Marketing

Ursula Sautter reports on how pharma firms are making smart use of online sales and marketing campaigns.

Ursula Sautter reports on how pharma firms are making smart use of online sales and marketing campaigns.

When pharma marketers get together these days, there is always a hint of fear in the air.

As a pharma company, we are afraid of both digital media and social networking, Tom Pryzgoda, director of international marketing at Abbott, recently told the audience at eyeforpharmas 5th Annual eMarketing Summit in Berlin.

The reason: Steering an e-advertising project through the swampy corporate delta with its intricate responsibilities can be a terrifying experience.

Luckily, Pryzgoda and other marketing experts believe things can be a lot less scary if a few basic steps are taken.

Creating a new corporate culture

Creating a corporate culture that accepts new media as a key approach to communicating with customers is perhaps the most important thing to do.

Because It's easy to shun what you don't understand," says Jody Ball, executive director of specialist communications consultancy FD Sant, education is crucial.

"If you stop your staff from using Twitter, for instance, or if you don't establish your own in-company variant of it, how can you expect them to embrace that culture?"

To do just that, Novartis recently introduced Yammer as its internal enterprise microblogging platform, actively stimulating use of the new communication tool.

At UCB Germany, Martin Hensen, head of e-strategies, is going face-to-face to convince his colleagues of the virtues of digital marketing.

Aside from taking part in marketing team meetings to present new projects, he co-organizes regular events at which outside-providers can show off the latest e-marketing ideas to the UCB crowd.

"Proselytizing," Hensen calls it.

Engage the regulatory and legal departments

Pharma managers concerned with keeping advertising within legal bounds are particularly leery that social media campaigns could pose a threat.

Since "this fear will stop such projects from moving forward," says Pryzgoda, it's crucial to "engage regulatory and legal from the very beginning," to empower these teams and "help them understand the industry and the tools and make them part of the solution."

When Abbott decided to set up a new website with information about a certain therapeutic area doctors had said would be useful, the marketing team immediately took their proposal to the regulatory affairs department to prevent later hiccups.

"We engaged them from the start and partnered with them to find a solution," says Tony Bondi, the company's e-marketing manager.

The result: The cooperation between two departments, often at loggerheads, was productive and the legal staff "was excited to be part of the process."

Digital marketing teams

Defining a corporate policy on the usage of the digital and social media is vital, too.

Once such a policy has been established, everyone involved will "understand the boundaries," says Ball, and stress that your company "takes social media ethics seriously."

An efficient approval process, which stipulates who is involved as well as how and when, Pryzgoda believes, will also be of big help.

"You'll know what the rules are and can then move forward," he says.

To speed up and facilitate communication, it makes sense to "create a cross-functional digital marketing team" incorporating members from all the departments involved in the campaign development and release process, Pryzgoda suggests.

Such a group can not only work on a particular campaign but also develop standards and guidelines for the use of the digital and social media in general.

Involving your online advertising staff in any new marketing plans is important as well.

"Youve got to make sure that e-marketing has a seat at the table," Pryzgoda says.

If the digital media experts enter the planning process too late, they'll be left "behind the eight ball."

Understand your audience

And then there's the need to "understand your audience," Ball says.

That doesn't only mean that you should try to determine which online channel will best reach your target group.

If you're advertising a memory-enhancing drug, for instance, it may not make much sense to choose MySpace as your platform.

If you are an internationally operating pharma enterprise, you also need to pay attention to geographical user preferences.

Abbott told its affiliates worldwide that they could take the contents of the newly established Psoriasis Uncovered website and localize it.

Fifteen different nationally customized sites resulted.

Since e-marketers have to prove the ROI of online marketing activities, a measuring system that tracks the effectiveness of e-advertising and enables benchmarking should be set up.

The successful campaign InBed, launched by Bayer Schering for its erectile dysfunction drug, revolves around various metrics that gauge user engagement quantitatively and qualitatively, allowing content to continuously evolve.

If these basic steps are taken, digital and social media should soon lose much of their scariness and become, in Pryzgoda's tongue-in-cheek remark to his audience, "the center of the universe."

For more on Bayer Scherings InBed campaign, see Marketing and social media: A success story.

For more on effective use the Web, see Using the web to improve patient compliance.