG/non-prescription drugs. 

Most importantly, as the pharma sector has been slow in embracing digital transformation, there is no reliable tool to assess the ROI of the marketing effort. Therefore, the pharma sector is met with the challenge of transitioning from an intuitive, time-consuming process for sales and market research to a data-driven initiative to drive more sales. 

Granular Insight Into The SKU Level Of Demand & Supply Trends

One practical solution towards the above-discussed problems lies in leveraging granular insight into the SKU level of demand and supply trends. This will help determine if customers are demanding a more comprehensive array of products or are drawn towards a particular product that is not adequately offered on the sales counter. Also, there may be changing customers’ expectations in terms of delivery speed, which lies in holding more items in-stock to facilitate same-day or next-day orders. 

As such, a more profound SKU analysis might just be the solution to gain granular insight into demand and supply trends and leverage these twin elements to streamline SKU proliferation. 

Pinpointing of Doctors, Pharmacies, Chemists And Hospitals 

All the entities mentioned above are primary sales channels of a pharma company’s products. How well they perform or drive impact in their respective domains has a direct effect on pharma SKUs. To that end, visibility is one crucial element when assessing sales potential. For example, certain doctors might have relatively wide visibility due to location and reputation, which, in turn, absorb more audience. In the meantime, there are also individual pharmacists, chemists, and hospitals that are more conspicuous as opposed to other counterparts due to sheer popularity, thereby emerging as hot prospects for the implementation of Hyperlocal model marketing.

Data-driven action plan for carrying out the marketing of products

This marketing model is quite the buzzword amongst marketers keen on maximizing value and ROI. It appears that investing in data collection produces real-time results. A data-driven action plan enables a sales entity to identify key customer segments, understand expectations, and deliver a curated message that has a greater potential of translating to quantifiable results. As such, data-driven marketing is the key to ascertaining what and which efforts are practical and relatively successful. 

To that end, a pharma entity can harness the power of data by directing emphasis towards metrics on marketing platforms, understanding generic objectives and challenges of a data-driven marketing model, getting a baseline and setting goals, and setting up data collection at every touchpoint. 

Assessment of ROI on marketing effort of product

Performance assessment is one essential component of a marketing campaign in order to get a clear picture of ROI on a marketing effort of product/products. Only then can one understand whether or not the marketing effort is delivering value to a company. 

The valuable insights gained from this process can be employed to formulate better strategies and smarter decision-making. In the meantime, assessing ROI can help with justifying marketing spend, allocating marketing budgets, measuring campaign success, and establishing baselines, crucial elements of a successful hyperlocal model.

At the end of the day, the entire above-enumerated strategies boil down to leveraging technology’s power to rapidly scale across the country and ensure the right product is available at distribution points for customers to avail when needed. In light of Prime Minister Modi setting up the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM), it is only logical for pharma players to embrace this digital transformation to provide better healthcare service to the people of the country. 

As far as market expansion is concerned, the aforementioned transformation is the only answer as digital India is embracing the same, meaning that those on the path of business and service should adapt to it in order to up their games and continue to dominate in their respective ecosystems.