You're the PM at a pharmaceutical company. How would you go about launching a new sleeping pill?

We begin by asking clarifying questions:

• Is there a competitor in the market?
• Do we have an idea on whether the objective of launch is strategic (long term) or inclined towards immidiate financial goals?
• Is the sleeping pill a new category for the company?
• How does the company fare in the given geography? Or is it the first launch in the geography? In other words what is my footprint in the given geography?
• Do we have any information on the specification/efficacy of the medicines? 

• The pharma company is launching the product in a new geography and it is a new category for the company. 
• The company is inclined towards immidiate rewards/financial goals during the launch. 

• The goal of this launch is to capture as much market share as possible. The metric we will be using is the increase in market share Q on Q. 

Clarifying questions:

• What kind of products does the pharmaceutical company mostly deal in? Drugs for all ailments (You can assume any big brand like Sun Pharma)
• So we are a big pharma company with an established brand name/ industry reputation? Yes
• What kind of a sleeping pill are we launching? What is the USP of this particular product? (It’s a different / safer salt, and the USP of the product is that it is not addictive unlike most of its counterparts)
• Do we have other drugs in our brand that cater to the same problem? Yes a couple
• What stage of development is this pill in? (It’s been thoroughly researched and the product is ready to be manufactured.)
• Where are we planning to launch the product? (India)
• What is the price of the product? It is affordably priced at Rs 50/- per 10 tablets. (~$0.7)
• Lastly, do we have any budget constraints? No

About the product:

A new sleeping pill in the market has the USP of not being addictive and is safer than most of its counterparts.

Our goal with this launch is to ensure the adoption of the product in India.

Market Overview:

The first step in our launch process would be to ensure that the right amount of drugs are manufactured to cater to the public so that we are not wasting our resources on overproducing and so that we are not underproducing either.

TAM: Indian population with ailments/ sleep issues / chronic problems

Total population: 1.4 B

Assuming most people who are 50 + would be suffering from sleep issues (20%)

~ 280M out of this approx only 50% ~ 140M

SAM: people who are taking medicines to treat this issue or there is an intent of treating ~ appro 60% ~ 84M

SOM: % of the market that we can capture (assuming we are a big well-known brand) ~ approx 50% ~ 42M

Total revenue/day: $60M

We should be producing at least 60M units to launch the product. (keeping some for buffer)

Porter’s 5 Forces:

• Industry rivalry (Medium): We are a big brand, well known, and we have a strong USP
• Threat of New Entrants (Low): Not many players in the pharma industry. It’s tough to break into
• Threat of substitutes (High): People don’t like to medicate their sleep problems and rely on herbs/exercise / healthy lifestyle to tackle them.
• Bargaining power of buyers: (Medium): Our end consumers are usually taking these medicines with a doctor’s prescription. Switching from one brand to another is difficult especially if the salt is unique. Still in India, many things depend on the pharmacist & doctors that are supplying the product (they would mostly recommend your product if they get a good commission)
• Bargaining power of suppliers: (Low) Assuming it to be low, as we are only sourcing the salt / raw materials but the rest of the manufacturing is in-house. We need to patent our research on the product so our competitors cannot steal our formula.

GTM:

Pharmaceutical products cannot be promoted through traditional marketing.

So the first step of the launch would be to create an awareness of the product to our direct buyers (doctors/pharmacists)

External:

• Conduct informational sessions in collaboration with medical institutes (like AIIMS / Max / Medanta/ other medical R & D institutes) where we would invite doctors from across India and inform them about the product, its pros and cons and the general benefit of using our product.
• Share research / conduct research with top medical institutes in India. These research findings should be made public so as to ensure the general public in India that this product is safe and has been validated by the top minds of the country.
• Send SDR representatives to pharmacists (starting with Tier 1 towns) and then slowly penetrate into the rest of India to inform them about the new product and give a batch of sample products for them to sell at their shop.
• Put a substantial commission-based model in place with private doctors and pharmacists so as to ensure that your product is recommended over the competitor brands.

