Content marketing is becoming increasingly important in the pharmaceutical industry. Many improvements still need to be made. A YouTube video has suggested three ways to improve a content-based marketing strategy.

Content marketing at the center of attention

By 2017, businesses from all sectors are expected to comply with the new trends and practices of online marketing. With video and hyper-personalization, content marketing will still occupy a prominent place this year. The attention of business leaders and investors is particularly focused on services associated with content marketing. These services include:

  • Native advertising
  • Sponsored Content
  • White papers
  • Brand publications

This multitude of nesting forces the business leaders and marketers – especially those in the pharmaceutical industries – to believe firmly in the almost infinite potential of content. The number and volume of investments made in this area is constantly increasing. Press groups such as the Guardian have created their own content creation lab for companies such as UPS, General Electric and Unilever. The same trend is observed in the United States and Asia. Pharmaceutical companies are logically among the loyal customers of these communication boxes that produce, test and manage thousands of different contents.

How to explain such a craze for ‘Content Marketing’?

“Content Marketing”: this expression seems quite familiar. Many people, however, are unaware of its meaning or do not grasp its true meaning. Basically, content marketing is a passive selling technique. It relies primarily on informative or entertaining publications. The primary objective of this content is to capture the reader’s attention. Once this first step is over, the marketer can make his brand known to his audience, and then start recruiting leads. The sales process itself takes place at the very end of the user’s journey. This facilitates the birth of a true relationship between brands and readers. The latter feels freer in their choice, a feeling most useful to gain their confidence.

Ensuring reader loyalty is becoming increasingly difficult in recent years. There is first of all the increasingly tenacious desire of search engines and reference sites to provide content relevant to their readers. Platforms that do not have the means or the experience to hold high quality lose logical visibility or traffic. New algorithms continuously scan sites for publications that contain quality information associated with the right keywords. The number of shares, likes or comments is also taken into account in the SEO process. Content marketing is therefore the most practical solution to produce both quality posts, while seducing users of social media.

The proliferation of advertising blockers is also pushing companies to become even more interested in content marketing. This recent trend cost several million Euros in shortfall annually to advertisers and agencies. More and more companies are therefore diversifying their communication media, reducing their investments in banner ads and improving their content strategy.

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Pharmaceutical industry catches up

While content marketing already has a solid structure in several industries, this is not necessarily the case with the pharmaceutical industry. The large companies in this sector have always been limited to campaigns of influence with medical professionals and other opinion leaders. They rely mainly on white papers to achieve this.

Aware of their delay, pharmaceutical companies are increasing their investment in content. Numerous improvements are made, in particular in the diffusion of contents on digital media and in the management of the production calendar. However, these corrections seem insufficient, according to the recommendations of Google and YouTube. These two web giants have outlined three areas of content marketing improvements for pharmaceutical companies:

  • The production of informative and useful content
  • The creation of sustainable content
  • Highlighted publications, with high buzz potential
  • Informative content responding to specific requests

Every search carried out by a surfer requests a precise answer, adapted to the problem posed. This is even truer if the user’s query revolves around the medical and pharmaceutical field. It is therefore in the interest of professionals in this sector to create content that responds to specific requests from Internet users. The idea is not necessarily to publish articles to answer the most asked questions around the pharmaceutical industry. Such a prospect is only possible if your company has the necessary financial and human resources.

If so, Google recommends that you create and distribute content that meets a specific need of users at regular intervals. It could be a tutorial around the dosage of a drug or a video explaining a particular treatment. This kind of content provides a precise solution to the user’s problem for a limited period of time.

Why invest in sustainable content?

As with the environment, creating articles, lists or videos always useful to the reader is a long-term investment. Such publications will attract Internet users for months, even years. This content tells a story (which is not likely to change over time) or describe the manufacturing process of a product. Readers will always be interested in this type of publication. The presence of such content on the site of a pharmaceutical company allows sharing know-how and asserting itself as a figure of authority in its field.

The importance of publications with high potential for buzz

YouTube knows a lot about buzz. This platform is indeed the first to make popular movies that attract visitors in a fairly short time. Google and YouTube firmly believe that videos are not the only ones to have a strong potential buzz. Other types of content, such as text and graphics, can also appeal to a wide audience over a very short period of time. This is the case, for example, of presentations of products (in the form of press releases) and of the live events of an event. This kind of content needs an upstream promotion campaign to attract as many visitors as possible.

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Diversifying content to capture public attention

Google and YouTube have no preference for any of these three types of content. Both firms advise companies – including pharmaceutical companies – to use these three types of publications simultaneously in their communication strategy. A site containing all these publications has all the arguments to generate visits, create commitment, retain and acquire potential customers.

The use of these publications in a content marketing strategy follows a precise timeline. Precise informative content and sustainable content must be published at regular intervals to create a habit among readers. Perhaps a weekly or monthly broadcast would report significant visits to the site. Promotional and high buzz content should be limited as much as possible. This kind of post works best if used only two or three times a year.

[PharmExec]

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