Looking for advice from exp marketing personnel

graflynn

I’m hoping that someone with advertising and marketing experience can give me some advice and I apologise in advance if I’m not getting to the point quick enough.

I volunteered to adapt a Type 1 Diabetes (not the more common Type 2 Diabetes) educational booklet. It originated in Australia and is doing an excellent job to support people who live with this illness.

The copyright permission stipulates that this booklet be available free of charge to the 16,000 Irish adults with Type 1. I have completed the editing and now need to raise €7,500 to have it printed.

I’ve never done anything like this before; I’m at stay at home mother! So I did a Google search for advice on how to write letters to big pharma companies and sent off my efforts. I offered advertising space in the booklet in return for sponsorship.

I did get replies of encouragement but so far no one has committed to the project. All the healthcare professionals who work in the area of diabetes have said that it’s something that Irish people should have available to them.

Finally, my question, what is the best way to sell advertising space? If you have any pointers or would like to see the letters I send out or if you have any other ideas on how I could raise this money please send me a PM.

I’m becoming a little discouraged because I really think this book would be invaluable to adults diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes – I wished I had received it myself 18 years ago.

RATM

Right I stand to be corrected on these points as I'm not a marketing expert and I don't know much about Type 1 or 2 either.

Big Pharma companies may not necessarily be your market if it is the case that there is one drug for type 1 suffers due to patents? i.e if Glaxo Smith Kline are the only company providing the drugs to treat this type then advertising might be futile to them as those with the affliction have to buy their products regardless. As I said I'm open to correction as you'd know a lot more about this end than I.

If this is the case (or even if there are only 2-3 companies producing for this small market) then it might be difficult to get them to advertise. A print run of 16,000 is a small number in the ad world, you'd make some money but not a massive amount.

Perhaps consider targeting the ancillary market around diabetes products. Isn't there lots of specialty sugar free products/sweets, etc especially designed for diabetics? And foods, drinks, etc? Go down to the health store and take notes of companies names.

Linkedin.com could also be useful to you here for reaching out to people who might be able to help.
Put this search string into Google:
site:ie.linkedin.com "diabetes" inurl:in -inurl:dir

With that you'll find 271 Irish profiles with the word Diabetes in them. In there are pharma people, nurses, health promotion managers, health magazine publishers, diabetes researchers, hospital reps and lots more.

People are good and you are doing a good thing. Reach out to those who might be useful and I'm sure they'll offer good help & advice.

graflynn

Thank you so much for your reply.

RATM wrote: »

if it is the case that there is one drug for type 1 suffers due to patents?

There are quite a few companies who provide the medication and supplies for people with diabetes. We need a LOT of “stuff” and it’s all provided by different companies-even insulin has about 6 pharma companies manufacturing it.

RATM wrote: »

Perhaps consider targeting the ancillary market around diabetes products. Isn't there lots of specialty sugar free products/sweets, etc especially designed for diabetics? And foods, drinks, etc? Go down to the health store and take notes of companies names.

None of the above products are endorsed by any of the diabetes association and most of these products are not actually beneficial for people with diabetes. You might be surprised to know that diabetic chocolate can actually cause abdominal discomfort!

However, I was considering approaching the companies who manufacture the likes of All Bran, Bran Flakes or Weetabix, but I thought they would be “too big” to even consider a small project like this? Would you have any pointers about how I could get someone’s attention within these huge outfits?

RATM wrote: »

Linkedin.com could also be useful to you here for reaching out to people who might be able to help.
Put this search string into Google: site:ie.linkedin.com "diabetes" inurl:in -inurl:dir

With that you'll find 271 Irish profiles with the word Diabetes in them. In there are pharma people, nurses, health promotion managers, health magazine publishers, diabetes researchers, hospital reps and lots more.

Thank you I will try this.

RATM wrote: »

People are good and you are doing a good thing. Reach out to those who might be useful and I'm sure they'll offer good help & advice.[/QUOTE] Here’s hoping!

RATM

However, I was considering approaching the companies who manufacture the likes of All Bran, Bran Flakes or Weetabix, but I thought they would be “too big” to even consider a small project like this? Would you have any pointers about how I could get someone’s attention within these huge outfits?

Then you have 6+ pharma companies to contact with your plan and to let them know how it is going to be of benefit to them and their bottom line

Use Linkedin / phone calls to contact the right people. You've looking for Sales & Marketing managers in these companies. Don't be afraid of dealing with big brand names, what is behind them all is people and people do business with people just like yourself.

Search for staff in your targeted companies to reach out to those who could be of help and then interest them in your idea. The advanced search is handy for this, you'll also need to find the parent company of Weetabix, Bran Flakes, etc- it might be Kellogs? Drop them a line and then follow up with a phone call to a specific person to talk further. Have examples of the type of booklet it will be, a graphic designer might do you a mock up to help in this. Talk about your print run, distribution and have a price list too but be negotiable somewhat on it. Give them a compelling proposition to engage with you and then build up the relationship.

Best of luck with it

antoinolachtnai

Do you know any of the medical consultants who deal with this area? I think they will be the route to success. As I understand it, their interface with the drug companies are the various reps that come to meet them. I would expect the reps to be very receptive to something like this.

Once you have printed these, you need to consider how you are going to distribute them. There is nothing worse than having 10,000 leaflets in your front room and no idea how you are going to distribute them to the people who you know need them.

I would really try to get one drug company to sponsor the whole thing rather than splitting it three or four ways. The drug company will then help you handle the distribution (they have reps calling out to all the relevant health professionals anyway.)

Another thing would be to try to get the drug company to do the printing. They have a marketing department that does this sort of thing and they will get a better price and a better service than you will. It will also give them the opportunity to brand it a bit to their own taste and they will probably want to do other things, like a website. (You may have misgivings about this, but consider what is really important. The main thing is to get the message out.)

If this leaflet has been distributed in other countries, be sure to get a copy that has been distributed somewhere else to bring along to your meeting with the rep or the marketing manager.

All this is my view of things and how I think it works. Medical marketing is not really my core thing.