Advice You - Business

Business owners waste thousands of dollars every year on web sites, brochures, sales flyers, etc. that don’t work. Sadly, these are often projects that shouldn’t have been started in the first place, but no one on their team (or their outsourced graphic designer) advised them it was a bad mo

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

ve. As a result, business owners waste money and eventually become discouraged with taking a proactive approach to attracting new customers – “marketing”. This article focuses on helping you make wiser choices and not wasting time and money when it comes to hiring the right designer for you

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

Examples of combination products may in

Here’s the inside scoop on hired graphic designers that aren’t experts in marketing (and most of them aren’t): they’re not involved or concerned in whether the design project makes sense for you, if it will be financially worth it, or what kind of positive results you should expect fro

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

m the design project. The majority of graphic designers are order takers: you tell them what you want created, and they design it. Now your project may be a success or failure, but regrettably, the artist isn’t as much concerned with this - you paid for a design and that’s what you received.

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

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As a business owner spending hard earned money, you can see this poses a serious problem. If you’re like 95% of business owners out there, you don’t know if the marketing design project is going to work for you or not - it’s a gamble, a crapshoot. Wouldn’t it make sense

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

Combination pro

to have someone on your team that can help you select design and marketing projects that will give you the greatest return on your investment rather than an order taker?

Case Study – A Real Life Example:
A client and a good friend of mine was solicited b

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

a “marketing expert/design firm” a few months before we met. My now client was sold a costly marketing plan package that read more like a bad book report than anything of value. Within this report the “expert” highly recommended the client invest a boat load of money on full color brochures, promot

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

ional flyers and coupons, “the brochure is marketing collateral that is essential…the brochure acts as a piece of marketing material that can be left behind to potential customers…”

As I read these “would you like fries with that” recommendations, I almost fell out of my chair,

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

“Wait a minute! Before we start spending all of this money on design and printing, shouldn’t we first analyze how these projects will affect the client?”

Before breaking open the piggy bank I suggested that the client take a step back and look at what result these investments w

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

ill really bring in. Here’s what we came up with: these marketing materials are not effective for the business the client’s in, the client is a high-end vendor so coupons will not support the high-end image, and the client gets business from personal interaction with prospects (within the 30 seconds

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

a personal connection is made with a prospect). Bottom line here is this: the recommendations would have certainly helped out the marketing/design firm, the grateful client avoided over $5,000 in costs that would have done nothing to grow the business.

Why is this important to

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

Following aspects would a

void order takers?
You don’t want to waste money, plain and simple. Unless you’re an expert in marketing, and you know what will work and won’t work, you have to find someone who can help you understand what design projects are worth investing in and which ones aren’t.

Yo

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

u wouldn’t hire a mechanic that knew less about cars that you, so why would you hire someone to help you get more customers that knows less than you?

Instead of guessing or hoping the project will give you a good return on your investment, wouldn’t it be great to know that BEFOR

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

you spend money on it? You make sure your car has enough gas in the tank before you take a trip – make sure your next marketing project has enough in it’s tank to where you want to get to as well.

How can you tell if you have an order taker, and how can you protect you

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

rself?
If you suspect you’ve hired an order taker, ask her/him these questions. If the questions are not answered to your satisfaction – run like heck, and hire an expert who can help you!

Can you provide me with any direction or wisdom as to why my proje

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

t may or may not work for you?

What should I be aware of before I have a project like this designed?

Can you help me understand how this project is going to be used so I get the best return out of it, and how it should fit into

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

my marketing strategy?

How will you evaluate your success on my project: by the results I get or if you designed something visually interesting?

Can you provide any past examples of projects that have worked out well for other

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

our other clients? Can you explain why you got the results they did?

Are my business growth and financial goals for this project realistic?

If you were me, would you invest in this project, WHY or WHY NOT?

Keep in min

.

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

d, if a designer could really help business owners choose the right projects that yield the highest return on investment, do you think they’d be charging bargain prices or working at a quick copy place? No. Discount designers are always an option but you do get what you pay for – an orde

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

taker.

Business owners would probably pay someone good money who could help them invest in effective projects rather than waste money. So you have to ask yourself, if a designer is charging bargain prices, what’s the likelihood she/he will be an expert versus an order taker

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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Lean manufacturing is a business performance improvement tool that focuses on enhancing value, cost, delivery, and people. It helps expose waste and makes continuous improvement possible by identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities in design, production, supply chain and management.

There is much jockeying going on with large corporations and sector shifts in Akron OH. This has effected many other sectors like retail and housing. Housing growth is strong in the suburbs around Akron, especially the North sides. During the last recession housing growth was fine, but urban flight hurt and when Rubbermaid moved to Atlanta to be by Home Depot their major customer, besides Wal-Mart type box stores took out many smaller businesses.

Business owners waste thousands of dollars every year on web sites, brochures, sales flyers, etc. that don’t work. Sadly, these are often projects that shouldn’t have been started in the first place, but no one on their team (or their outsourced graphic designer) advised them it was a bad move. As a result, business owners waste money and eventually become discouraged with taking a proactive approach to attracting new customers – “marketing”. This article focuses on helping you make wiser choices and not wasting time and money when it comes to hiring the right designer for you.

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Advice You - Would You Like Fries with That? Is Your Graphic Designer Just an Order Taker

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