In real estate, it’s “location, location, location.” And forpharma marketers looking for ways to increase their advertising with ameasurable ROI, the word of the moment appears to be “research, research,research.” Never was this more evident than during the recent ePharma Summit.Conference chairman, Paul Ivans of Evolution Road Consulting, set the tone forthe conference with some industry trend slides indicating that 80%of the US isonline and half of these people search the web for health info. Ivans notedthat one-third of these healthcare seekers routinely use social media as partof their information gathering.
While most of the presenters and attendees agreed thatpharma marketers are not investing online in proportion to the results they aregetting, Microsoft’s Peter
Neupert arrived at some interesting conclusions on thissubject during his presentation. Neupert is convinced that pharma isn’tspending enough on
e-research. And once the research is done, a better processneeds to be found to invest marketing funds to achieve the kind of ROI they areseeking.
Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution and author of the book,What Sticks, indicated that those companies that have spent the money onresearching how the web improves the marketing mix are already makingadjustments to their media mix. Companies that participated in cross mediaoptimization studies have invested much more heavily in online tactics afterseeing the results.
Brad Aronson of Avenue A | Razorfish noted that there aremore consumer Rx decisions influenced by peers than by health portals. He toldthe audience that over 54 million adults have connected online to others or thecontent created by others about their disease or condition.
Dan McKillen is president and CEO of the HealthDay newsservice
From the March 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
