First published in Pharma Industry 2/2017, May 2017. Republished in full, translated from the Swedish original.
The argument is that a website is not a digital library but a destination, and that it counts as successful when it meets business goals, not when its visitor numbers are high. Two passages carry real risk for anyone acting on them today. The first is the recommendation to follow identified customers at a personal level and feed that into sales activity, whether through a login account or, where no login is used, through cookies set off the back of an email mailing: the article predates the General Data Protection Regulation taking effect in May 2018, and what such tracking of named healthcare professionals now requires is a question for your own data protection function before anything is set up. The second is the description of the product site for prescription medicines, where the gate asking a visitor to state that they work in healthcare, and the claim that Sweden is relatively alone in using that procedure, are treated as settled; anyone building on that should confirm the current position with their own regulatory function. Three smaller things date the piece: the measurement sections define bounce and time on site the way the analytics tools of 2017 defined them, and a reader should check what their own platform means by those words before reusing the definitions here; the two search engine claims, that fresh content is rewarded and that a site which is not responsive is punished with a lower ranking, are given without a source and reflect how search was described in 2017; and Adwords, named among the promotion channels, has since been renamed Google Ads. The article also states without a source that a visitor decides in under a second whether to stay, and its measurement heading expands the abbreviation KPI as cost per interaction, which the author corrects in Part 3 of this series.
When a concept such as "multichannel marketing" becomes an increasingly clear part of a company's everyday work and affects many different departments, the employees need a higher level of digital awareness. In this series, consultant and digital strategist Fredrik Holmboe goes through the most common strategies within multichannel marketing and how they can be used and followed up to increase the company's digital competitiveness in the market.
In the previous issue of Pharma Industry we published the first article in this series on multichannel marketing, with a focus on analysis and follow-up. That article covered the email channel, the engine that drives communication, interaction and flows of traffic alike. This article focuses on websites, the watering hole where your customers top up on relevant information within their field of interest.
Looking back quickly: for several thousand years people have tried to communicate an offer to others. For a long time word of mouth was the alternative, though other methods were available too. The oldest objects found that carry a sales message are papyrus scrolls a little over 5,000 years old, dug up in Egypt.
Since then the process has developed dramatically, with a few clear breakthroughs.
The Gutenberg press in 1450, which opened the way for mass production of printed text. Industrialisation during the nineteenth century, where strong commercial forces had a great need to market their products and services broadly. In 1836 a French newspaper, La Presse, became the first in world history to sell advertising space. Radio arriving in the first decades of the twentieth century, with the television set following fairly closely behind, then the telephone, and finally the internet.
For most of the twentieth century the success factor was to be seen and heard as much as possible. With more money invested in radio and television advertising it was more likely, almost certain, that the company would get enough exposure to reach or beat its sales targets.
But now we are seeing the other side of that kind of extensive marketing strategy. People are starting to tire and to shut sales messages out. Above all when we count in all the marketing channels available today, at a time when we are constantly connected to the internet.
We do not want to be sold to any more.
Today we want to be informed on terms we have chosen ourselves. We want to feel a greater autonomy, where the information presented to us is personally adapted. We do not want to feel held up in our own lives, and we would rather take part in something of substance without opening our wallets at all before we finally choose to do business.
That history, and the reluctance it has bred, is extremely important to take into account when creating, running and maintaining a website, if that site is to become an attractive destination for your customer group.
In the pharmaceutical world there are mainly five types of website: corporate sites, campaign sites, patient sites, product sites and portals. They are aimed at two main audiences, the general public and healthcare professionals (HCPs).
The material on these sites, that is the articles, the films and so on, often goes under one collective name: content. I will use that word throughout this article whenever I mean material of some kind.
One important point to make is that a website, with all its subpages and different resources, must not become a digital library, a place full of everything from A to Z put there for unclear reasons. Or worse still, put there only because it happened to be at hand when the site was built.
The goal for every type of website is to take the visitor from their question to the right answer in as few clicks as possible. Under "key factors for success" you will find many different aspects to think about in order to reach the goals you have set.
A website can be considered successful when it meets business-driving goals, not simply when it has high visitor numbers.
Some time ago I heard about a product manager who had an annual target of getting 500 visitors to his part of a portal, a target that will not decide whether the site is successful. Not even if it is met. What comes out of those 500 visits at the next step, and the step after that, may very well be decisive.
What counts as business-driving varies from site to site and from business area to business area. It is mainly within the following three areas that you find data to support an analysis of whether the goals are being met.
The first point shows the total number of visitors to the site over a chosen period, that is, the total visits from one person on one device counted whether it was one visit or several. A device usually means a computer, a smartphone or a tablet.
