Can digital marketing agencies compensate for bad marketing talent ?

It’s time to rethink how your agency does business from pitching accounts to providing value that drives brand objectives. The day of simply filling out some paperwork for healthcare marketing business is over.  Today marketers in pharma are looking for a lot more from their agencies and the agencies that provide the same old “yes” business are going to find themselves slowly loosing clients.

In case you weren’t aware there is a hiring frenzy going on within digital marketing.  It’s easy to find geeks and nerds but it’s really hard to find someone who understands that digital marketing is about driving brand objectives and that today every thing we do has to drive conversion because businesses are in business to make money.

Over the last 3 years I have seen an exodus of digital marketing talent from pharma and biotech that I have never seen before.  People are deciding to leave pharma because they are sick and tired about being told what they can’t do when they know that the rules of the game have changed.  Yes there are some companies that are trying new things and making inroads but for every company like Sanofi that is embracing new media there are 5 others who are avoiding new media and marketing.

The other complaint that I hear from pharma marketers is that a lot of the digital agencies they are working with are too task oriented and not good enough on the strategic end.  ”If I ask them to do something and it doesn’t make sense than for God’s sake push back and say so” said one Director.  This after he spent over $300,000 to do a program on Web MD that produced a negative ROI. “The agency kept saying how it was a great way to increase awareness but they never voiced their concerns about the dollar value of the program and ROI until we were almost done. I can assure you that when we wrap this up we’re moving on from them” he said.

Digital agencies have to be the digital marketing arm of the company and cannot treat marketers like clients.  They have to integrate with the brand people and more importantly with the legal and regulatory people to learn the culture of the organization and try and change influencers perceptions about new media.

There are some agencies which get it but for the most part there are still too many that don’t and pharma needs to look elsewhere.

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• The serious disconnect between digital marketing and marketers (newmediaandmarketing.com)
• Why digital marketing is so hard for brands (newmediaandmarketing.com)