Who Will Be "Miss Viagra" 2015?

Wowie zowie! Is that a roll of dimes quarters in your pocket or are you just excited to see those sexy women of every ethnic persuasion (except latina?) in Viagra ads? If there were a "Miss Viagra" beauty contest, which one would you crown Miss Viagra 2015? (I included the woman who appeared in the first ad that aired in 2014.)

Which contestant should wear the crown for "Miss Viagra" 2015?

No. 1   No. 2   No. 3   No. 4

BTW, Actress, model and former Miss Hawaii Kelly Hu is featured in one of the new Viagra ads. She’s #4 in the lineup shown above.

My Favorite Drug Ad Celebrities

Drug Advertising Celebrities

2015 Was Another Good Year for Orphan Drugs & Pharma Marketers

UPDATED 4 Jan 2016: FDA approved 45 new drugs in 2015, four more than in 2014 and the highest number since 1996. Twenty-one (21) of those (47%) were "orphan" drugs (find FDA data here). This compares to 17 orphan drugs approved in 2014 or 41% of the total (see CDER New Drug Review: 2015 Update and "2014 Was a Good Year for FDA & Pharma").

Click on image for an enlarged view.

That's good news for the pharma industry, which often submits drugs to the FDA as orphan drugs but once approved the drugs are "used broadly off-label with the lucrative orphan drug protections and exclusivity benefits," according to the authors of a study recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology (read "#Pharma Welfare: 'Orphan' Blockbuster Drugs on Rise - Including Crestor!").

Pharma marketers also have good news regarding FDA marketing enforcement actions in 2015.

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SEO Made Simple 2016

Many people are wondering if SEO, search engine optimization, still matters.  As someone who's been focused on SEO for a long time, I can definitely say it's essential for success. However, the process of optimizing your website and the process for doing so has radically changed.

Back in the day you could trick search engines into believing that your website had more authority than your competitors. Authority is essentially Google's way of assessing a point value to indicate site popularity. Google has become much more sophisticated and trying to put one over on them is a waste of time.

One of the most fundamental changes in search engine optimization is local optimization. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices, most searches using search engines have some type of local intent. This type of search query has changed the Google algorithm and ranking factors. Even if you are a national business, you must think locally and optimize for local search.

The second area that have evolved over the last few years is content.  As I talk about in SEO Made Simple (audio version), content is the driving force behind site authority and valuation.  The more engaging content you produce, the more users will stay on your site, interact with, and share your web pages. This had a dramatic and lasting impact on search engine results.

When people ask me for my optimization advice, I always point to the two items above, local optimization and content creation. When these two factors are at the heart of your optimization strategy, you can influence search engine rankings.

What about those old SEO tactics?

If you're still getting emails from India promotion number one Google rankings, there's probably a bunch of outdated tactics behind it. The best case scenario is that you don't get penalized when these companies start posting links to your website all across the internet. The worst case scenario is that Google catches on (and they will), banning your site.

I've found that websites who have received a Google penalty rarely, if ever, fully recover.  Is it worth the risk?  No, definitely not.  My recommendation is always to learn SEO best practices and either implement them on your own or simply hire a reputable firm to implement specific tactics like blogging, digital assets, etc. under your supervision.

To be successful with search engine optimization, you need to take a fresh approach. Focus on how to build quality information online that others want to interact with. When you do, you'll naturally attract links to your website or blog and improved organic rankings will follow.

Pharmaguy's 2016 New Year's Resolutions for the Pharma Industry

2015 is coming to an end, thankfully. It's not been an especially good year considering that the media and politicians have found a face for evil pharma and rising drug prices: Martin Shkreli!

Shkreli's recent arrest will only heighten pharma's bad press as some people wonder why more pharma CEOs have not been arrested.

Be that as it may, let's look ahead to 2016 and what I recommend as New Year’s Resolutions for the drug industry and especially pharmaceutical marketers. If you're interested in how well my 2015 resolutions fared, go here.

My #1 personal New Year's Resolution is the same every year:

Stop telling the pharmaceutical industry what to do all the time. Unfortunately, I have never kept that resolution. So, here's my recommended list of 2016 resolutions for pharma...

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Are All Pharma CEOs Martin Shkrelis?

Martin Shkreli claims he was arrested because he tried to maximize his company's profits by raising the price of a life-saving drug. There is no doubt that may have been a factor in the timing of the arrest, which resulted in even more attention to common practices employed by the drug industry to keep drug prices high and maximize profits as this NYT editorial points out.

NYT Editors: Shkreli No Different Than Other Pharma Leaders

Pharma Wars: Meet Shkreli the Hutt

Not such a long time ago in a pharma company pretty close by...

Looking Back on My 2015 New Year's Resolutions for Pharma

Before I publish my recommendations for 2016, let me review my 2015 New Year's Resolutions for pharma to see how many were actually achieved.

