Rare Disease Marketing
Over the past 10 years, research into orphan drugs for rare diseases has seen a significant increase in investment, all driven by rare disease marketing.
Some of the reasons that have led to this increased interest are:
- drugs for rare diseases should have faster development times;
- lower R&D and marketing costs;
- greater value on the market (because of the high unmet needs in rare diseases)
- public investments.
The reasons just listed (along with other more specific ones) make the rare disease market very attractive to pharmaceutical companies, including start-ups and small-sized ones.
The other side of the coin is given by the fact that, being rare diseases, the data available for research are scarce.
The importance of marketing and medical strategy in the domestic rare disease markets starts from this evidence.
There are several reasons why rare diseases marketing strategies should start from the domestic market, from research to awareness to obtaining more qualified leads.
Market Research and Territory Alignment
Technological advances, process improvements, new messaging formats, and social media platforms (such as Facebook, Linkedin, and also TikTok and X, formerly Twitter) enable market researchers to create research and reports specifically for pharmaceutical companies.
Furthermore, the use of integrated electronic tools by physicians in the field is increasingly widespread, allowing the creation of electronic registries and databases accessible to pharmaceutical companies and their marketing teams.
The powerful connection between crucial data points is automated, creating a direct link between data and leads.
As a result, marketing departments can collect more comprehensive datasets, organize it, and perform more accurate and effective research.
Territory Preparation and Lead Generation in rare disease marketing
Data and analytics help a rare disease company to identify and reach new regions/countries and achieve a deeper impact on the local communities that need their products.
Territory preparation is a productive strategy that should be used before the actual lead acquisition efforts.
Like any marketing strategy, pharmaceutical marketing is much more effective when you have multiple touchpoints with a potential lead.
Investments in territory preparation can include profiling physicians and centers via phone or email before a field force is built, identifying the patient population, and even gathering information about the disease status being studied.
These preparation efforts are and can be thought of as educational. Once potential patients have been identified, efforts can then begin to convert them into leads.
Since patients can be located anywhere and typical rare disease pharmaceutical companies place field representatives in targeted territories, territory preparation efforts allow companies to focus their coverage and identify the relevant physicians and potential patients within their initial geographic target.
Lead generation can also be accomplished through a multi-channel marketing strategy. Integrating the work of field reps, MSLs and KAMs with an online marketing team is an efficient and productive way to get started.
Generating more qualified leads profitably can be a challenge when managed in-house.
A remote marketing team can increase leads without breaking the budget.
Internal marketing teams oversee finding data, generating leads, and converting leads into sales. Owned commercial teams take care of executing rare disease marketing strategies and achieving the educational and sales goals to make these efforts successful both for patients and pharma companies.
If, on the other hand, your presence in your domestic market of rare disease is already strong and structured and you are interested to expand into new territories, such as the European market, the best solution is to turn to BlueDil International. With its long-lasting expertise in orphan drugs development and launch, BlueDil can serve as your virtual affiliate, providing an agile and fully-integrated team to cost-effectively enter the complex but strategic European market of rare diseases.