Content-Marketing For Pharma Companies

"The search term 'Comirnaty' recorded 40.500 monthly searches in the Google.com search engine by March 2022. 'Biontech', on the other hand, recorded 74,000 monthly searches in the Google.com search engine and as many as 450,000 monthly searches via the German Google.de. All values with increasing tendency. We should evaluate user queries to provide Google US users with even better answers referring to Biontech."  

Silence is silver, talk is gold

Content marketers are currently looking at the pharmaceutical industry in this way, or something similar: an almost inaccessible industry whose brands and products the general public is surprisingly interested in. Its topics have been "resonating" with users for almost two years.

The search term "Comirnaty" was queried 40,500 times in Google.com, according to Semrush Dashboard.

Content marketers identify that need for information that rewards those who meet it with opinion leadership. They make it measurable.

Google.com, a magazine for millions

If millions of users turn to Google every month as a source of information on topics that require explanation, then companies and organizations should do everything they can to appear on the front page of this digital periodical with their facts and opinions and their view of things, because this is where public opinion is influenced.

They should develop a message that the target group understands and considers relevant, because then Google's recommendation algorithms will ensure that it stays that way in the long term.

Pro Generika: Specialist content for the mainstream

The industry association Pro Generika led the way in 2020.

The back story: Generics account for 78% of all prescribed daily therapy doses, users discuss generics in wide-reach communities on the Internet, and agile online mail-order pharmacies publish their own blogs to achieve their ambitious sales targets.

Would it be right to leave it to these "irregular" players to influence public opinion on the core issue of such an important and competent industry association? And isn't public opinion so important for the addressees of the work of such an industry association, namely stakeholders such as politicians, health insurers, journalists and professional associations?

Yes, it is definitely important, because public opinion influences the political decision-making process, which is decisive for shaping the framework conditions of the pharmaceutical industry.

Pro Generika recognized an opportunity in this: Completely without a product that the association could sell to a customer, but with a clear message, Pro Generika opened up to a new broad target group.

The progenerika.de topic clusters overview page with topics of interest to the general public.

Pro Generika opened up to the mainstream, to the patients. The "interested Bild readers" who otherwise obtain their information on the net and, because of their numbers, have the greatest influence on the formation of political will. On its communication channels, Pro Generika began to provide

• correct, objective and up-to-date
• formulated in a way that is comprehensible to the target group,
• packaged in attractive formats, and
• content tailored to search queries.

Not propaganda, but information on complex issues such as global drug production, the pros and cons of which the user is free to decide for himself after reading. That is good content marketing.

Content marketing is user-centered communication

Content marketing has a decisive advantage over neighboring public relations with their multiplier-focused "push" measures:

If the PR campaign is a generally precise, effective, but unfortunately also very cost-intensive measure, which is therefore hardly suitable for continuous regular communication, the content in content marketing is in the right place at the right time, whenever the user is ready to engage with it, namely in

• search engines,
  
• on websites,
  
• in social networks,
  
• in newsletters,
  
• in e-books,
  
• in webinars,
  
• in chatbots and messengers. 

Content marketing does not need multipliers, the sender becomes his own publisher. And even better: Once the content is published, it will remain visible for all time through Google's intervention, even without an advertising budget.

Content marketing influences economic success

It goes without saying that content marketing is ideally suited to selling products that are expensive, complicated, require explanation or need to be handled sensitively in some way. This may not work as well in the pharmaceutical industry as it would for a software company, for example, because of legal regulations and multi-level distribution channels.  

Nevertheless, content marketing is suitable for the pharmaceutical industry because information is also a product with intrinsic value. In a sense, we are talking about "information products" on complex topics requiring explanation by companies and organizations whose work results are not normally available to the general public.

If this information is read, it contributes to positively influencing the attitude of the addressee in the sense of the sender. In this way, they indirectly contribute to measurable economic success.

Silence is not an option

Nowadays, no company can afford not to communicate with its target group. If the company doesn't do it, its competitors will, and then guaranteed in their sense.

Digital content, on the other hand, can achieve many desirable goals: it can increase brand awareness, get users excited about topics, possibly convert them into customers, and even retain them in the long term.

Your next steps

If companies develop an understanding of the questions, challenges and problems of their target group, they can provide answers, suggest solutions and discuss the background to the various solution options.

Because user behavior can be evaluated on the Internet, companies and organizations no longer have to fish in the dark with their communications, as they did in pre-digital times. So the time is right to take action now and seize the opportunities of an industry that has hardly been digitally transformed in communications. Content marketers identify it as a "window of opportunity" that could nevertheless easily close due to competition.

Are pharmaceutical companies therefore on their own to tackle this strategically not exactly trivial communications project? No, of course not. There are digital communications professionals available for this purpose: consultants and agencies in a wide variety of forms and of all stripes.

How do you find them? That will hardly surprise you - by doing a Google search for "content marketing agency".

This article first appeared in the 02/22 print edition of PM-Report.