Time for the drug industry to get serious about digital marketing

With so many people using the Internet for health information and other mass channels having less impact on conversion it’s time for pharma organizations to get serous about digital marketing. Here is how pharma should organize around digital marketing.

Here is a sample of what a digital pharma organization might look. At the top you have a Digital Marketing Director who is responsible for ensuring that everything the brand does meets brand objectives and is balanced with empowered patient needs. She/He also is responsible for ensuring that every member of the team has a full understanding of patient segmentation demographics and psychographics. She/he conducts research as needed to gain insights into how the target audience is using the Web for health information and what patients are looking for in a branded health website.

The Content and Functionality Manager ensures that content is written in “human” terms not cold scientific language that most people can’t understand. He/she also ensures that content is shared with insurers and health portals to ensure consistency of information and getting information to people where THEY are online. The functionality part of this position ensures that the website has the right tools that patients and consumers need to get the answers they want not because they look nice. Usability testing would fall into this persons responsibility as well.

The SEO/Online Media Manager recommends the optimum spend for search and online ads, suggests key words and works with the analytics manager to ensure that keywords are meeting brand and business objectives as measured by specified metrics like cost per targeted action or cost per lead. Online ads would be developed for each segment, placed and optimized as needed to increase awareness (if that is brand objective) or take brand messages to patients where they are online.

The analytics and Insights Manager does not report just raw data. Rather he/she reports on what the data is telling him/her and recommends actions to leverage this data. This is a very important position because he/she has to report actionable insights that meet business needs. They also need to provide an overview of what is happening overall in the online world especially when it comes to health.

Pharma cannot continue to assign one person for such an important channel. IT people can help with technical issues but you really need people with marketing backgrounds to be in these positions and when they do a good job don’t move them out of digital marketing. Good people are too hard to find and retain. These position would target both consumers and HCP’s online.