Frost & Sullivan releases the 'White Paper on Exploring Innovative Medical Promotion Service Models in China 2022'

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The innovative pharmaceutical promotion model refers to a service model where pharmaceutical companies entrust enterprise service providers with digital systems to achieve online visits, online academic conferences, and the latest medical information push to strengthen communication with healthcare professionals. At the same time, offline contact and regular visits are also adopted to improve user stickiness and explore richer offline promotion scenarios. Unlike traditional pharmaceutical promotion services that mainly rely on offline physical media, the innovative pharmaceutical promotion model typically does not require a large team of pharmaceutical representatives.

Source: Frost & Sullivan report

• Promote the compliance of solutions

In response to the increasingly tightening national supervision of the pharmaceutical sales industry, business compliance is a fundamental prerequisite for the future development of pharmaceutical CSOs. In the future, pharmaceutical CSOs should avoid blindly guiding sales processes with financial compliance as the core, but instead focus on business operations and return to true pharmaceutical CSO services, addressing financial and tax compliance issues from the perspective of business promotion.

• Continuous optimization of promotion content and expansion of service areas

With the increasing demand from upstream and downstream enterprises for pharmaceutical promotion service providers, service upgrading has become the main trend in the development of these companies. In the future, the optimization direction will revolve around two major themes: expanding into more service areas and refining service content.

• Upstream and downstream industries are linked

The expansion of service areas requires pharmaceutical promotion service enterprises to provide more value-added services for upstream and downstream enterprises. By extending their service scope, pharmaceutical promotion service enterprises can transform the original single model that only served pharmaceutical companies into a closed-loop industry chain service system, linking upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, thus creating a foundation for the future large-scale development of enterprises.

• Online and offline integration

Although the current online mode can meet most information interaction and transaction operations needs, real-world scenarios that are accessible, timely information acquisition, and face-to-face visits offline are particularly important for forming long-term and stable trust relationships with customers. This includes important scenarios such as medical institution access, cross-departmental services, and academic exchanges. Therefore, an ecological-level promotion service model integrated online and offline will become an inevitable trend in the future development of pharmaceutical promotion.

• Strengthen the product portfolio and import drug layout in the treatment areas of specific diseases

The competition in the pharmaceutical promotion industry has become increasingly fierce with the increase in the number of institutions within the industry. In addition to service operations and clients, forming professional service features at the product level has become a key success factor for pharmaceutical promotion services.

(1) The COVID-19 pandemic has driven digital transformation, and digital technologies and AI applications have gained market recognition.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected offline meetings and other offline promotional activities. Due to the increasing maturity of digital promotion models and further advancement driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, digital promotion has gradually replaced traditional offline promotion models. Digital pharmaceutical promotion can more accurately target customer groups through the combination of big data and AI, deliver product information and collect feedback through various media channels, and help with data flow back and the accumulation of digital assets.

(2) From the supply side, innovative drugs have further driven overall market demand

In the past two decades, with the rapid development of biotechnology, many innovative treatment methods and emerging medical devices have continued to evolve. In China, with a series of technological reforms advocated by the state, more and more independently developed innovative drugs are being launched on the market. Therefore, both international and domestic medical companies have a huge demand for pharmaceutical promotion.

(3) Players driven by ecological services can better fulfill the industry's mission against the backdrop of innovation in China's pharmaceutical industry

Compared to other types of innovative pharmaceutical promotion solution players, ecosystem service-driven players can maximize the satisfaction of pharmaceutical companies' actual needs, bringing tangible results in drug promotion and sales.

By continuously accumulating a pool of real and reliable drug usage feedback information, service providers accumulate fulfillment experience in 'digital assets' and industry solutions. This enables them to continuously optimize costs, meet their internal profitability requirements, and ensure the healthy and sustainable development of themselves.

(4) Traditional CSO pharmaceutical promotion service companies will accelerate their cooperation with digital platforms, and traditional pharmaceutical representatives will not be replaced. Instead, they will become part of an integrated and digitalized pharmaceutical promotion ecosystem.

Traditional pharmaceutical promotion service enterprises such as CSOs will accelerate their transformation and will establish close cooperative relationships with ecological service-driven or purely digital promotion enterprises in the future.

Traditional offline representatives possess mature business acumen with local hospitals and physician groups, which plays a significant role for both pharmaceutical companies and digital healthcare promotion service providers. CSOs leverage their team's rich offline promotion experience and mature capabilities to assist pure online players in transforming into ecosystem service-oriented enterprises.

The core promotion group for pharmaceutical companies is still primarily doctors, and future digital promotion strategies focused on patient management will develop rapidly. Currently, leading pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer have already made C-end patient management one of the important aspects of digital promotion, by providing feedback on patients' medication needs to form a data supplement to traditional promotion methods.

Currently, the pharmaceutical promotion services in China can be divided into two types: traditional pharmaceutical promotion models and innovative pharmaceutical promotion models.Among them, the innovative pharmaceutical promotion service model has a more complete fulfillment and reach service system: Pharmaceutical companies strengthen their connection with healthcare professionals by adopting digital systems for online visits, online academic conferences, and the latest medical information push. At the same time, they also use offline contact and regular visits to improve user stickiness and explore richer offline promotion scenarios.

Source: Frost & Sullivan report

Online digital promotion refers to pharmaceutical companies reaching prescribing doctors through voice communication, internet advertising, online meetings, and other methods. The online model breaks down the limitations of time and space, improves reach efficiency, and helps pharmaceutical companies easily implement and track the progress of digital promotion as well as analyze results.

