Pharma marketing: How to measure digital marketing performance
Hemen Patel, president of CRM Metrix Digital Marketing Analytics, on how pharma firms can build a culture of measuring digital marketing performance
By on Jul 5, 2011
Why is it important for pharma to invest in digital marketing (DM) strategy analytics?
In the old days of mainly TV, radio, print, and outdoor ads, things were very easily managed and, most importantly, it was managed centrally. The central department could evaluate what was working and what wasn't when they had spent money on those traditional media. Today’s consumer is blasted with multiple (sprayed) brand messages delivered through digital and offline media. It is imperative for companies to focus on top performers and find the sweet spot within the media clutter with respect to time, resources and capital.
And there are many different types of digital touch points—social media, websites, microsites, online ads, Twitter, Facebook, online videos. But if you don't have the information about what's getting you new sales, everybody will just be doing what they want to do. It is necessary to establish a culture that prioritizes the top three to four DM media that contribute most to financial objectives for the business. Also remember to continue exploring the feasibilities of new media without taking away time, resources and capital from the core marketing model. Financially speaking, shifting away from the top three to four media may present missed opportunities.
In order to find the sweet spot, it is critical that proper research methods be deployed to measure digital marketing performance. The performance insights delivered enable marketers to evaluate strategies that work and do not work, which leads to the allocation of time, resources and capital for the top three to four performers.
How widespread and standardized is the use of DM strategy analytics currently?
It's still the wild wild West out there. We have observed that most traditional marketing strategies are developed and managed by market and/or consumer research. However, this is not the case for a large volume of DM strategies—and everyone is engaging in some type of DM strategy through one or more of the various touch points—which are mainly designed based on feelings, hunches and ‘follow the leader’ mentalities.
But are companies doing it in a concerted fashion?
Everybody is doing it in an isolated manner—there's a social media expert; there's a website guy; there's a Facebook guy; there's an online video guy, but there's no element of sharing the knowledge. And often, they just 'ninja it'—so, just because a guy puts something on Facebook he is suddenly a social media manager—but he has no background of market research and measurement. And there is no element of sharing knowledge. There are no centralized DM departments. Everything just goes up to the chief marketing officer. And these guys have other jobs to do. Even when I talk to an interactive marketing manager, he'll say, ‘Well, measuring is not my task and I don't want to go above and beyond my job to help the company establish this type of organization with DM strategy, even though I believe this is what we should do.’
So there is no standardized use of Web marketing analytics?
No, everybody uses their own metrics and methods to evaluate them. There is no sense of protocol, no guidelines or policy within any of those organizations. John, who manages the website, may say, ‘For me, it's all about customer satisfaction.’ Mary, who manages social media, may say, ‘For me, the key metric is how likely users are to post a comment.’ How can you compare these two things? How can you decide which one is working better?
Moving forward, it is necessary for internal teams to develop a performance protocol that is nearest in terms of proximity to the brand and its objectives. This creates a very effective research strategy, as one team commands and communicates the research protocol to internal and external marketing partners. The centralized system stores all dispersed DM performance metrics into one central location, which presents a bird’s eye view of marketing performance.
How would you summarize its benefits?
A global research protocol establishes brand- and company-wide DM performance norms; these allow the brand to compare and contrast performance between strategies. Standardization and centralization provides the ability to isolate top performers. Integrated reports facilitate building best practices for future strategy development. The development of a digital marketing performance intelligence system creates an historical archive.
How many companies are actually using analytical metrics?
Ninety percent of companies do not measure. Those who do usually just rely on behavioral metrics—how many first-time visitors to a page, how many repeat visitors, top referring links—but they have not yet begun building a culture of DM strategy or measuring the success in terms of key metrics, such as awareness, driving of branding, driving of intent, driving of relationship. They don't know what purpose a particular strategy serves. Is it building trust? Is it credible? Is the platform used as a pre-purchase research platform? Or is it post-purchase? So what we try to tell people is, ‘Listen, you need a centralized department. There's a lot of things you can do to scientifically achieve a high level of efficiency if you measure using standard metrics.’
How manpower-intensive would it be for the average pharma company to establish a specialized team for DM strategy research and analytics?
The beauty of it is, you can leverage an existing department to be the marketing research and analytics department. Companies already have departments that aggressively evaluate and analyze marketing media like TV, radio and print. But the digital counterpart somehow has not been integrated into their functions. You maybe need to add two or three analytical specialists to bring in that kind of expertise and experience.
How do you go about establishing the set of metrics that will be most useful for a given company?
That depends on the corporation, category and brand and how they have been measuring in the past. You have to make sure you are consistent here. Let's say a company has always measured TV advertising by listing purchase intent. That means you also have to measure your website, your online ads, etc by using a similar criteria and method. Then you can compare which one is really doing better and where you should focus your time, resource and capital. This is how you decide what the DM key metrics should be—purchase intent, brand image perception and such. In some cases, only two metrics could be involved or it could be five metrics that become the standard.
So it's not the quantity of metrics that's crucial?
No, it's the quality of performance metrics that answer key business questions. For instance, which sections of the website are most influential in terms of purchase impact? Are we capturing market share among consumers who don’t often buy our brand? Which actions taken during the visit represent engagement at the bottom level of the conversion funnel? What are the top three media sources driving traffic in terms of targeting accuracy and in-market status? Which combination of post-visit actions taken lead to purchase (i.e., re-surf website + made recommendation + downloaded coupon)? To what degree does the website visit experience drive relationships and branding? And many more.
What is the biggest problem you face at the moment?
It's a wonderful environment out there and we are having fun. But it's an uphill battle. The biggest problem is that nobody is hired exactly for that type of position. So, therefore, when we speak to people who could be close to having an expertise to pull this off, they say, ‘Why should I put more work on my plate?’
Is it more difficult to convince management of the need for DM analytics?
Yes, it is, specifically due to the large number of regulations there. When we measure the websites of a pharma company, the main goal is evaluating ROI as opposed to trying to increase user experience via measuring usability satisfaction and providing ideas for website improvements. If a pharma company wants to improve a website, they have to put in an application because the new contents must be approved. So they'll say, ‘This information is not useful for me. I just want to know what's working for me. I'm not interested in any improvement ideas.’
Are DM metrics particularly important for pharma because of trust issues?
Yes, for pharma that's an uphill battle. Not many visitors visit their sample sites and trust is very, very low. When you are running a banner ad or Web campaign, very few people are going to click because they say, ‘The pharma industry is demonic; it makes such a lot of money’ or ‘There has been bad press about side-effects.’ So pharma definitely needs to have facts to build that trust, to create credible brand messaging, and this not only goes for websites but online ads as well.
Click on the title to download a copy of CRM Metrix’s Digital Marketing Performance Evaluation: Key Metrics.
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