The marketing of medicines has a long history beginning with the sale of miracle cures, often with little real potency, and continuing with the marketing of legitimate non-prescription over the counter (OTC) medications such as pain relievers and colds and flu remedies.

The marketing of prescription only medicines (POMs), however, is a more recent phenomenon. For years pharmaceutical companies targeted the medical profession through ads in professional journals and visits by medical representatives to doctors’ offices and hospitals.

Over time, as the number of representatives went up, the amount of time spent with doctors went down. And journals clogged up with ads competing for attention. In response pharmaceutical companies sought competitive advantage by turning to branding and more recently new media to come up with creative digital marketing campaigns.

Connected marketing

Digital marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels to reach the target audience in a relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.

Previously regarded as a stand-alone service in its own right, digital marketing is now seen as a domain that covers most, if not all, of the more traditional marketing areas by providing the same method of communicating with an audience, but in a digital fashion.

Digital marketing today extends beyond many of the techniques and practices contained within internet marketing – such as websites and online display and banner ads – to include a whole host of offline elements such as mobile phones, text messaging, CDs, DVDs, laptop sales aids, 2D/3D animation, kiosk and digital outdoor.

Integrated campaigns

Digital marketing is just one channel of the marketing mix but is growing faster than any other type of media. What makes digital communications attractive is that pharmaceutical companies can reach the target audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets.

One of the considerations about digital marketing is that it requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media; low-speed internet connections are another barrier: If pharmaceutical companies build over-complicated websites, people connected to the internet via dial-up connections or mobile devices may experience significant delays in content delivery and therefore stop using the medium.

The strength of an integrated campaign therefore lies in understanding where and how digital or online media strategy fits into the overall marketing strategy.

One thing's for sure – whether it's a case of creating brand or product awareness, generating leads, capturing data or actually selling online, successful digital marketing must combine an understanding of the pharmaceutical company’s business and commercial requirements with the online needs and behaviour of its customers.

More than the web

Digital marketing requires creative solutions that look beyond the digital to complement the clients’ offline marketing strategies while engaging their customers.

Online creativity can be a powerful business tool and includes:

Digital online marketing and communications – website and internet marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, online and internet advertising and e-sales tools.

Design and build – internet, extranet and intranet sites, microsites, website design development, ecommerce, content management systems (cms) and applications development.

Offline digital – CDs, DVDs, laptop sales aids, 2D/3D animation

Keeping track

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured and tested.

Advertisers either pay per web banner impression, per click (PPC), per play (PPP) or per action accomplished. Therefore, pharmaceutical marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the target audience.

These measurements cannot be achieved through traditional offline advertising, where an individual will at best be interested, then decide to obtain more information at a later time.

Getting started

You will need to know how to manage the people, information, technology and services required to align the client’s digital marketing strategy with their business objectives.

The types of jobs in digital marketing are varied and include:

§          Information architect – an information architect provides the blueprints for a website. You will be responsible for arranging the hierarchy of website information and creating the navigational structure of the site. You may also work with graphic designers and user functionality project managers

§          User interface designer– by determining the overall structure and flow of information on web pages and websites, you will help ensure that users of websites and corporate intranets can navigate them logically and intuitively to find the information they need

§          Flash animation designer– you will use animation and graphics software to design and develop 2D and 3D animations for creating characters, special effects and graphics for websites, broadcast, multimedia presentations, training, games and corporate presentations

§          Multimedia designer – designs and develops multimedia presentations by combining still images, sound, text, video and animations to create presentations for CDs, websites and interactive media. These can be used in training, games, corporate presentations and as sales tools. You should have a working knowledge of graphics and animation software and web technologies

§         Web content manager – you will work with web designers and web programmers on website design and capabilities to ensure that website content meets the client’s requirements and fulfils the needs of website users. You will be responsible for overseeing the writing, editing, updating and placement of content on websites and corporate intranets

§         Web content writer – writes copy and navigational links for websites; corporate intranets; email communications; and web-based advertising and marketing campaigns. Also adapts copy from offline sources for online use

§         Web designer – responsible for creating designs and layouts for websites, corporate intranets, email communications, logos and online interfaces. Also designs materials for web-based advertising and marketing campaigns and works with writers to integrate copy with designs