Catalyst attended the Exl Pharma SEM conference in February where Mike Moran, author of Search Engine Marketing Inc. presented. After reading Mike’s great post regarding the conference it had me thinking that although Catalyst has been doing search marketing catered to the healthcare / pharmaceutical industry for nearly a decade, industry thought leaders like Mike as well as the healthcare industry itself is just becoming more aware of the huge marketing opportunity that exists here.
An excerpt of Mike Moran’s post,:
[My] favorite part of the day was listening to Eric Papczun of Performics…..I was most interested in the stats he showed about the pharmaceutical industry:
- 58% of Americans say that online information is their most important source for health information (Pew Research)
- 54 million Americans look for information on pharmaceuticals on the Web (Manhattan Research)
- 80% of Americans (113 million) have researched health information on the Web (Pew Research)
Mike continues:
I haven’t worked with any pharmaceutical companies on their search marketing programs, so I was interested to see what health searchers do. Not every industry is as large as health care, so you may not have industry-specific statistics for your industry. But if you do, they can go a long way to convincing the boss that search marketing can’t be ignored.
Catalyst thought the Exl Pharma SEM conference was very successful in providing pharmaceutical marketing leaders a forum to share their opinions as well as their challenges. For those in attendance, there was little doubt that the opportunity for search marketing in the pharmaceutical industry was bountiful, yet the challenge of executing an effective search marketing campaign in a highly regulated industry, managed by conservative management makes for a daunting task for any individual or small army. However, I assure you that even though many pharma companies are just starting to navigate their search marketing path, there are already pharmaceutical companies who have forged ahead and are reaping the benefits of establishing themselves and their brands online – where their consumers research.
My hat is off to those pharma marketing evangelists who take it upon themselves and their team to continually educate management and prove the value of search marketing in the healthcare industry.
