Medicine, Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Advertising Agency Digital Marketing

An average pharmaceutical] business should spend between $202,500,000 and $405,000,000 a year on marketing and advertising expenses, or roughly 7.5% – 15% of annual gross revenue. The total amount may be higher if you are in a highly competitive industry, want accelerated growth or your business generates high revenue during the holiday shopping season. 

Pharmaceutical business owners are often heavily involved with the day-to-day operations of their business. Some of the most common challenges for a drugs business include: 

1. Regulatory and Compliance Hurdles: One of the most significant barriers for this industry revolves around stringent regulations. Companies must ensure that their products and services meet rigorous safety, quality, and efficacy standards. For pharmaceuticals, getting a drug from the research phase to market requires navigating a labyrinth of clinical trials and regulatory approvals, a time-consuming and incredibly costly process.
2. Rising Research and Development (R&D) Costs: The path from conceptualizing a medical treatment to bringing it to market is fraught with obstacles. Many potential drugs or treatments don’t make it past the trial phases. The increasing cost of R&D and the uncertainty of success place tremendous financial strain on pharmaceutical companies.
3. Healthcare Access and Affordability: Ensuring that healthcare is both accessible and affordable remains a global challenge. There’s a stark lack of healthcare infrastructure in many regions, especially rural or underserved ones. Additionally, the rising costs of treatments, medications, and healthcare services mean that many individuals cannot afford the care they need, leading to significant health disparities.
4. Data Security and Patient Privacy: With the increasing digitization of health records and the adoption of telemedicine, ensuring data security and patient privacy has become paramount. Breaches can have severe legal implications and erode patients’ trust in healthcare providers and institutions.
5. Adapting to Technological Advancements: The rapid pace of technological advancement in medical tools, diagnostic methods, treatment modalities, and drug formulation requires companies to be continually on their toes. Those who fail to adapt or keep pace risk becoming obsolete or losing their competitive edge. At the same time, integrating new technologies often requires significant investment and training.

Because drug businesses are so focused on these challenges, it often becomes very efficient to bring in outside experts to help manage and ensure specific tasks are done correctly. Marketing and advertising are two of the most commonly outsourced areas businesses use because they are so critical to the business’s success. 

Healthcare Lead Generation 

Many drug companies are focused on generating leads. This can include building an internal email list for marketing purposes or generating high-value leads that can be quickly contacted to grow revenue. Lead generation typically involves creating a specific incentive, offer, or informational guide, then driving prospects to a landing page to collect their information. You can also collect the prospects information on a lead form hosted by the ad platform. Both options can be connected with your CRM or email marketing system so automatic calls, emails, and SMS messages are sent directly to your new prospect. If you want to help set up a lead generation for your healthcare office, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Increasing Healthcare Sales 

The most popular of all advertising objectives for pharmaceutical companies is sales. Increasing revenue is essential for every drug company to succeed. Many ad platforms have new tools that allow you to pass through values for each customer, which means they associate more weight towards the customers spending the most. This allows them to find more customers like your top spenders. If you want to help grow your drugs, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Healthcare App Installs

Perfect for any medicine business that has a mobile app. The mobile app objective allows you to run ads either for new app installs or for app events, which are specific events set up inside of your app, such as account creation, payment method added, or transaction complete. It can also monitor usage inside the app or if users are reaching a certain area. This allows you to display highly targeted ads that are relevant to each user who sees your ads. The most common types of apps are games, utilities, or informational mobile apps. If you want to help grow sales or usage from your healthcare mobile app, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options.  

Healthcare Local Traffic 

Many pharmaceutical companies have locations they are looking to drive local foot traffic to. This can be for a special event, promotion, grand opening, or daily usage. Local ads can be targeted down to a single zip code or a 1-mile radius around a spot on a map. This ensures you can reach the individuals that are located close to your pharmaceutical location and get your ads in front of them. If you want to increase foot traffic for your drugs location,  please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Healthcare Brand Awareness 

As your drug company grows, it will become essential that you stay ahead of your competition. This is generally done by Brand Awareness campaigns, which focus on reaching a wide number of targeted users consistently over a long period of time. This ensures that your pharmaceutical company stays at the top of mind for your consumers, and they continue to purchase your products and services. If you want to increase your Brand Awareness, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

• Establishing Authority and Trust: When it comes to healthcare, the stakes are high. People want accurate, reliable information. Companies can use content marketing to become a go-to source for expert advice and insights. Think whitepapers that break down complex medical research or blog posts explaining the side effects of a medication. The more you educate your audience, the more you establish your brand as a trusted authority.
• Emotional Resonance: The impact of a personal story can’t be overstated. Whether it’s a testimonial from a patient who recovered from a severe condition thanks to a new drug, or a heartfelt post from a nurse sharing their experiences on the frontline during a pandemic, content that resonates emotionally binds consumers to your brand. It turns your company from a faceless entity into a community of real people dedicated to improving lives.
• Combating Misinformation: Misinformation can run rampant, especially on social media platforms. Healthcare companies have the responsibility—and the opportunity—to set the record straight. Through strategic content marketing, they can counteract myths and inaccuracies that circulate online. This not only uplifts the brand but also serves a public good.
• SEO-Driven Results: Let’s face it—when people have medical questions, they Google them. By investing in high-quality, search engine-optimized content, healthcare companies can ensure that their pages show up in these critical moments. This isn’t just about driving traffic; it’s about reaching people when they most need accurate information.
• Regulatory Compliance: Of course, healthcare content marketing isn’t without its challenges. Companies must adhere to strict regulatory guidelines to ensure that they’re not making unfounded claims or sharing misleading information. But with the right strategy and oversight, creating impactful, compliant content is possible.

