SUMMARY: In its simplest form, a creative management platform, or CMP, is a cloud-based software that allows marketing teams to create, distribute, and measure the performance of digital advertising. The advantage is that marketing teams can create online ads without relying on an agency but it requires a digital marketer who fully understands the brand’s target customer.

A creative management platform contains a range of products, features, and tools that assist and aid different areas of campaign production. Combined together, the features of a CMP help to make digital advertising workflows smoother and increase efficiency and return on investment.

CMP’s like Pencil offers tools to design, implement and measure online advertising, but DTC marketers need people to measure online campaigns. The tools to design online ads are simple to use, but I do not expect DTC marketers to learn how to do this. Instead, they need digital marketing talent to use cloud-based cloud-based software to develop and make changes based on the brand manager and M L R team’s needs.

The benefits to developing creative in-house is speed, costs and having someone integrated within the team who really understand the audience.

One of the biggest mistakes DTC marketers make when it comes to digital ads is messing their effectiveness with clicks. If you can deliver the brand message to your audience without a click, your online ads are working. Rather than measure your online ads in their own silo, it’s better to measure ALL your advertising against hard metrics like new Rx’s.

The other advantage of a CMP is developing several creative executions and testing them on different sites before deploying across all sites. Again, it requires someone with digital expertise, but this is one area where you need help to become “digital truly.”

In House Digital Marketing

In-house is the direction where digital marketing is traveling – and it has been for some time now. A study reveals that 91% of brands have moved at least a part of their digital marketing operations in-house. Cost efficiency, greater control, and increased transparency are amongst the biggest reasons for in-housing.

In-house staff are immersed in your brand. They know your products, understand your markets, and are driven to perform for your brand, and only your brand.They also provide your company with expertise that in the long-term will improve ad performance and save you budget.

However, when it comes to moving digital marketing operations in-house, 56% of marketers say a lack of existing talent and skills to build a competent in-house team is the biggest obstacle. This is why pharma should be on a digital marketing hiring spree.

The importance of digital marketing cannot be overemphasized enough for DTC pharma marketing. People are going online for health information and making decisions based on what they find online. Build capabilities NOW before you’re playing catch-up.