Many companies allocate an exponentially more significant percentage of their marketing budget to paid media over organic search. However, many brands are unaware of the waste inherently included in paid media. Organic search delivers results at a lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) than paid search — 87% lower cost, per research. According to Google, organic search also offers double the ROI that paid search does.
Category Archive: DTC Spending
(Endpoints) Pharma TV advertising boomed in 2021 – to the tune of $3.91 billion across prescription meds, iSpot reports. That’s an increase of 4.8% year over year, which may not sound like much but marks pharma’s steady growth through the pandemic. And its continued growth of national TV ad spending while the rest of the industry is on the decline in the US. What a waste of money.
OPENING: TV is great at creating awareness, but it can also scare patients away if one of your side effects is “may lead to death.” This is one side effect that stands out when your target audience watches your spot along with “serious heart rhythm problems” and “new cancers have happened during treatment.”
SUMMARY: DTC marketing is evolving as patients become more thoughtful about choosing treatment options. The model of “heavy TV followed by a website designed to sell people isn’t going to work anymore.
SUMMARY: Like it or not, there will not be a return to normal for DTC marketing. The onset of wrong, inaccurate, or confusing medical information forces people to go online or talk to their doctor about treatment options. DTC marketers need to get more personal and stop using a generic formula for marketing.
SUMMARY: With patients staying away from their doctors because of COVID, DTC messages need to add incentives and better messaging to get people to take action rather than wait. No one message will do this, however. Messages need to evolve in these special times.
SUMMARY: There is a huge issue that’s challenging DTC marketers: online health misinformation. While we’re still trying to research the changes it has led to for DTC marketers, there are some observable behaviors taking place that we have examined through Google analytics. They paint a picture of people who are spending more time online looking to answer their questions and relying on HCPs to help sort out treatment choices.
SUMMARY:
- TV continues to be the dominant channel for DTC advertising.
- Some of the TV spots for drugs are horrible, and some products should even be on TV because of terrible fair balance.
- TV ads only drive awareness as the first step for online health seekers. More conversations are happening on social media, and pharma seems to be immune to the conversations.
- One of the reasons for such bad TV is the lack of talent within DTC marketing.
- Agencies are equally responsible for bad DTC TV.