QUICK READ: People are spending more time looking for online health information but there is a lot of bad information out there. Pharma must bridge the gap between selling and becoming a resource for online health seekers.
Pharma Websites
SUMMARY: Pharma product websites are supposed to drive brand objectives: new Rx’s. But is that model really relevant today? No. A lot has changed in the way online health seekers make treatment choices and unless pharma websites adapt the will become more and more irrelevant.
SUMMARY: While it’s reported that pharma is going to put more money into digital marketing they are overlooking the most important initiave: their websites. Bounce rates, time on site and page views continue to be dismal as onion health seekers go elsewhere for health information.
KEY TAKEAWAY: The results of an exit survey on two top pharma websites had terrible news for the marketing team. Less than 10% of visitors to the site were going to ask their doctor for/about the medication, and the vast majority (84%) said the website failed to answer their questions about the drug or health condition.
KEY TAKEAWAY: Dynamic content enabled websites
KEY TAKEAWAY: While patients are going online to research new drugs and treatments, pharma websites are becoming a less important part of the decision making. DTC marketers need to focus more on digital and less on TV.
- Pharma marketers often view website creative as the key to building a great website, but bounce rates indicated that online health seekers disagree.
- Your website homepage should be a combination of key messages that are important to USERS and intuitive navigation that makes it easy for online health seekers to find the information they are looking for.
- As your brand moves through the life-cycle your home page should change to reflect updated needs of your audience.
- Only 3% of healthcare advertising is spent on digital.
- Pharma websites are not designed to engage users they are there to strictly inform people about the advertised drug.
- An estimated $7.4 billion (£5.5 billion) was wasted on display ads alone in 2016, a figure that will rise to $10.9 billion (£8 billion) by 2021, according to Forrester.
- Before serving an ad, marketers must gain insight on target audiences. Many take a “spray and pray” approach, hoping to drive performance success.
- [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]According to AdWeek, only 14% of marketers whitelist sites,[/inlinetweet] with 52% estimating that 10-50% of their marketing spend is lost to fraud.
- [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]More than half of paid programming impressions are probably fraudulent[/inlinetweet], while under even the best-case scenario, one-third of those impressions aren’t viewed by an actual person.