Digital Marketing in 2015: Why and How Pharma Must Harness a More Strategic Approach
For digital marketing to truly deliver on its potential, most pharmas have to face and fix four interrelated issues. The first has to do with reforming the organizational structure of marketing and sales to empower digital as a primary, not ancillary, channel. The next two issues underpin the first, namely developing robust, marketing-related analytics and moving to better funding of digital. The fourth issue, and the topic of this report, is the need for digital teams and brands overall to shift from an adolescent tactic-based marketing approach to a more-mature strategic approach centered on the customer experience. Vanguard companies taking a more holistic approach to developing strategy consider customer pain points and needs along the treatment journey, along with digital audits and competitive reviews in the process, all within the context of overarching brand goals. The remaining companies are either still tactically focused and media-specific or reliant on customer digital insights alone. This report makes a case for why digital marketers need to embrace a more-robust strategic approach to multichannel marketing and includes hypothetical digital strategic plans for rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.