Most big pharma companies spend about $1 billion annually on DTC. GSK was the nation’s 7th largest consumer advertiser in 2006 with $2.4 billion according to TNS, JNJ was the 9th. So is DTC a wise use of your marketing dollars? A couple things to consider:
1. Recent TNS survey concluded that 64% of doctors said there should be some sort of moratorium on DTC advertising and 27% believe there should be no DTC ads at all.
2. According to Neilsen Net Ratings, two out of three people surveyed use the Internet to search for information just before and just after visiting a doctor.
Thus, search marketing for the pharma industry should be a significant investment. I say significant - but it pales in comparison to DTC campaigns. Move some of that very large media budget to search. I’m constantly told ‘we do not have a big online budget’.That’s because it’s invested offline. Why? Your docs don’t like it and your consumers are actively looking elsewhere.
Search is the manifestation of new consumer behavior. In the past, marketers predicted what consumers would do. With online access, it just got easier; consumers are now expressing what they want and expressing intentions. We as marketers need to change gears; we need to create the most relevant response. Our key role is to respond to intention. How are people talking about your drug, your competitor’s drug, your disease category, treatment for the disease, etc.? Google and Yahoo know. So go find out. Then ask yourself these questions: Have you created a relevant response for your consumer or doctor? Have you created a response at all?
Brand management, the ability to review what people are saying about your brand, used to be fairly simple, but today the challenge is enormous; blogs, podcasts, micro-blogging, instant messaging, Wiki’s…oh my. For all industries brand management is important, for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry it is business critical at all times and can enter regulatory realms. I know regulatory, that is why I am going to say take baby steps.
This is the same industry that ten years ago told me search marketing is unethical and we will not get it through regulatory. Yes, I am that old. Anyway, we all are aware of the negative perception the general population has of pharma. If you search in the Google results under any pharma brand you will find a number of negative results. In fact, on average, Catalyst finds about 30% of the branded keyphrase SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) are negative. Type “Vioxx” into a search engine, three of the first ten organic results are negative and three of the four paid search results are negative. Perform a test on your brand? What percentage is negative? What percentage is negative when you type in your competitor’s brand name? What is your tolerance policy? Do you have one? Perhaps you should present a policy to the corporation. Pharma Company X Best Practices: -if the SERP results for the brand name are negative by 25% or more, engage in search reputation management. Or if our SERPs are worse than our competitors, engage in Search reputation management.
What is the value?
- Fortunately, all online content leads to one central location, search engines. Whether this content is fact or fiction, the search engines are usually the first place consumers will form an impression of a brand. Manage the results on a SERP and you can better protect your online reputation.
- Secondly, and I know this is more of a giant leap, research you will better understand what people are saying about your brand and condition.
How does it work?
- Monitor your brand keyphrase results in the first five pages of the search engines; categorize them as positive, negative and neutral.
- Leverage your existing assets, optimize these assets. Pharma has patient testimonials, press releases, podcasts, TV commercials, etc. - if these assets are in a digital format, optimize them! Optimize these assets to appear in the search engines for your brand keyphrases. Crowd the negative results off the first couple of pages with your existing assets.
- Paid search: your paid search vendor should be monitoring and notifying the search engines of trademark misuse. Second, buy the top spot for your brand name.
- Domain misspellings and jacking. If you are a popular brand, beware; type in your brand name and really look at the results, far too often there is URL jacking. Folks buy a URL similar to yours and consumers are unaware and click on that link. For example, “Allavert.com”, which is a common misspelling for the the allergy drug Alavert.
- Continue monitoring, continue optimizing.
For more information check out our press release about Reputation Management.
For those of you who do not know, just last month Google started a health advertising blog. The blog is purportedly designed:
“to help our health industry advertisers better understand how people are searching for health information, and how you as advertisers can better leverage the power of search and the Internet.” (source)
Lauren Turner, Account Planner, Health has caused some eyebrow raising in the healthcare space. She wrote about Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” and suggested healthcare industry advertises on Google to respond to “Sicko”. “Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore’s movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue”, she wrote.
I am not going to say much more. I learned early on not to talk politics with clients and in-laws. I guess Lauren does not agree. However, Google may agree as they pulled down all her comments on this topic over the weekend. Lauren Turner did write a follow up to the article that explained that her opinion was hers and not necessarily Google’s etc, you can see that here.
