The Evolution of Pharma Marketing As We Know It

Peter Niemi is a partner at MDC Advertising, the programmatic healthcare company.

Despite the myriad of technological advancements (think cameras you can swallow, robotic surgery systems, and next-gen synthetic limbs) made in medicine within the past 25 years, there is one place where the industry has notably lagged: its marketing.

Pharmaceutical businesses of all sizes are integrating digital marketing into their greater marketing strategy, primarily due to the increasing operational costs and the decreasing effectiveness of traditional methods – and the significant effectiveness of digital methods. While this shift has not happened at any great scale in the pharma world, there are telltale signs that it is starting, with digital spending expected to climb to $2.22 billion, according to eMarketer.

While pharma lags behind other verticals in the adoption of modern marketing techniques, the industry’s reliance on traditional channels is being overcome by the realization of just how powerful new programmatic marketing and media tools are. While the pharma market has been slower to adopt new digital marketing tools, it has had the positive result of being able to learn from the advances made in other industries. When pharma marketers see value being achieved by other industries they are increasingly open to piloting programmatic campaigns with clearly defined success measures. Once these measures are achieved they become eager to look for scale, and start diverting budget away from unmeasurable channels and inefficient approaches.

This post is first in a series that addresses how pharma marketers are fundamentally altering the way they engage with consumers in the digital age by incorporating programmatic technology into their marketing mix. The next post in this series will examine some of the common challenges that pharma marketers face, and how they are overcoming those challenges to execute responsible, high performance digital marketing campaigns.