For pharmaceutical companies, bringing a new drug to market is a long, complex, resource-intensive process. With so much time and money on the line, commercial teams need an accurate understanding of current market dynamics – including unmet needs and physician perceptions – to position their product for success.
But the value of pharmaceutical market research doesn't end after a drug has launched. The most successful pharma companies leverage physician insights at every stage of the product life cycle. From early discovery through post-launch, rapid, unbiased physician insights can inform critical decisions that will ultimately impact a product's success.
In this post, we’ll explore how you can use on-demand, real-time physician insights from KeyOps to optimize outcomes at every stage of the product life cycle. While the research you conduct will change over time, our unique, targeted approach to reaching healthcare providers will help validate opportunities, optimize strategies, and maximize your return on investment throughout the product journey.
Pre-Launch: Commercialization Planning
When a pharma company has selected a product for development, it’s the job of the commercial team to plan for a successful launch. During the pre-launch phase, the focus is on product marketing and commercialization planning – determining how to position a drug for long-term success.
It’s hard to understate the importance of making well-informed, strategic decisions at this early stage of the product life cycle. That’s because the ultimate success or failure of a pharmaceutical product is often determined within the first few months after its launch. In fact, one study has indicated that for 85% of pharma launches a product’s sales trajectory is set in the first six months.
With so much on the line, commercial teams need fast, reliable physician insights. KeyOps surveys can help create physician personas, map patient journeys, and identify barriers to use. By gathering unbiased insights from the physicians who matter most to your business, you can gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape – helping to refine your physician targeting. And if you don’t have a physician sales target list, we can help you build one by tapping into our physician network.
KeyOps market research data can also help inform your product positioning. Our omni-channel testing allows you to gather feedback on key messages and campaigns with target physicians pre-launch – empowering pharma companies to optimize promotional strategies and hit the ground running at launch.
Launch: Drive Product Awareness
After a pharma product has been officially launched, the first year is critical – as early adoption will shape its long-term sales trajectory. KeyOps provides a direct pipeline to target physicians, enabling your team to monitor KPIs and prescribing behavior in real-time.
Every KeyOps engagement can be customized to deliver the data you need to make key business decisions – from brand health and launch tracking metrics to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your patient support programs.
Our fast time-to-insight means life science commercial teams can gather targeted physician insights in a week or less. As a result, you can use KeyOps to refine your messaging, identify emerging issues, and course correct quickly during this crucial window.
Growth: Maximizing Potential
The growth phase represents the first three to five years post-launch. To fully capitalize on growth opportunities, pharma companies need access to ongoing insights across areas like brand health, patient support programs, and salesforce effectiveness.
At this stage in the product life cycle, the goal is maintaining sales momentum. KeyOps surveys can tap into feedback from targeted physicians to highlight what’s working, what’s not, and where to invest to maximize potential. If there are operational problems or market headwinds, we’ll help identify them quickly – so you can develop strategies to overcome them.
Another benefit of using KeyOps is the ability to quickly respond to unplanned market events. For example, if a competitor is having inventory issues or decides to pull out of a market, KeyOps can deliver the real-time physician you need to capitalize on the opportunity.
Maturity & Decline: Protecting Revenues
For mature brands, the focus shifts to protecting revenues in the face of new competition or loss of exclusivity. KeyOps provides on-demand access to established physician targets to monitor changes in the competitive landscape that may impact prescribing behavior.
Our on-demand surveys offer a great alternative to high-cost ATU market research studies. And unlike physician advisory board research, you’ll get unbiased results from a diverse physician audience. Then, if an unplanned market event occurs, the insights you need to adjust your sales and marketing strategy are only a week away.
New Business Development: Asset Evaluation
New business development is an important lever for pharmaceutical companies to ensure they have the right medicaitons in support of overall strategy and therapeutic area focus. At this point, pharma companies are assessing a potential opportunity, but need to quickly determine whether or not a product is commercially viable.
From a market research standpoint, there are important questions that need to be answered: Will the product serve an unmet efficacy need? Is the size of the potential market large enough to justify an investment? If we launch the product, will physicians actually use or prescribe it?
Using KeyOps, you can get fast answers to those questions from physicians that match your ideal profile – reducing guesswork and providing an objective gut check on whether to move forward with development. This can include customized research on your pre-commercialization asset assessment, market size, competitive gap analysis, and more.
Eliminate Uncertainty with KeyOps
In a competitive and dynamic market, life science commercial teams face the need to make high-stakes decisions in near-constant uncertainty. KeyOps was purpose-built to deliver the rapid physician insights that pharma companies need to navigate critical choices at every turn. To learn how our on-demand pharmaceutical market research can help you maximize opportunities across the product life cycle, request a demo today. Let’s discuss how accelerated market insights can help take the guesswork out of your next decision.
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