Subjects - Business

How do we know what the 5 Biggest Mistakes are?

After over a decade in direct response, we have peered “under the hood” of hundreds of direct marketing campaigns across every type of category imaginable. Sometimes a new client will come to us after a failed attempt with another agency, or simply to get a second opinion on whether their campaign was or is being

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

run optimally. As a result of this extensive experience, not only have we seen which decisions make campaigns successful, but also which decisions condemn campaigns to certain underachievement of their potential.

The most difficult part of writing about the “5 Biggest Mistakes” is narrowing down the list. It would be easier to write about the “Top 20 Mistakes”. Nonetheless,

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

this paper presents the blockbuster mistakes that are a) way too commonly made, b) sure to doom a direct response radio advertising campaign, and c) relatively easily avoidable. In other words, get these things right, and you’ll live to face the lesser challenges with greater strength and greater knowledge.

Biggest Direct Response Radio Mistake #1: Faulty or non-existent t

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

esting methodology

There are many ways for a testing methodology to fall short, which is why this is #1 on the list. Testing the wrong variables, testing in the wrong order, testing too many variables, testing too few variables. The list is long. The point to remember is that success requires a scientific approach. That means disciplined and well thought out – a

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

“ready-aim-fire” approach verses “fire-fire-fire”. Any good direct response agency has staff that understands the process for conducting scientific research, particularly research methods, statistics, and database management. The best DR agencies have applied this knowledge over time and have developed a proven testing methodology, along with the supporting technological infra

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

structure, that will get you from testing to profitability with the least amount of up-front time and money.

If you don’t follow a well-defined, proven testing methodology, you are throwing your ad dollars away. Period. You simply will not know why one ad works better than another or whether there are other approaches that could work better. You will just be out of money befo

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

re you can determine whether your campaign has legs.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #2: Inadequate data capture and analysis

The power of direct response radio stems in part from the ability to collect and analyze results from the bounty of data that can be collected - and to distill insights that drive further refinement of the campaign. As all experienced

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

marketers know, it is the insights that lead you to grand successes. With the right tools, technology, and processes, it is possible to conduct station-by station analysis, look at performance by market, format, day of the week, daypart, and a whole host of other variables to understand what’s working and what’s not for a particular campaign. This is vital to the process of op

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

timizing campaign profitability.

Yet many avoid this process, shield it from their clients, or conduct “analysis lite” on the data. The problem is that you can’t distill the insights if you don’t dive into the analysis. As a result, perfectly viable campaigns are being deemed failures. In these situations people declare “radio just doesn’t work”, and proceed to run away as fa

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

st as possible. Avoid this mistake by making sure your media buys are backed by thorough, detailed analysis, not a cookie-cutter approach cloaked in unproven, formulaic assumptions.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #3: Flying blind

It still astounds us how many people, smart businesspeople, ask us to move forward with advertising before they know the basic key m

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

etrics associated with their campaign. We refer to this as “flying blind.” It is not unlike deciding to fly a plane surrounded by instruments that are providing you data you can’t use to make important decisions about flying the plane. Turn left, turn right, speed up, ascend, descend? Scary thought? It should be, because absent a tremendous amount of luck it spells sure death.

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

Every direct response campaign has a similar set of key profitability metrics and each one has a hurdle or break-even level that must be met in order to achieve some level of profitability. The big mistake is spending a dime before this exercise has been completed. Why? Because when you get the test results back, you won’t know what to make of the data. You won’t have a cont

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

ext within which to assess whether what you are looking at is good, amazing or awful. Bottom line: model the campaign, identify the key metrics, and know what those numbers have to be. And by all means, make sure your agency knows so they can maximize the profitability of your media campaign.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #4: Having the wrong people on the bus

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

r> Each DR campaign is comprised of similar vendors. This includes a manufacturer, a creative and media buying agency, a sales center, a customer service group, and a fulfillment center. You can poll any one of these groups of vendors and there is one thing they would all agree on: not one of them alone can make the campaign a success. This is a classic team situation. If one

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

member drops the ball, the whole team fails. As the client, perhaps the single biggest impact you’ll have on the success of the campaign is how you decide to choose the members of your team – who you put “on the bus”. Sales centers will always tell you they will meet the needs you’ve expressed (guess what, they’re good at sales!). Big agencies will always try to convince you

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

that only they can get the lowest rates and only they can grow your campaign really big (as if suddenly the laws of market economics don’t apply). Will you choose the ones who say they’ve been around since the beginning of time and believe they know all there is to know, or the ones who are experienced but also unassuming enough to be constantly learning, improving, and giving

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

birth to new ideas? Will you choose vendors who play nice with the other team members, or those who throw the others under the bus at the first sign of trouble? If you don’t choose wisely, your campaign could fail for reasons you won’t even understand.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #5: A corrupted creative process

Once you communicate the definition of su

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

ccess, allow the creative process to unfold. A professional direct response ad creator is someone who has learned a tremendous amount about what works and what doesn’t, on millions of other people's dimes. We’ve built a large database of direct response wisdom that can save you a lot of time and money. If you define success as an ad that reaches a certain CPO, and trust the cr

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

eative process, you’re much more likely to get an ad that produces successful results. Now that will make you proud.

Final Words

Now that you are armed with knowledge of the top 5 Biggest Mistakes in Direct Response Radio, you are well on your way to boosting your chances of Direct Response success. To be sure, there are other mistakes to avoid. Knowing about

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

these mistakes is half the battle. Knowing how to avoid them is the other half. How do you produce insights? How do you approach testing methodically? How do you know which vendors to choose? How do you develop breakthrough creative? How do you get the remnant rates on the best time slots?

Radio can be an enormously profitable customer acquisition channel for many businesses

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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