Internal:

• Roll in any existing products that deal with insomnia that might risk cannibalizing our new product.
• There should be a close monitoring of the patient results of taking the product at least up to 5 years after launch so as to ensure that no short-term/long-term side effects occur. Meanwhile, we can focus on our own R&D to further improve the product.
• Conduct Insomnia awareness workshops with the general public (we can start with hospitals/ senior citizen homes/ offices) to make them aware of insomnia as a medical condition, the pitfalls of it and how can people tackle it (we will not sell our product here). This can be done in collaboration with doctors.

QUESTION: You’re a PM at a pharma company. How would you launch a new sleeping pill?

Clarification:

·       What kind of pharmaceutical company? Mid-sized, reputed

·       What is the target market? India

·       Is it for only human usage? Yes

·       Is this the first product from our company in sleeping pill or improvement over existing one? Interviewer: First product. Me: Ok. Then it might require us to course correct based on our learning

·       What is our business objective? Taking market share

·       Is this the first marketing campaign for us? Interviewer: Yes. Me: Can I assume the objective of this marketing campaign is to drive awareness and trial among our target segment? Yes

Summarize: We will launch our sleeping pill for human usage with an intent to capture market share and on immediate basis we want to drive awareness and trial through our marketing campaign.

Pre-Launch:

Most of the thinking on goals and execution, partnerships and distribution readiness in this phase.

Target segment:

·       Working professionals with problems to sleep at home (40-60 Yrs)

·       Entrepreneurs with problems to sleep at home (40-60 Yrs)

·       Senior citizens with problems to sleep at home (60+ Yrs)

·       Patients with problems to sleep in hospital (18+ as regulatory has approved our medicine for 18+ only)

Will relook our product strategy if it is designed for any segment. If not, will start with one segment based on Total serviceable Market that covers size and willingness to pay and accessibility of customers, CAGR and relevance. Based on these factors we will zero down to patients with problem to sleep in hospital as the accessibility of these customers would be high. We will be able to pilot our launch in this segment and later expand to adjacent markets.

Target Geography:

We will consider select but varieties of market to get a wholistic sense with lowest possible marketing cost. Hence we will consider hospitals in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.

Goal:

·       Reaching 1500 hospitals, 5000 medicine stores and 30,000 doctors in 1 month

·       Converting 150 hospitals, 500 medicine stores and 3000 doctors in 1 month

·       Sales of 15,000 strips in 1 month

Competition and differentiation:

We need to have differentiation compared to competition given this market is already captured. I it is taken take during product design (lets say fortified sleeping pill that not only lets you sleep but also backfills your vitamin C to energize yourself). Otherwise, we need to be aggressive in our promotion and pricing compared to our competition.

For our target segment the biggest influencers are doctors in hospital and neighborhood medicine store of the hospital. We need to provision samples and trade promotion schemes to win over competition that I will cover in my promotion section.

Pricing:

Lesser than next best alternative at this point of time. Need to follow penetration strategy with stepwise increase in price based on milestones.

Partnerships:

Given the influencers, partnerships to be formed with

·       Trustee of hospitals with co-marketing activities using existing relationship

·       Doctors association with event sponsorship for the association using existing relationship

·       Relationships with Individual doctors with samples and research finding reports

·       Relationship with medicine store of the hospitals with trade promotions

Distribution:

At focused medicine stores near to specific hospitals

Launch:

Promotions

·       Comarketing activities. Sponsoring standees and posters at hospitals to raise awareness around reasons of sleep depravedness and remedies to put inside hospitals.

·       Bill-boards with hospitals and sleeping pill with direction

·       Sponsoring event to share research reports of doctors and branding the sleeping pills with samples.

·       Provide discounts for first lot to medicine stores to earn higher margin

·       Sponsor retail merchandise like pouches for medicine tablets, free sanitizers/face masks/branding on uniforms

·       PR articles on miracles by the medicine problem providing peace of kind

·       Testimonials from customers that would be used for next campaign

Post launch:  

·       Metrics, learnings and defining next course of action

·       Metric:

o   Numbers of strips sold

o   Number of doctors reached and samples provided

o   Number of hospital ties up with

o   Number of doctors association tied up with

o   Number of unique customers reached

o   Cost of customer acquisition

o   Profit/Marketing cost

o   Repeat purchase

o   # complaints on side effects

Insights:

·       As this is a new product, we will consider all customer complaints/feedback to improve the pills with a business case.