The second point tries to capture visits by different people over the chosen period, with the aim of counting each person only once. This has become a little harder in recent years with the advance of the mobile devices mentioned above, since one person can visit the site to read an article on a work laptop, carry on reading on a smartphone on the bus home, and finish on the home PC. Even though the aim is to count one person once during the period, that person is counted as three different (unique) visitors. Most commonly, though, the first and second points differ and conclusions can be drawn from the statistics.
The third point is usually broken down as the number of pages visited per visit, and generally shows how appealing a visitor finds your content and how easy the site is to move around in. Good content, good linking between pages and a clear structure usually lead to good numbers.
The last point, the number of "bounces", is a measure of how many visitors come to your site only to leave it without having clicked on within the same domain. It is often a measure of how well the visitor got an answer to the question that brought them to your site and then became interested in reading more. A "bounce" can happen when the visitor clicks on to another domain, clicks "back" in the browser, closes the whole browser (or the current tab), types in a new web address, or leaves the window open so that the session on your site expires.
The first point mainly concerns content other than text. Examples can be filmed material such as interviews or lectures, animated films that show mechanism of action or handling, course material, self-tests and so on. That type of content is often preferable, since it can lead to a greater experience of value, longer visits and more return visits.
The second point concerns the activities you have defined as desirable for the visitor to complete. Examples can be signing up for a course or a newsletter, or answering a survey. Every single page on your site should have one of two things: a clear call to action (CTA), or a considered reason why there is no CTA. One or the other.
All the traffic passing through your site should be handled in a deliberate and business-driven way.
Measuring engagement is hard if only one form of data is examined. It is in the combination of several different data sources, including some of those above, that you find the visitors' engagement. Some of the measures you can look at are these:
The first point is a kind of value barometer for your content. If the visitor is satisfied and has experienced a value, the chance is greater that the content consumed is liked, commented on or shared. Each single form of engagement can give too little data for an analysis, but taken together a better picture usually emerges. The value of these three can be based on the level of investment required from the visitor. A comment takes longer to write than a like, and a share means the visitor considers your content valuable enough to put their name behind it out towards their own network. Your content is then, to borrow an expression coined by the thought leader Seth Godin in 2007, remarkable. A search for "Seth Godin remarkable" is time well invested.
The second and third points show how interesting the visitor considers your content to be. Length of video play is often an obvious parameter to look at, but length of scroll on the page can sometimes be forgotten. Pages where the statistics show that readers leave "early" should be reviewed.
The fourth point also says something about how your content is experienced. If the first article was good enough to meet the visitor's expectation, the chance is greater that they will consume something more of what your site has to offer. This point also says something about how clear the internal linking is and how easy the site is to move around in.
The fifth point is a little special: time on the site. Like video play and scroll length above, time on the site can give a hint of engagement. With a big BUT. Your content competes with a great many other stimuli from other parts of the internet (social media for instance) and from the "real" world (a phone call for instance). Your site can be left standing, ticking away time and lifting the statistics without showing any real engagement. Time on the site is good as an engagement barometer, but should be analysed with some care and in combination with several other factors.
The last point shows that a visitor has appreciated your site enough to come back several times. If this figure is high you have probably succeeded in creating the watering hole where your customers top up on relevant information within their field of interest.
To reach that goal there are a number of decisive factors.
In a world where the noise only keeps growing, it is extremely important not just to create, run and maintain a website. Your site needs to be something quite special. In its looks, its content and its usefulness. It needs to be remarkable.
It takes a dedicated effort to succeed with the above, and at many companies it takes a large shift, an organisational digital transformation, before every colleague starts speaking the same language and has the same answer to the question of why these digital efforts and projects are needed.
In a digital world there is no longer room for silos. Cross-functional cooperation is the foundation, and clear leadership is required from people in senior positions in order to succeed.
Once your site has reached a level the company can be proud of in front of its customers, it should be the hub for every marketing activity, whether those are carried out online, in print or in physical meetings. That is an insight and a goal everyone at the company needs to share if the investment in a striking, valuable and remarkable site is to bear fruit.
In the next issue of Pharma Industry comes part three in this series, webinars. A channel that, handled well, offers great potential to reach the customer group and in the longer run to create a large and lasting value on your websites.
See you then.
Fredrik Holmboe
Digital strategist and consultant
fredrik@dualia.se
www.dualia.se
Read the Swedish original at pharma-industry.se. Part 1, on email, is here, and Part 3, on webinars, is here. Related service: Content Engine Sprint.