I am just returning from the CBI’s 6th Annual eMarketing for the Pharmaceutical Industry in Philly. The importance of Search Engine Marketing was self evident as an entire day was dedicated to SEM. I kicked off the conference with the “honor†of speaking on regulatory issues, how to navigate regulatory obstacles and execute an effective pharma SEM campaign. I have had some great experiences explaining ‘alt tags’ and snippets to pharma regulatory teams and explaining why we should put schizophrenia on the branded site even if that word is not at a sixth grade reading level.
Avenue A and Greater than One followed with a very technical presentation of SEM. Our client Chris Smith, Genzyme, followed with a salty commentary of Google’s content match product. He has some great suggestions, humbly suggesting to Google how to improve their AdSense product. Frank Viscotti from Novartis had the same comments at the IIR conference in January in Philly. Side note – will someone have a conference in Boston please?
Next Steve Krein, OrganizedWisdom.com, a great presentation. However, he was challenged with lots of clamor! The guy was trying to enable the pharma industry to participate in the consumer generated content phenomenon. A women from Roche told him she sees no value in his product! What a resume Steven has, it gives me hope pharma and social content may work….eventually. I do remember eight years ago presenting SEM to a number of large pharma companies and they told me SEM was unethical and they would never participate. Another reason I do believe consumer generated content with pharma participation with prevail! Finally, to end the day, Bill McGee presented Healthline vertical search engine with some great tools. Phew, we made it!
On the plane back to Boston, I am musing about the day…most of the day was negative! We (myself included) talked regulatory, click fraud, more regulatory and of course technical. As a SEM vendor, my plea to all my competitors, Chris N, Brad A, Chris O, Rob M, we need to talk to our clients like marketers. Stop talking 301 redirects and talk reach, engagement, transaction – basic marketing speak. I do not think any of those words were spoken at the SEM day in Philly. I am among the guilty. Perhaps that is why SEM is still only 5% of the pharma marketer’s budget.
