VIEW on E-SOLUTIONS
Reaching Your Target Audience
R.J. Lewis, President & CEO
Your target audience is on the Internet, using e-mail, and connected via mobile in greater numbers than ever before. Yet the pharmaceutical industry’s digital media expenditures still come nowhere close to correlating with your audiences’ digital media usage levels. The digital environment provides rich data and incredible flexibility for engaging with your targets on their terms. Reaching your target is no longer enough. To be competitive today, you must engage them. To achieve ROI, you must measure the impact of customer engagement and the resulting benefits to the brand. Today’s pharmaceutical marketers are savvy about gaining exposure among target audiences using integrated, “surround-sound" programs. By understanding audience demographics, marketers invest in different vehicles to reach their targets. Their awareness strategy is designed for brand-building through frequent repetition. Be noticed. Be remembered. The media perspective introduces an engagement strategy that depends on relevance-based exposure. Initial messaging should be designed to make a compelling statement that motivates audiences to take action based on state-of-mind at the time of exposure. That action is critical in driving to positive ROI; it’s usually the first measurable step in the conversation. Conversation or engagement is a huge factor in pharma marketing success. The complexities associated with understanding the marketed products usually demand more time than a one-time-hit receives. Short of having a face-to-face meeting or a highly motivated pen-pal suffering from the same condition, the interactive nature of new digital technologies makes these ideal media for inclusion in today’s pharma marketing programs. Pharmaceutical marketers are fortunate because engagement is easiest to achieve in deeply researched, important, subject areas. Health professional and consumer audiences are avid users of digital technology, and they actively use the Internet for research and education on disease conditions and medications. They manage information via their e-mail inboxes and use mobile applications to help them better manage a streamlined medical practice or a personal health condition. So, be sure to build your marketing campaigns to include a powerful digital media component. An integrated media plan with a quality digital partner that offers strong targeting and reach among your audience demographics will significantly increase your opportunities for optimization and positive ROI — and your audiences will be that much closer to experiencing the value of your product in their lives. Strategies Behind Creative Executions Michele Trichter, Managing Sales Director, Consumer Marketing dvertising campaigns are typically most effective when the creative ad units and media buy are planned together. By strategically aligning ad creative with media placements, advertisers tend to receive more optimal results. Whenever possible, creative messaging should capitalize on the understanding of the audience being reached by different types of placements. When the creative process follows media planning or vice versa, there are often missed opportunities. When the two are strategically aligned at the start, much more value can be realized. This type of flexibility is most commonly executed online. Within the digital media space, there are many different options for capitalizing on how audiences interact with marketing creative. Because of the complexity of the digital environment, it can be beneficial to partner with experts who understand both marketing and digital media. Working with a strategic media partner gives you the ability to craft different types of campaigns to achieve different marketing goals based on whom the creative executions will be reaching and in what environment. Working with a strategic network partner gives you great reach and effective optimization because of the variety of publishers included in the buy. Planning with a strategic partner from the start rather than force-fitting campaign components together later in the process gives you more budget effectiveness, with less waste and typically greater ROI. These are two examples: • Marketers who would like to achieve targeted content delivery might create a content syndication and/or microsite campaign. With these initiatives, content can be branded or unbranded, it can reach target audiences in trusted third-party environments, and audiences don’t typically leave their intended experience to become exposed to the sponsor’s messaging. Only interested audiences click through from promotional vehicles to read the relevant content. • On the other end of the spectrum, brand awareness campaigns can be delivered to either a broad or targeted audience, depending on objectives. The flexibility of a network buy creates increased opportunities for exposure/frequency management and interest-based targeting. When advertisers both tailor their messages and are able to maximize exposure based on audience characteristics and behaviors, they can see a huge impact on bottom-line success. Creative executions should be entwined with the media plan at the strategic start so the two are poised to deliver optimal results. n e-Healthcare Solutions Premium Advertising Network e-Healthcare Solutions Premium Advertising Network represents the digital advertising and sponsorship opportunities of a large portfolio of medical publishers, providing advertisers with a quick and easy means of achieving vast reach to specific niche target audiences. For more information, visit e-healthcaresolutions.com.
