ABSTRACT
A biopharmaceutical firm has four major promotional tools in its possession: personal selling, public relations and publicity, sales promotion, and advertising. Promotional activities may be directed toward the product portfolio, or the biopharmaceutical company itself. In using a push strategy, a biomanufacturer seeks to send custom-tailored product information, promoting the product’s competitive advantages through the promotion of its unique selling points. Having selected a push strategy, biomanufacturers are then faced with the selection of customer audiences to be targeted, communication media to be implemented, as well as the frequency and detail of the promotional information. The usual methods of biopharmaceutical promotion to them are through personal selling or other targeted communications, focus groups, and conferences. However enormous the implications of direct-to-consumer-advertising of drugs and the budgets devoted to this, the issue of physician targeted promotion is significantly greater on all fronts, both financially and in terms of eventual outcomes.
