What is Digital Marketing?
pharmafile | May 14, 2010 | Feature | Medical Communications |Â Â Â
Some consider it just another channel to market, but the reality is more complicated.
by Mark Millar, PraeMedica
The basic principles of marketing still apply: know your customer and your competitors, define your target segments and be clear on your message priorities and positioning.
However that’s where it ends. Digital is not just another channel: it requires a new approach to marketing and a new understanding of customer behaviour.
Why is digital different?
Digital includes a wide variety of channels which share important characteristics distinguishing them from traditional channels:
• Duration: online resources can be permanent rather than campaign-limited. It’s important to remember that because online material is so easy to copy, it should always be considered to exist somewhere, even after the site has been closed down.
• Interactivity: the online visitor is seeking information. Each chooses when to initiate contact, how long and which pages they visit and when to move on.
• Push v Pull: you need to pull people to your online content rather than push content to them. The age of ‘build it and they will come’ for websites is gone. So you’ll need guidance on promotion using search engine marketing and online click-through advertising.
• Two-way: the internet provides for dialogue with customers and among customers. This can be an opportunity to engage, understand and serve your customers as individuals.
• Breadth and depth: the amount of content can be unlimited. This has advantages and disadvantages and requires an understanding usability and design concepts.
• Segment & target: online visitors can be differentiated and shown different content, for example according to geography (language) or brand adoption.
• Measurable: one thing you’ll not be short of with digital is metrics. In fact the trick is knowing which metrics are important to you. Site visitors or site visits? How do you measure engagement? Email open or click-through rates (for example, an email read in Outlook’s preview pane is not counted as opened)?
• Adaptable: split A/B testing can be used to compare one message or design with another so you can settle on the most effective.
The end result of all this is the need for a new approach. In his bestselling book Seth Godin coined the phrase Permission Marketing, indicating a shift in control to the consumer. Marketers must earn the right to communicate to customers. This is done over time, bit by bit, by drip-feeding valuable communications to customers in return for their most valuable asset – their time.
The ever-expanding digital options
- Product.com website (for professionals)
- Product.com website (for patients)
- Unbranded website (for professionals)
- Unbranded website (for patients)
- CD-ROM via direct mailing, journal insert or sales force
- e-detailing (attended or unattended)
- KOL collaboration website / forum
- Email marketing – from your own website or a sponsored third party
- Distributed content: e.g. sponsored pages on publisher/society sites; podcasts on iTunes
- Mobile device marketing
- Social media: e.g. Facebook, Twitter
- Operational tools: e.g. brand team workspace or salesforce AV resources
- Online advertising & PR
- Virtual meetings and Ad Boards
A world of choices
It can be overwhelming to think about the plethora of options available. Even within digital, media consumption is becoming increasingly fragmented. The list of options can be daunting (see above table). We can say they relate to traditional activities in a number of ways:
1. Complementary: a digital add-on to an offline activity. For example, recording a satellite symposium and distributing it on CD-ROM;
2. Replacement: replacing an offline activity with a digital equivalent. For example a virtual ad board hosted online or email campaign instead of post mailer;
3. Incremental: a digital activity with no offline equivalent. For example a disease microsite or Twitter page.
So how do you choose? To begin, consider which are appropriate for your brand in terms of customer needs and preferences, message delivery, targeting, integration with other activities, budget and timeframes. What works for a new indication may not work for a brand near patent expiry. For example:
1. To promote newly published clinical trial data to clinicians in a specific region, consider a multimedia CD-ROM programme distributed via your field sales force and journal inserts.
2. To transform a satellite meeting beyond a half-day event, create a microsite that runs for the months before and after, asking questions to building engagement around key clinical issues and hosting a recording of the talks afterwards.
3. To service a region where it is unfeasible to run a sales force, build a website and email service in the local language as a home for the brand with two-way communication features.
Of course, no customer will do everything. No one will frequent your website, read all your emails and contribute to all your social media discussions. It’s about segmenting, about satisfying each customer according to their own preferences.
Whatever your scenario, however, there will be options you can take to give you the right mix, to deliver a better service to your customers and move towards your brand objectives.
Visit www.praemedica.com/planning for a free slide set on digital marketing planning.
Article taken from The Digital Pharma Guide, Click here for the e:edition