Well my article that appeared recently in MediaPost titled, “Search Insider: Multi-Language Search Strategies” has generated a lot of dialogue and is obviously an emotional hot topic for many people. I’d like to hear your thoughts on marketing to the U.S. Hispanic community.
Shrewd marketers will employ multi-language search strategies! I do not think most folks include organic search in their marketing mix today. I believe even fewer consider organic search in their multi-language marketing efforts. Overall, an effective search marketing strategy that includes multi-languages will undoubtedly benefit an under-served market /community and in turn may produce a significant positive business impact for you. Let me know what you think.
Every search vendor and media vendor has a solution for Click Fraud (including Catalyst). However, click fraud is not the only source of lost ad dollars. What is tragically overlooked is Google’s broad match tool - and it just got more dangerous. Google AdWords has just made available a new report type, one that reports on the user’s TYPED query. I don’t know why they did this, but this has blown the lid off the hocus-pocus behind “extended broad match.”
A quick look at this report for many of our clients reveals that they have indeed received many impressions and clicks on keywords that they should not be, including
- keyphrases they are not indicated for, not on the keyphrase list
- competing drug, not in the keyphrase list
- keyphrases we have listed as negative keyphrase, for example “X problems in cats; “cats” was on our negative list but it just came up
- words not at all related to “condition X”, they’re just spelled similarly
- and keyphrases that our paid search analyst states, ‘I don’t know how the heck this qualified as a match to the keyword “X”"
We at Catalyst and you folks in pharma marketing should think about the implications of this from a number of perspectives:
- As a reality check about our use of broad match.
- As a potential tool giving us insight into user behavior. (Lots of people seem to use those refine results for disease “x” links).
- As a potential regulatory violation if inappropriate queries trigger your ads
I read an interesting article on MediaPost Monday. The article discussed a recent study of pharma marketing managers’ opinions on marketing tools for their industry and found that a quarter of the brand managers believe their current marketing mix is only performing “reasonably well” or “not well at all.” Over 80% of respondents said an integrated direct marketing program is an important part of promoting a brand.
This article does not delve into the importance of SEM in the marketing mix, so I thought I would get up on my soapbox again and emphasize the importance of integrating an SEM campaign.
When investing in a DTC campaign, consider the ideas below; they will improve the integration and thus success of your marketing efforts:
- After seeing an ad on TV, be it branded or unbranded, folks are going to go to the Internet if interested in more information.
- 95% of health information seekers look for information on the search engines
- Invest in paid search (in can be up and running in a matter of days)
- The consumer may not remember your brand name; make sure you have an ad with your brand name in it (even if does not contain the condition - I love regulatory)
- The consumer may misspell the brand name; make sure you buy all misspellings
- Included all the relevant keyphrases used in the commercial, press release, etc.
- When estimating your paid search budget, using historical numbers is only an estimate, we typically experience significant increases in keyphrase volumes during TV campaigns and even more if you are receiving a lot of press. A mention on Oprah 10x - be prepared!
- Invest in SEO, organic search. As many of you know, it takes a while before organic search results begin to show up. Start the organic process at least three months prior to launch. If successful, your site will rank organically on the first page of Google for relevant keyphrases.
- Studies show that if both a paid and organic listing appears in the SERPs, the performance of the campaign improves dramatically. Specifically, iCrossing reported when organic search listings and paid search listings appeared on the same page, visitors increased by 41% and actions increased by 45%.
Bottom line: Include Search Marketing!
So the cover of MedAdNews displays the top DTC drug spends in 2006. As we would guess,
-Lunesta leads the pack at $329 million
-Ambien CR is next at $209 million
Now go to Google and type “insomnia treatment“.
Neither site is listed on the first page of Google in the organic results. Although on the second page, Ambiencr.com is ranking ahead of Lunesta.com in the results.
I would think both of these brands would invest in a successful organic search strategy. These DTC campaigns will raise awareness and drive folks to the search engines! It gets worse. The third biggest spender, Crestor, not listed on the first three pages of Google for “cholesterol treatment.”
I am now on my soapbox, if you are going to invest $100 million+ on DTC, please close the loop and invest in Search Marketing. Your drug sites will rank for condition x treatment if you have a solid search strategy. I am now stepping off the soapbox.
