What does launch excellence really mean? For you? For your customers? For their patients!

Launch excellence should mean more to your customers and their patients, than you, the pharma marketer, sales team, the commercial and medical leaders. For you, it will mean commercial success and a job well done; for them, it could be life-changing.

By their nature, product launches often look to the short term; getting the right ‘bang for your buck’, striking while the data’s hot, making hay while the story shines, so ‘success’ and ‘excellence’ are defined by what is achievable within a certain time frame – typically a big, attention-grabbing campaign, and plenty of sales materials that may or may not get used.

A creative ad campaign will make a splash, but is it effective on its own, and is it sustainable? Rep calls and emails will lead to some interesting conversations, but what will they be talking about when the noise dies down?

Medical science liaisons (MSLs) and key opinion leaders (KOLs) talking about the data will garner some attention, but so what? What’s next?

By involving the audience (internal and external) early and continuously in the launch planning process and applying intelligent omnichannel planning, we can dramatically improve the process and measure effectiveness of launch.

Through rapid test-learn-refine measurement, we can evolve quickly and push excellence at launch. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, we can be loud and smart at the same time.

What could a ‘better’ approach to patient-first customer experience planning do that would have the highest impact at launch?

Future launch excellence will focus on the customer experience and, as a result, will be more effective, more efficient and drive better shared outcomes, for the patient and the healthcare professional (HCP), over time. Launch excellence isn’t just about the numbers, it’s about the behaviours behind the numbers. Only here can we really elevate and evolve launch excellence, overcoming audience barriers such as HCP and patient habits, perceptions and entrenched behaviours, as well as internal pain points ranging across strategic consistency in messaging and approach (global to local), intelligent engagement planning, CRM uptake, rep capability, and sales and marketing cohesion. Only when addressing internal and external barriers and drivers will you achieve excellence in customer and patient experience.

We need to listen, learn, engage and evolve with your customers. We balance what you, the client, wants to say, with what your customers want to hear and how they want to hear it, see it, click it and discuss it with their peers.

Are you ready? Will you ever be ready? We all know that your customers are changing how they consume media; content formats, channels, one-way info is becoming open discussion, the power is shifting, the control is slipping. So, embrace the change, pre-empt their needs, engage HCPs on their terms.

‘Launch readiness’ is a moveable feast; you can be ready to do what you’ve always done – create and share some assets internally and hope the local markets know what they’re doing – but how can we be absolutely sure that the right capabilities are in place at ground level to localise and execute launch assets via the most effective means?

Put your customers, and their patients, at the heart of launch strategy from the beginning and throughout, via ongoing, future-focused engagement planning. An all-too-common approach is for pharma to look inward first, at its organisational structure or readiness planning – which is vital – but to be ‘ready’, you can only prepare so much, you need to be able to react, flex and engage the audience in ways that work for them. What do the audiences want or need? What will be their barriers and drivers to adoption?

The ‘right’ medical, marketing and sales approach is an integrated one. A successful launch doesn’t have to be the most complex, or full of the latest technology and innovative channels – your launch materials need to be relevant, compelling and easy to access. Only then will they be useful and usable for both internal teams and customers, and only then can you learn what works, what doesn’t and why.

Launch excellence should champion shared success – for the pharma companies, their reps, the customers and their patients. Being omni-relevant will drive a successful launch.

We make sure that the voice and behaviours of the HCP and the patient are considered throughout launch and beyond. We work with clients, their customers and their patients to continuously explore and embrace the evolution of healthcare engagement. This isn’t ‘launch excellence’, it’s ‘customer experience excellence that produces a successful launch’. Not as snappy, but you’ll get better results.

Inizio Engage XD is part of Inizio, a market-leading commercialisation platform for pharma and biopharma, connecting best-in-class scientific knowledge, market intelligence, actionable data, cutting-edge tech, communication and creative execution. We help our clients navigate each pivotal moment in their clinical development and commercialisation journey so that more people get the treatments they need, faster.