Pharma’s “Content Marketing” is Content Run Amok, Says Founder of Content Marketing Institute
More than half — 58% — of the pharma/biotech industry is spending more than $50 million in content development every year, but much of that content is not connected to a solid objective, which means money and time are being wasted. In a recent Accenture study, only 11% of pharma/biotech marketers reported they have a clear content management strategy and only 9% feel their organization has clear marketing objectives, but 93% report the volume of digital content and assets they manage is higher today than it was two years ago.
“The fact that the industry is investing heavily in a lot of content without a strategy makes us believe companies are not investing wisely,” says Jamie Antis, managing director, Accenture Life Sciences, Intelligent Marketing Services at Accenture. Especially since the report shows that 97% of respondents within pharma said they spent more time managing the operational details of content today than actually focusing on its alignment to the overall marketing strategy. “This number is significantly higher for the pharma industry than for some of the other industries that we have polled,” Ms. Antis says.
Many pharma marketers are perhaps mistakenly thinking that if they have content up on a website or a video connected to a tweet that they are using content marketing methods. However, if the content does not drive or change the consumer behavior, it has no value to the marketer and possibly not even the consumer.
“Right now content marketing is considered copy, and it’s not copy,” says Ritesh Patel, chief digital officer at Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide.
“It’s not called a copy writing strategy. It’s a content marketing strategy and should live within the overall marketing strategy. There are lots of marketers who still don’t understand the difference between a content strategy and a copy strategy.”
All too often, marketers will create online copy and focus only on search engine optimization and that is only one small part of content marketing. Mr. Patel often hears: “It’s a website, so write the copy and make sure it’s tagged for SEO.” This is not a content marketing strategy, he adds.
Joe Pulizzi, founder and executive director of the Content Marketing Institute, defines a content marketing strategy as the creation of valuable, relevant, compelling information published on a consistent basis that helps build a relationship with a consumer and follows that consumer throughout his or her buyer’s journey.
The proliferation of digital channels that provide easy access and practically no production or publication costs along with more and more consumers looking for information online has greatly reduced the former barriers to print publishing, making it almost too easy to post content.
“We think because we can publish, we should, and we publish content all over the place and most of it doesn’t work,” Mr. Pulizzi says. “It’s content run amok.”
Further Reading:
- “Curation vs. Content Marketing: Which is Best for Pharma Marketers?”; http://bit.ly/PMT247
- “DTC Marketers Should Embrace Content Marketing, Says Expert”; http://sco.lt/5iDkkz