We have different types of selling and marketing types in pharmaceutical sector like
- Branded Drugs Marketing
- Generic Drugs Marketing
- Pharma PCD/Franchise Marketing
- OTC Drugs marketing
- Institutional Supply i.e. corporate hospitals, dispensaries, pharmacy chains etc.
- Online Pharmacies
Pharmaceutical companies are earning good business by every type of marketing and selling types. But when come to differentiate which one is better than it is very difficult. We can’t say this one is better and this one is not. Each type of marketing has own pro and cons, and good scope in pharmaceutical industry.
First you need to understand that all above mentioned marketing types are doing good in market. Pharmaceutical companies are selling their medicines from all ways and earning good profit.
Selection of marketing type for your new pharmaceutical set-up will basically depend at your exposure and experience in pharmaceutical sector. We will prefer to adopt marketing type which are familiar to us in starting as we can’t take much risk in starting as new start-ups as very less risk bearing capacity. So, we have to avoid experiments at starting level.
Every type of marketing has huge competition so we can’t choose either one on the basis of competition as a factor. You will require pharmaceutical distributors in every type of marketing.
Branded Drugs Marketing:
Launch your pharmaceutical product and promote your products to doctors and convince them to prescribe your products to their patients. This is fall under branded drugs marketing as per Indian pharmaceutical Market.
In branded drug marketing, sale is dependent at prescription of doctors. If you have experience of prescribing prescription from doctors then you can easily set-up branded drugs marketing but if you don’t have any interaction with doctors during your professional life then it will not be easy for you in this marketing type.
Benefits:
- High Margin
- Creates Strong Brand Image
- Complete control at sale and sales team
Drawbacks:
- Highly invested and required lot of efforts
- New inventions and researched molecule are key in branded marketing which makes it more difficult to start with.
Generic Drug Marketing:
Launch your pharmaceutical products and sell that through distributing to retailers, and retailers will sell your products. This is fall under Generic Drugs Marketing.
In generic drug marketing type, you require to have experience of dealing with chemists and pharmacies. Generic medicines are sold through chemists and pharmacies. Chemists and pharmacies directly sell generic medicines to patients with or without doctor’s prescription. In case of doctor’s prescription, chemists and pharmacies have to substitute a branded medicine with their generic counterparts to sell.
Benefits:
- Bulk sale
- Price dependent market and can get orders by providing low prices
- Complete control at sale and sales team
Drawbacks:
- Low margins
- Highly invested and required lot of efforts
Pharma Franchise Marketing;
Launch your products and find out franchisee partners/distributors at different locations and these franchisees sell your products either as branded drugs marketing or Generic drugs marketing. This is fall under Pharma Franchise Marketing.
Pharma Franchise marketing is totally different from above two marketing types. In above two cases, marketing and selling can be done by own self or appointing sales team but in franchise marketing, we don’t recruit sales team or do marketing at field directly but appoint distributors cum marketing partners who do marketing along with distribution.
You need to have knowledge of channels through with you can find out franchisee partners for your products.
Benefits:
- Can easily cover whole country by appointing franchisee all over India without much investing at sales force
Drawbacks:
- Don’t have direct control at sale and sales team.
- Don’t have control how your franchisee partner is selling either through branded way or generic way.
Conclusion:
Branded Marketing, Generic Marketing and Franchise Marketing are the ways to sell and market your products. You can’t find out what’s better and what’s worse form these. You just need to select best possible as per your experience and knowledge, and stick to it.
Things to consider:
One thing that also should be consider in starting that we have to choose either one marketing way for own start-up. If we will choose more than one from Branded Marketing, Generic Marketing and Franchise Marketing types then it will be suicidal for our business.
Suppose we are doing marketing by generating prescription and at same time we provide products to other counters at generic basis then it will affect company good will and make it difficult to survive in either side.