So, to start your Memorial Day Weekend, I thought I’d load you up with some facts. You know, some fun conversation starters for your barbecues. I do hope a lot of you will have other things to discuss, like the Red Sox are still nine and a half games ahead of the Yankees, even after our visit to NYC. Anyway, back on topic.
The IAB and PriceWaterhouse Coopers released their 2006 Internet Advertising Revenue Report on Wednesday. Internet advertising revenue for the full year of 2006 increased 35% over 2005. The total was $16.9 billion. That is 5.9% of total US ad spending, up from 4.7% in 2005. We are expanding and when compared to broadcast television (1949 - 1960) and cable television (1980 – 1991) we are expanding quickly.
Internet advertising revenue surpassed cable in its third year of growth and broadcast television in its fifth year of growth. What does this mean? It means as marketers we need to quickly understand how to apply our marketing efforts to Internet advertising. Not an easy task, there is way too much going on. However, as I have mentioned before I do believe Search will continue to be a road-map for consumers. Make sure you are testing search. There is a lot to learn including:
- How do people talk about my condition?
- What messages and keyphrases do they respond to?
- Should I buy broad keyphrases with low conversions but more branding opportunities or more targeted keyphrases?
- What is the impact to my query volumes and conversions when running a national DTC or DTP campaign or sponsoring the health section of Yahoo?
- How do I integrate search into my current marketing strategies? How do I integrate organic and paid search?
- What is the consumers experience when they search for my brand?
- I could keep going, but it is a holiday weekend.
Although not pharma related per se, here is some public information: Searches on Yahoo! for Cadillac Escalade jumped over 75% after the Superbowl. Cadillac was listed at the top of the sponsored search results and organic results. Search volume was up 105%, traffic volume was up 177%. Superbowl keyphrases generated 1.3 million impressions. Closing the loop is key. Am I beating a dead horse? Any of you planning a Superbowl ad? Any of you launching a DTC campaign soon?
By the way Search revenue accounted for 40% on Internet advertising revenue in 2006.
It just keeps getting more interesting. On Tuesday Google said they have invested in a biotech company founded by Sergey Brin’s wife. According to 23andMe’s Web site, this company will create a common, standardized resource that has the potential to accelerate drug discovery and bring personalized medicine to the public. This will be accomplished by encouraging individuals to learn about their own genetic information. I must admit, sounds interesting. Other investors include Genentech!
comScore released its health related search information yesterday. (GO) Here are some of the highlights:
The average monthly unique visitors online in the US is up 4% to 176 million visitors. The average monthly unique visitors looking for health information is up 12% to just over 55 million. WebMD leads the pack with NIH.org, MSN Health and Yahoo! Health (experiencing a significant jump over last year) following close behind.
When planning your Search campaigns, think Yahoo and MSN, particularly if you are engaged in display ads and sponsorships. In terms of search, Google is the ominous leader, however folks are using Yahoo and MSN as a health resource, so you can see how this may present a problem to Google - even though the co-op was supposed to solve this. Perhaps the reason that Yahoo and MSN are doing so well (they are the in top ten portals for visitor loyalty at roughly 17% each, NIH and WebMD are 22% and 29% respectively) is that the interface gently funnels the user into a health vertical and there are interesting value adds for the user like Yahoo Answers and MSN’s Ask the Experts.
Research demonstrates a significant increase in search query volume, click through rates and conversion after a consumer has viewed a display ad. Therefore, it is essential to make sure your online media shop is coordinating efforts with your search shop to maximize that synergy.
According the study, the top searches are: Pregnancy, Cancer, Fitness, Cold and Rash. I would venture to say that Flu, Fitness and Cold are seasonal. Flu and Cold, as it is flu season Q1 in most of America, and Fitness as the warm weather is coming? Next on the list is Nutrition and Weight loss, no surprises there. Finally the list wraps up with Diabetes and Depression. The recent Avandia news notwithstanding, I have to give GSK kudos - even if they’re not a client - because they are ranking page 1 in Google organically for both those keyphrases. I would estimate the one listing for each of those highly searched keyphrases brings the site about one million visitors a year. GSK had the foresight about ten years ago to purchase both depression.com and diabetes.com. What URLs do you have in your closet?
