Market Based Strategic Planning

Market Based Strategic Planning For
Early Stage Life Science Companies

Positioning To Win The Battle For Your
Customers’ Minds

September 9, 2008

We are an over-communicated society
• Average Americans are exposed
to:
– Over 3,000 advertising messages
daily per person (Newspaper
Association of America)
– 840 billion emails annually as a
society (Forrester Research 2000)
– 4.5 hours TV daily per person
(Nielson)
– Over 2 hours of radio per person
every day (Nielson)

Copyright © 2008. Pharmacision LLC, (734)895-3670,
tmarten@pharmacision.com 2

We have too many choices
• Average supermarket has
10,000 individual products
on display
• 100,000 prescription drugs
on US market
• 1,500 companies listed on
the NYSE introduce over
5,000 significant new
products annually
• 345 contract research
organizations (biores.org)


Our Brains Need a Way to Cope
• We don’t cope well with
information overload

• The mind can only deal
with 7 units at a time

• The “inadequate
container”
– A computer has to
accept the information
you put into it. The mind
does not.


To cope, we create “Ladders in the Mind”
• We think in relative terms
• We create “ladders” or categories for
products and services to simplify
understanding This is where
• We rank products and service marketing
offerings in each category like rungs
battles are
on a ladder
– Each rung is a brand or service offering
fought
– The “best” ones are at the top

This is how we
position things!

Key Points on Positioning
• It’s a verb, not a noun
• It’s something your customers do. Not you.
• But you can influence it.
• The odds are stacked against you.
– Sturgeons Law: 90% of what’s out there is crap
– Customers will only give you limited “mind space”
– You only get one first impression – repositioning rarely ever works
• However, you can influence it if committed throughout your
organization.
• Involves most important decisions your company will make
• Marketing not sales
• Makes it easier for customers to buy your product or service


For early stage companies trying
to “cross the chasm”

How do you cut through the
information clutter and position
your company, products, and
service offerings for success?

Take a systematic approach to developing a Market Based Strategy
How and where should we establish a
Strategy beachhead?

What is our imp. & diff. whole product
Profiling solution for target customer personas?

How would we like our customers to
Positioning describe us?

What key features & benefits
Message communicate our positioning?

How should our elevator pitch sound and
Execution communications package look like?

What’s the business model and launch
Implementation plan?

Need to be brutally honest and in touch with the market

• Market-based
strategic planning
employs a systematic
approach to remove
biases and prevent
“sacred cows” from
driving strategic
decision making.

• Need market
research!

Source: Adapted from Cantillon eCourse

Map out markets and prioritize segments
Market Development
Strategy Checklist
• Target customer persona
Total Segment
• Compelling reason to buy
Significant unmet
• Whole product solution
need related to
value proposition • Partners and allies
Not satisfied with
• Distribution
current solutions
• Pricing
Able to be • Competition
reached
• Positioning
Willing to
switch


Agree on a target “beachhead” market

• Need to commit to a target
customer segment (market)

• The decision to focus on
some customer groups
and applications means
you don’t focus on others

Copyright © 2008. Pharmacision LLC, (734)895-3670, Source: Adapted from Cantillon eCourse

“A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a
thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay
busy.”……..

........“Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on
one tree and get dinner.”

Seth Godin, The Dip


Build a Whole Product Solution

• Build a service
or product for Potential Product
your market Augmented Product
Expected Product
• Don’t try to Generic Product
build a market
for your service
or product

Adapted from: Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm, Harper Collins, 2002.


Product Profiling – What is your unique value proposition?

Not Different Different

Important

Unimportant

Understand your “purple cow”
Purple cow concept from: Seth Godin, Purple Cow Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, Penguin Group, 2003.

Envision how you want customers to perceive your products & services

Positioning – what your customers say
• For [Target customer]
• Who [have “The Problem”]
• Our product/service is [Description]
• That provides [whole product solution to
problem]
• Unlike [the competition]
• Our service provides [Fill in key differentiator]

Develop messages to communicate your positioning

Positioning and Message are highly interrelated and
need to be addressed together.

Positioning (unique place for product
in the customer’s mind)

Message (what we need to say to
communicate positioning)


Tell a simple story
The greater the number of messages, the lower the recall, the
lower the credibility and the more difficult it will be to persuade

From: Clancy & Shulman Marketing Myths That Are Killing Business, 1994

Market Based Strategic Planning
• A process and structured approach
• that provides a starting point for business and
marketing plan development,
• explores how a business can best compete in the
markets it elects to serve,
• encourages an unbiased assessments of internal
core competencies and external opportunities,
• and enables companies to position services and
develop new products in a favorable fashion making
them easier for customers to buy.

Contact Information

Pharmacision LLC
Thomas Marten
President

(734)895-3670
tmarten@pharmacision.com


Market Based Strategic Planning

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