·       If the campaign succeeded, decide on the next phase of campaign for maximizing revenue with more penetration in number of hospitals in a city and number of cities as well.

·       Once this market is saturated new set of campaigns could emerge to reach to users directly if regulatory allows to target senior citizens through direct to consumer campaigns.

·       If the campaign failed, identify the metrics and brainstorm on recovery plan.

Scope of the product and launch

1/ What is the product? Oral pill which anyone take and will give sleep for 8hrs. 

2/ Is this for adults ? or for people having certain conditions? What about side effects? All adults. No children. No side effects whatsoever. 

3/ Can we assume scope to be US? Yes. 

4/ Is this approved by FDA and other regulator bodies? Yes. 

5/ Is this over the counter ? or does this need prescription? Over the counter. 

6/ What is the price? Is that determined or do I need to determine as part of this exercise? Price already determined. Its $100 per pill. Each pill gives 8hrs of sleep for an adult. 

6.5/ Is this covered by insurance? No. 

7/ Will the adult wake up to an alarm, or if someone wakes up? Yes. No impact on that. 

8/ Is the pill addictive? For .e,g Will I lose the ability to sleep if I stop taking the pills? No. 

9/ Will the pill actually help me sleep better in future without taking the pill? No. It wont impact anything physiological. It only impacts you for the next 8hrs. Thats all. 

10/ Are there competitors who already provide such a pill? No. 

Summary: 

Customer: Any US adult. 

Value proposition: Give sleep for next 8 hrs. No side effects. No long term benefits either. 

What is the goal of this launch? Do you have any revenue targets to meet in 3months, or 6 months of launch? Revenue of $xx by 6 months. Thats the only goal. 

We need to drive multiple things to 

1/ Awareness that something like this exists

2/ Covince them that this product works

3/ Get them to buy

4/ Get positive customer references - which will help in (2)

Where is the biggest unknown in the above? If we know that customers who try it, will always be satisfied, then we really need to focus on the loop of awareness -> convincing → getting them to buy and use. 

Customer segment and size: Basically we are targeting people who think getting a good sleep for the next 8 hrs is worth $100. 

Do we know who big is this market? We must have some idea? What is the profile of such customers? Basically this is a luxury pill. People with income > $150K is the target market. 

Pre-launch: 

Awareness, convincing, getting them to buy → Our launch goal will be to validate the mechanisms that we have in place to achieve those metrics are working well. If they work well, then scale them. 

Awareness: Is there a standard way to reach out to these customers? 

Awareness: Ads on TV, social media, Google ads, display ads. We can do a campaign before launch to get users to pre-order or sign up to know more about such a pill. 

Publish in major science journals about the effectiveness and complete lack of side effects. 

Use that to get major news outlets to write articles on the new pill. 

Drive awareness among doctors to recommend this pill -- I think there aer many ways to do this. I am not an expert. 

Generate awareness and convincing.  

Distribution: 

Setup channels with major retailers - Amazon, walmart, CVS, Rietaid etc. Goal is maximize reach, but also drive more profits. For e.g, Should we do exclusive tie up with one retailer? Get better terms - they will do in store mktg, will take less cut etc. 

Ideally, we would like the best terms from all retailers, with limited lockin period for us. If not, we should perhaps chose one channel, show how successful the product is and then get other retailers to bid with better terms. 

Define the metrics we want to monitor. Examples include 

1/ How many users buying the pill?

2/ How many pills per user?

3/ Revenue?

4/ Revenue break-up across distribution channels?

5/ Awareness metrics: Page views to landing page, number of oline orders, number of pre-orders. 

During launch: 

Post-launch: 

1/ Track each of these metrics on a weekly basis. List whats working, whats not working for each stage and then change your tactics. 

2/ Focus on getting customer testimonials to drive more awareness and more convincing. 

3/ Start working on getting approval from insurance companei