I have been following the ePharma conference via Tweets and while there have been some great presentation there also has been some people who are clueless. The one Tweet that really got my blood pressure rising was the Michael BanksMD who said that “digital Marketing is redundant. It’s just marketing!” That is wrong on so many levels and it clearly shows why some within the drug industry have not really leveraged digital marketing.
So marketers do believe that digital marketing is “just marketing” and as such they are paying a huge price in lost opportunities.
A great example is social media which is changing the way people communicate and gather health information. It’s changing how people share news, share opinions, and share personal health information. Social media has made word-of-mouth marketing one of the most powerful marketing tools available. However most pharma websites still suffer from online brochure syndrome and push marketing.
The two-way nature of conversations in social media channels presents a fundamental shift in how companies communicate with their customers. Now they can talk back to you. Nothing in the history of marketing has let us consumers communicate with our favorite brands in so public a manner.
As it turns out, Cluetrain was right. The marketplace has changed. Customers are in control, not the marketers and this includes healthcare where patients want more decision input the types of medications they take and treatments they undergo.
Another person at ePharma said “the best ideas are the ones that come from outside the organization” and I could not agree more. The problem is not the lack of ideas it’s overcoming the internal barriers within the pharma organization that prevent marketers from thinking about marketing with people as opposed to marketing at people. I still find that legal and regulatory people, for the most part, will not allow ANY social media conversations because to them it just presents to much of a risk.
Digital marketing is NOT mass marketers and to think of digital marketing as such is the reason that pharma continues to live in the past of Web 2.0. The ePharma conference has had a lot of good ideas but getting them implemented is another challenge and a lot of people just prefer to “go with the flow” and not make waves in an industry that is loosing marketing Linchpins.
Related articles
- ePharma Summit: Less Proselytizing, More Results (pharmexec.com)
- The risk in social media is in being left behind by pharma (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- Minimizing social media risks with new (ah-em) FDA guidelines (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- Social media is a competitive advantage for drug companies (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- It’s time for agencies to play a bigger role in healthcare marketing (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- The most important paid media for pharma ? Websites ! (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
Passionate healthcare marketer with over 10 years of experience I believe that what's best for patients is best for healthcare marketers. I also write a monthly DTC Column for PM 360 Magazine and have written many articles on healthcare marketing in an age of empowered patients.
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Short history. I was in a Company with Internacional interestes and I was amazed with the lack of competence of that business in social media, search engine marketing and search engine optimization. It was unbelievable. They were using Google Adwords and spending alot of money on it and at the same time they didnt had Google Analytics to ACTUALLY see the results on their website caused by the Adwords trafic. Social media? They dont have a clue whats happening in the world……They see social media as a bunch of kids in the internet……How the hell is that possible?
Today will be tomorow. If a business dont take the advantage now in starting right away, the competitors will. And then when they realize Internet Marketing is important, they will start behind. Simple as that.
Good article