eMarketing Conference for the Pharmaceutical Industry

March 12, 2007 – 7:47 pm

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.

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, Search Marketing, Search Marketing Conferences | Comments (0)

SES New York: April 10th. See you there?

March 10, 2007 – 7:40 pm

There is a great deal of buzz about the upcoming SES conference in NYC beginning April 10th, with plenty of “new for NYC” topics, including video search optimization to kick off the conference! After Google’s YouTube purchase (and now the Viacom lawsuit) what else would we expect? Last year the conference had over 6,000 registrants. We are all grateful the conference is in April this year, spring in NYC should be a lot more fun than last year’s February SES conference. Thank you Danny!

Please come listen to me speak on the four star rated topic of “Search and Regulated Industries”. And don’t miss our in house expert, Sherwood Stranieri speak on the hot topic of video search. See you there!

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, Search Marketing Conferences | Comments (0)

Top 5 Paid Search Marketing Tips

March 8, 2007 – 7:47 pm

If you’re responsible for the success of your company’s paid search strategy then you already know that the value of a paid search marketing campaign should be measured in terms of its return on investment (ROI), and not in terms of the number of impressions your ads receive or the number of visitors the campaign produces. Billions of dollars are spent each year on paid search campaigns because it works. However, most companies can make their campaigns significantly more efficient and effective.

Tim Breen specializes in paid search for Catalyst and recently posted an article over at our Search-Matters blog. If you are looking at paid search check out his article for his top five tips on how to:

  • Avoid Broad Search Terms
  • Utilize “Exact” or “Phrase” Match Options
  • Utilize Negative Search Terms
  • Sponsored Search Versus Content Match
  • Local Search Versus National Search

This is a huge market and companies are throwing away money either trying to do this themselves or bundling it into their web design business.

Heather

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, Search Marketing | Comments (0)

Using search queries for business decisions

February 28, 2007 – 7:33 pm

In today’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, password protected) there is a piece by Kevin J. Delaney discussing how companies are investigating web-search queries to determine different industries to focus on and what type of product enhancements to deliver.The article is very interesting and discusses how companies such as National Instruments, Siemens, and others have actually looked at what their potential customers are searching for and made business decisions based on these queries.

What people search for is a glimpse into their direct needs.When people are looking for health information they often put in symptoms, not necessarily the main problem. Realizing this can determine how best to communicate, and in some cases as the article mentions determine new directions for products.

I recently wrote about proper SEM in the pharma market, the piece is titled ‘Proper search engine marketing aids pharma’.The main theme of the column was discussing how search engine marketing can help health care and pharmaceutical companies, but also that general SEM simply can not be effective, it must be specifically tailored for a specific industry.

The article highlights quickly some of the things a health care company must think about when looking to use SEM to build their brand(s).

When you think about your industry what are the specific challenges each of your marketing partners, including SEM, must know?

Heather.

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, Search Marketing | Comments (0)

Digging for Answers

February 22, 2007 – 7:48 pm

Shari Thurow, who has written the book Search Engine Visibility, has a post at SearchEngineLand yesterday that brings up a topic I’ve been discussing recently. Shari is quite right in writing, “I find that searchers who are truly interested in purchasing a product and/or service actually dig for information.” This is the same in all industries. The challenge we face however in healthcare SEM is the ensuring that web content is optimized for how people are searching, even though it may conflict with branded messaging. For example, and this is for illustrative purposes only, say a new diabetes drug is specifically indicated for Type II Diabetes and the original web copy spells out “Type Two Diabetes” because of marketing requirements by the brand team. A quick look at the chart below shows that when users (i.e. potential paying customers) search for this type of diabetes information they use “Type 2 Diabetes” thousands of times more than with the numeral 2 spelled out as “two”.

The point is, not optimizing for high volume related keyphrases results in lost targeted traffic. Educating clients on the balance between their marketing messaging and how people are actually searching is essential to a successful search marketing campaign.

By Heather | Posted in SEM, SEO, Search Marketing | Comments (0)

Search Engines have First Amendment right to reject ads

February 6, 2007 – 7:04 pm

A U.S. District Court in Delaware basically threw out a lawsuit originally filed by Chris Langdon. Elinor Mills has coverage over at CNET and I’m sure it will be picked up elsewhere throughout the day. Check out the comments already streaming in at CNET and you can see this is going to be a hot topic.

Elinor also links to this blog posting from Eric Goldman which sums it up quite nicely.

Do Search Engines have the constitutional right to ban certain advertisements from their sites?

We’ll obviously see a lot more of this these types of challenges filter through our judicial system in the coming years. Let’s face it, search engines maybe the most cost effective and efficient way of delivering your message to the mass market – everyone wants a piece but if you don’t follow the rules then the search engines won’t let you play.

By Heather | Posted in SEM, Search Marketing | Comments (0)

Does vertical SEM matter?

February 2, 2007 – 7:37 pm

In this weeks Mass High Tech, our local technology weekly newspaper, I wrote a piece entitled Proper Search Engine Marketing Aids Pharma. The main theme of the column was discussing how search engine marketing can help health care and pharmaceutical companies, but also that general SEM simply can not be effective, it must be specifically tailored for a specific industry.

From the piece:

The health-care industry is heavily regulated, minimizing what can be said and when. For SEM it can be difficult to know how to maximize search results while also meeting industry regulations. For example the Food and Drug Administration’s Fair Balance Act is what health-care and pharmaceutical organizations are concerned with when it comes to marketing. Basically, this act demands that all marketing present accurate and fair assessment of the risks as well as the benefits of the drug. In order to maximize SEM while following regulations, companies must follow best practices in order to truly leverage the Internet and take advantage of the opportunities.

The article highlights quickly some of the things a health care company must think about when looking to use SEM to build their brand(s).

When you think about your industry what are the specific challenges each of your marketing partners, including SEM, must know?

Heather

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, Search Marketing | Comments (0)

Welcome the the Catalyst Search Marketing Blog

January 23, 2007 – 10:10 am

Everyone who is anyone has a blog, right? I’m not completely sure if that is true, but it certainly has become an important part of how we communicate in today’s world. For more than a year I have been following some terrific blogs in the search marketing space, and I’m really excited now to have a voice in the virtual and interactive conversation.

What will I talk about here? Great question! Catalyst online is a search engine marketing (SEM) firm, and more specifically we are the online SEM firm that is devoted to the health care market. Our legacy is working with companies like Novartis, Pfizer, and more. Our expertise is how to leverage search engines in order to increase visibility for these companies, their products, and their brands.

So I’ll be talking about SEM, paid search, organic search, local search…you get the picture. But I’ll also be venturing into some of the debates raging over at Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, and others, as well as bringing you the latest news and information from Catalyst online.

I’m looking forward to beginning this conversation, but I’m even more excited to hear directly from each of you.

Keep reading,

Heather

P.S. The RSS feed is below and you can always reach me at hfrahm@catalystsearchmarketing.com.

By Heather | Posted in Healthcare Search, Pharma Search, SEM, SEO, Search Marketing | Comments (0)