Promotion analysis refers to helping pharmaceutical companies formulate drug promotion strategies, analyze and predict the effectiveness of promotions; strategic analysis also involves collecting basic information and behavioral data about target doctor groups, and based on this, continuously optimizing personalized and precise promotion strategies.

Based on the specific situation of the drug, innovative pharmaceutical promotion service providers precisely design online and offline promotion strategies to enhance long-term promotional effectiveness.

Source: Frost & Sullivan report

Compared to general online model-driven enterprises, ecological service-driven pharmaceutical promotion enterprises can also be equipped with offline service teams to further ensure the fulfillment of promotional commitments and doctor loyalty, addressing the pain point of being unable to form long-term stable cooperative relationships with frontline doctors.

Centering on the digitization of traditional offline promotion scenarios, it revitalizes the private domain traffic of pharmaceutical companies and enables drug promotion services through internet traffic.

The medical service-driven model connects with a wide range of doctors in China by establishing a mature operational platform for professional doctor management. It usually ensures doctor stickiness on the platform by providing online consultation, health consultation, and other services, thus laying a solid foundation for subsequent digital promotion of medicine.

By delivering cutting-edge medical research findings, clinical diagnosis and treatment guidelines, and other services to the medical community, we aim to enhance interaction with doctors and improve platform stickiness. After establishing a mature doctor community platform, we promote relevant pharmaceutical information, including treatment plans and medication pairing strategies, to achieve the effect of pharmaceutical promotion.

It mainly relies on the existing mature channel resources of distributors, directly signing channel placement and promotion strategies for relevant drugs with pharmaceutical companies. Digital means are also used for monitoring and adjusting promotional strategies, such as Pharmacist Helper's 'Factory Brand First Promotion' service.

Source: Frost & Sullivan report

Innovative pharmaceutical promotion services can achieve precise reach to target doctors through the accumulation and application of 'digital assets'. This is based on the analysis of basic doctor information and behavioral data (preferences, behaviors, etc.).

Innovative pharmaceutical promotion service players have broken through the physical limitations of traditional promotion methods through online market research, preliminary voice communication, and academic department meetings. This has significantly reduced trial-and-error and promotion costs, while also enabling them to reach a broader grassroots market. The integrated online and offline collaboration has greatly improved efficiency.

Innovative pharmaceutical promotion service companies can design business portfolio models that meet actual needs based on the specific conditions of target markets, such as developed cities, key communities, and towns. This includes organizational structure design, KPI breakdown and assessment, talent recruitment and training, etc., aiming to achieve the accumulation and replication of promotion experience in similar markets, optimize promotion costs, and control risks in new market expansion.

Compared to traditional promotion models, which may exacerbate doctors' 'work-life conflict' issues through frequent offline visits and result in poor service experiences, the ecological pharmaceutical promotion model can provide doctors with highly convenient pharmaceutical academic programs, clinical medication guidance, and patient management tools, significantly reducing doctors' workload, improving work efficiency, and offering a better service experience.

Source: Frost & Sullivan report

A full understanding of the matching relationship between drug service needs among medical institutions, doctors, and patients:Similar to the concept of 'people, goods, and place' in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, one of the core values of innovative pharmaceutical promotion services is the ability to 'provide appropriate services at the right time, for the right hospitals and doctors, through the right methods, thereby enabling patients to use medications rationally'.

Innovative service model focusing on doctor experience:Chinese doctors often face a high-intensity work schedule and bear significant work pressure. How to communicate effectively with doctors is one of the fundamental guarantees for achieving long-term service. In the future, only innovative promotion services that fully consider the doctor's experience can achieve large-scale and sustainable success.

Doctors are the core resource of the entire healthcare industry, serving as a link connecting hospitals, patients, and pharmaceutical companies. The scale of doctor management is a key factor in ensuring the effectiveness of promotional services:Innovative pharmaceutical promotion requires the support of a massive user base on the platform to generate networked and scaled effects. Therefore, the ceiling of digital service providers is influenced by the scale of platform users, and their core competitiveness largely depends on the number of doctors receiving promotional services.

Accumulation and utilization methods of 'data assets':To provide 'one-stop' services to pharmaceutical companies, platform service providers need to understand the business strategy and operational demands of pharmaceutical companies in the digital age. Only innovative promotion services that meet strategic needs are what enterprises require. In addition, innovative pharmaceutical promotion service providers often possess massive online medical service traffic. How to convert this service traffic into 'digital assets' and provide support for business conversion is the core capability of innovative pharmaceutical promotion service providers. To achieve long-term and effective doctor reach, service providers need to sort out various doctor behaviors, build an effective doctor database, and accumulate reusable promotion experiences. This enables them to effectively associate promotion behaviors with promotion outcomes, thereby greatly increasing pharmaceutical companies' willingness to pay for promotion services.

Carefully maintained medical service content:The platform needs to have high-value content to retain doctor users. When doctors use the platform, they have many practical needs such as knowledge learning, scientific research communication, re-education, promotion, and enhancing personal influence. Digital tools can meet their daily practical needs by providing knowledge retrieval, classic treatment case retrieval, medical plan discussion, and many other functional modules to improve user stickiness.

Establish good cooperative relationships with medical service institutions:Medical service institutions, such as hospitals and clinics, are the core places where medical services are provided. The management of medical service institutions is the key decision-making body in determining drug admissions. Establishing a good cooperative relationship with medical service institutions, including compliant operations, promoting intra-hospital department construction, and improving information technology levels, will bring business opportunities for more in-depth and comprehensive business development in the future. With the advancement and influence of a series of external policies such as the national 'Thousand Counties Project' and 'volume-based procurement', medical institutions also have a strong desire to leverage external service forces to achieve long-term survival and development of the hospital, which has laid a healthy social foundation for future cooperation.