2015 Resolution #1: Forget about using Twitter to promote brand name drugs to consumers.

I don't know if pharma marketers have forgotten about doing branded tweets, but I haven't come across any nor have I heard many laments about how hard it is to overcome FDA's social media regulatory hurdles.

But there was one failed attempt to bypass the FDA via a promotional post on Instagram. Of course that was a post on Instagram by Kim Kardashian promoting Diclegis.

Before the Instagram ink was even dry the FDA sent a Warning Letter to Duchesnay, the drug’s maker. That letter put the kibosh on the “one-click rule”:

“We note the statement, ‘[F]ind out more www.diclegis.com; www.DiclegisImportantSafetyInfo.com[,]’ appears at the end of the social media post; however, this does not mitigate the misleading omission of risk information. By omitting the risks associated with DICLEGIS, the social media post misleadingly fails to provide material information about the consequences that may result from the use of the drug and suggests that it is safer than has been demonstrated.”

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My Twitter Audience as of Dec 2105

The following is an "Audience Insights" analysis of my Twitter account (@pharmaguy). You can also learn more about my audience from results to date of my reader survey.

Click on image for an enlarged view.

Gallery of Drug Advertising Mascots

These are my all-time favorite drug “mascots” (I call them critters) seen in direct-to consumer ads. Along with the gallery of images, I offer links to more information and the ads themselves (at least in a few cases).

If you know of any that I have missed, please tell me about it in comments to this post or contact me via Twitter: @pharmaguy.

Pharmaguy's Gallery of Drug Advertising Mascots from PharmaGuy.com

What the Drug Industry Can Learn from FDA's Social Media Policy

The FDA recently posted a new social media policy, but it's not for the pharmaceutical industry. The policy is for its own employees (read "FDA Releases a Long-Awaited Social Media Policy").

Like similar policies developed by pharma companies such as Roche (here), FDA's SM policy provides guidance to their employees about how to use social media for personal and professional purposes.

"The FDA encourages the use of social media technologies to enhance communication, collaboration, and information exchange in support of FDA’s mission to protect and promote public health," states the introduction. "This policy applies to FDA employees, contractors, and other personnel acting in an official capacity when using social media to communicate with the public regarding FDA-related matters."

I read "between the lines" to determine if this policy offers any hints as to how the FDA may further regulate pharma's use of social media in the future, especially with regard to correcting/deleting comments posted to its own sites and linking to external third-party sites.

Read more »

How to Use Pricing Psychology to Generate Sales

No matter the market, developing a pricing strategy is essential for ensuring something sells. However, the price can't be determined based solely on what the seller hopes to get for it; there are a variety of factors that come into play, including demand and the current market atmosphere. There are a number of psychological tricks that come into play, as well.

Pricing Based on Market

In some situations, you can price a product as high as you want -- and no one will buy it unless they are stupid. For example, a real estate agent would advise homeowners against pricing a home $200,000 over the market price. If the homes on a street are identical, but one is priced much higher, it may attract more initial interest; after all, buyers are curious. However, once they realize it has no advantage over any of the competitors, they will certainly settle on the lower priced options.

Pricing Based on Competition

Another strategy for pricing something to sell is based on the price the competition sells for. This is a common retail strategy; store A will offer a product for one price, while store B offers it for several dollars less. In most cases, store B will have the market for that product because of the pricing difference. The only time customers would choose to buy at Store A would be due to convenience. Of course, there are downsides to this: the profit margins usually end up being very narrow. The 'race to the bottom' tactics only benefit consumers, not businesses.

Pricing Based on Loyalty

This is often called a penetration strategy. A company will sell a very high-quality product at a price much lower than the competition would. This is most often used for smaller companies trying to break into an industry dominated by giants; it allows them to get a wedge of the market share without offering any initial innovation, but through building customer loyalty, they're able to build slowly until they can compete with the bigger players.

Loss Leaders

This price strategy definition is sometimes called promotional pricing. Because the business doesn't make any profit off the initial sale, it's called a 'loss leader' -- it brings customers in to purchase other products that will turn a profit. The initial purchase is just to capture their interest. As a result, the original product is usually priced much lower than the market is asking.

Using an 'Almost' Price

This tactic is exceedingly common. Companies will price a product at $4.99 instead of $5, but because it isn't quite $5, customers don't see it as so great an expense. It's a simple way to trick the brain into believing a product actually costs significantly less than it does, even if the actual price difference is only one cent off.

These four pricing strategies in marketing examples should help you better understand how to implement them into your own business. By using smart pricing strategies and psychologies, you can begin to generate sales even if there are far stronger competitors against you.

This post comes from Sarah, an inspirational writer who is taking QLD real estate course online at NREL Australia to grow her marketing career. She is part of crews at a specialized training center for the real estate industry, working with entrepreneurs and small business owner to upskills and achieve results that raise the standards of professionalism and respect in the Real Estate industry.