User-generated content is a very popular way to allow others to evangelize a brand, product or service, but it has generally been considered off-limits for the pharmaceutical industry because of the potential negatives of adverse event reporting. One way for pharmaceuticals to find out what people are saying about them has been to monitor the conversations within blogs and message boards (also known as forums). This allows the discovery of some of the information gaps that exist between users and the pharmaceutical websites that they visit.

Many patients, their family members, or concerned friends are going online not just to share their stories, but to seek information from others like them – those with a common condition and/or treatment. The answers they look for may include dosing and side effects, which are among the subjects that can easily lead to misinformation on the Internet. Monitoring their conversations can help guide future content development, helping to preemptively answer frequently asked questions. Incorporating this FAQ data with popular key phrases is another valuable way to inform users and help rankings within search engines.

Umbria, which bills itself as a “marketing intelligence company that mines the blogosphere and other public forums for real-time insights into companies, products, people, and issues,” provides reporting on prominent topics, and is an AA|RF partner. If a pharmaceutical company, or an organization in another highly-regulated industry, has wrestled with the idea of letting consumers write about them on their own sites, a thorough analysis of what is already out there may help to make that decision easier, and may lead to some hitherto undiscovered feedback from users.

As search volume continues to surge upward, Paid Search efforts continue to dominate online media budgets, at an increasing rate of 41% in 2006 vs. 34% in 2005 (JupiterResearch). In turn, competition in many categories is increasing, and CPCs continue to rise, as much as 18% since 2004. While all of this growth is profitable for the search engines and many advertisers, it is becoming increasingly difficult for some brands to fully fund a robust Paid Search program. These brands require innovative approaches to achieving campaign goals within strict budget parameters. A recent article suggested that taking the “less is more” approach to Paid Search may actually be beneficial to a brand in the long term.

Pat Stroh took a deep dive into the topic of coordinating search efforts with offline media efforts in a recent Search Engine Watch article titled: Coordinating Search with External Media: Can Less Be More? Often, in response to a big offline push, marketers will extend their search budgets to capture any additional traffic that may come in as a result of the external buzz – a tactic always considered at Avenue A | Razorfish. However, it’s likely that many of us have never stopped to think about whether all that additional traffic is truly beneficial to the brand. An increase in budget will allow for more impressions, thus more clicks and an increased overall cost; upping bids to ensure strong positioning will increase those costs even further but, according to Stroh, conversion rates may actually decrease.

Next week, this article will conclude by discussing the rationale behind this “less is more” approach, as well as digging deeper into the impact of offline promotion on conversion rates.

Internet Marketing Expected to be #1 by 2011 – A recent forecast of ad spending in the U.S., conducted by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm, predicts that Internet Marketing will be the top advertising medium by 2011.  They predict that Paid Search spending alone will reach $16.9 Billion per year.  Analysis and links to further information can be found at Search Engine Land.