Taking Control - how to take real control of your segmentation and targeting

There are two major elements in making a segmentation and targeting project deliver:

· defining your customer base accurately by value, and

· an effective implementation in the salesforce.

How do you place a value on every customer in your audience?

To understand and measure true customer level value you need to assess a customer in at least two dimensions:

 

1. Potential to prescribe, or to influence prescribing of your products.

This is best described as the level of opportunity a customer has to prescribe and/or influence others positively. Examples of simple measures of potential are the number of patients or the relevant market sales volume. Looking at potential alone will only give a portion of the value of a customer. When you add in the second dimension, propensity - this can be used to work out value.

2. Propensity, or likelihood, to prescribe or influence your products.

These are the parameters that determine the likelihood of your promotional activity being successful. Again taking a simple example, previous usage of your product is a propensity factor, but maybe the impact of influencers or gatekeepers at PCO or Trust levels could be a more important measure.

There are several parameters that can be used for each dimension, and by using both dimensions, you have a far better view of the true value of the customer base than by just using potential alone

What specific data do you use to value customers?

Unlike a third party list supplier, you have a free hand when selecting what data to use. As long as the information concerned can be obtained robustly, and linked to your tactical end point (i.e. the account or customer), then it can be considered.

To demonstrate the diversity of data you could use, we’ll take the example of a GP level segmentation project for an anti-hypertensive drug. The characteristics are only examples and are not intended to be accurate, representative, indicative or useable.

Simple potential characteristics:–

· number of patients,

· local population levels of disease relevant groups [age, sex, socio-economic etc],

· market usage and growth.

Simple propensity characteristics:–

· own product usage,

· response to your product USP (e.g. compliance, safety, efficacy etc),

· selected competitor usage,

· use of branded competitors in the same class of drugs as your own (e.g. use of branded ACEis etc),

· presence of an active cholesterol management clinic at the practice.

PCT has your brand specified on their formulary.

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Questions or comments? E-mail us at info@evantageconsulting.co.uk

“I truly believe we now have a state of the art segmentation & targeting strategy that will deliver our brand strategy”.

Ian Broadgate, CV Therapy Manager, Novartis