Tips for identifying a winning strategy for your pharmaceutical brand

If you have taken the time to go through all the brand planning steps, then you are ready to identify the strategy, or strategies, that will achieve your brand's objectives by tackling the most important key issues .

A strategy is a high-level description of what needs to be accomplished in order to achieve the brand objectives , to help the brand compete to its fullest potential and to best meet the patients' needs.

It is not a list of detailed activities that need to take place. This is the next step of the brand planning process. Do not skip the strategy step or there could be a loss of focus of what truly needs to be done.

Take a look at the key issues that you identified in the last step. Each key issue should have 1 or 2 strategies assigned to it with the intention of tackling that particular issue. Be specific of what you want to achieve with that strategy.

For example, if you use the key issue example that we discussed in the last section, your strategy could be as simple as 'Obtain full coverage for the brand by the top 3 medical insurance companies by the end of the year.'

Once your brand plan is complete and has been approved, you will have a set of strategies to guide your activities for the following year.

Type the strategies one underneath the other, print them, laminate the sheet, and pin this somewhere close to your computer.

Why is this important? Many people at your company and elsewhere will be very passionate about the brand that you are marketing, and will give you tons of great ideas on what you should do to promote the brand. You are also passionate about the brand you are marketing, so you may get very excited about these ideas. If the idea fits one of the strategies, then evaluate it. If not, then politely thank the person for taking the initiative to give you such a fantastic idea, but that it currently does not fit the marketing strategies that have been identified and approved. Of course their idea would help grow the brand, but as a marketer, you only have so much budget and so much time. You will be more successful if you stay focused on the approved strategies.

There are always exceptions. If the situation of the market has changed substantially since you developed the brand strategy, and this particular suggestion would address the new situation, then you need to re-assemble the brand planning team to discuss next steps. Remember that the brand plan is developed and approved as a team , so all team members should also have input into major changes that may take place during the year.