The world has changed for healthcare, looking to increase their marketing and advertising efforts using AI. Various new tools now enable automation and AI to be used in areas like sales, graphic design, video production, content creation, voiceovers, spokesperson, video creation, blog writing, and more. 

The current average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads for the term “healthcare” is $2.62 and is expected to increase over time. SEO generates these same clicks from targeted keywords for free. There is tremendous value from SEO as you can generate a high volume of traffic for your key business segments, however, SEO is a long-term investment. We recommend that medicine companies should be willing to plan for 6-12 months of SEO services before expecting an increase in results from these efforts. Please know that with SEO, the work is foundational, which means each task builds on top of each other. Each action ads more credibility to your website in the eyes of Google and other search engines. AdvertiseMint only believes in high-quality SEO, or long-game efforts, when building SEO. Most SEO tricks or gimmicks often work for a bit but later end up hurting your pharmaceutical company when updates are made to the search engines. The only way to move forward regarding SEO is by doing a lot of the right things and doing them faster than your competitors. Healthcare SEO involves three main areas. The first is onsite optimization, which means the pages of your website contain content and are optimized for the search engines. The second step is to build more topical authority around your business to help Google understand that you are an expert in the drugs area. This is done by writing consistent blogs between 500-2000 words on core topics relating to your business. The final area is off-site linking, which means other websites are linking back to your site and using specific anchor text. This can be achieved by public relations, outreach, and building relationships with other websites. When these three are done together, the result is that your healthcare SEO will improve, and your organic ranking will start to increase, thus sending more traffic to your website. If you are looking to improve your SEO, please contact AdvertiseMint. 

Yes. Every pharmaceutical should have email marketing and SMS marketing for their company. Email marketing has continually been proven to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for drug companies. Email marketing allows you to reach your prospects and customers with specific messaging based on where they are located in your customer journey. These “flows” can be set up so that every person experiences the same informational process regardless of when they join. This ensures your company is communicating 24/7 with the people who are most interested in your medicine services and products. SMS messaging is also becoming highly profitable for breaking through all the noise and reaching your most valuable prospects via text message. There are many rules regarding SMS marketing and how to add and remove people from your pharmaceutical SMS marketing. If you want to learn more about optimizing your Email and SMS marketing for your drug company, AdvertiseMint is here and ready to help. 

Medicine, Healthcare, and Pharmaceutical sectors are among the most heavily regulated industries when it comes to advertising and promotional activities. These regulations are in place to ensure that consumers receive accurate, safe, and non-misleading information. Here are some key advertising restrictions that these businesses typically face:

1. Claims and Efficacy: Advertisements, especially for medications, must not make false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy or safety. Any claims must typically be supported by solid clinical evidence.
2. Side Effects and Risks: For prescription medications especially, advertisements often need to include a disclosure of potential side effects. In the U.S., this is why you might hear or read a long list of potential side effects in drug commercials.
3. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Advertising: While some countries, like the U.S., allow DTC advertising for prescription drugs, many others do not. Even in countries where it’s permitted, there are stringent regulations detailing what can and cannot be said.
4. Off-label Promotion: Companies are generally prohibited from promoting “off-label” uses for their drugs, meaning uses that haven’t been approved by regulatory agencies.
5. Comparative Advertising: Comparing one drug or treatment to another in advertisements can be tricky. If done, comparisons must be accurate, and any superiority claims must be supported by robust evidence.
6. Endorsements and Testimonials: The use of endorsements or testimonials, especially by healthcare professionals, is often restricted or regulated to ensure there’s no perception of undue influence or bias.
7. Pricing: Some jurisdictions have rules about advertising pricing, especially if it could be perceived as inducing consumers or healthcare professionals to favor one treatment over another based solely on cost.

You can find examples of pharmaceutical competitor ads online in several places. Here are the instructions for how to view competitor ads running on Facebook, Google, and TikTok ad platforms. 

View pharmaceutical Competitor Facebook Ads 

1. Go to Facebook Ad Library 
2. Select the country where the ad appeared. 
3. Select ad category (All, Politics, Housing, Employment, Credit).
4. Search by keyword or advertiser.
5. Review Facebook ads.

View healthcare Competitor Google Ads 

1. Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Sign into Google Ads.
3. Click ‘Tools and settings’ in the top nav.
4. Click ‘Keyword Planner’ under the ‘Planning’ heading.
5. Click ‘Discover new keywords’
6. Type a relevant keyword into the box.
7. Click ‘Get Results’
8. Review Top of page bid and Google ads. 

View drug Competitor TikTok Ads 

1. Go go TikTok Ad Library 
2. Select ad target country 
3. Select ad type.
4. Select ad published date.
5. Enter in the desired keyword or advertiser.
6. Hit search. 
7. Review TikTok ads. 

For most companies, revenue is the KPI (key performance indicator) we monitor when determining whether marketing and advertising efforts are successful. The revenue can be used to determine the ROI or ROAS for your campaigns over a set period of time. ROI (Return on Investment) is calculated by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from the final value, then dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and finally, multiplying it by 100. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is determined by dividing the total revenue by the total ad spend for a specific period of time. 

In addition to revenue, other companies may use metrics such as CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), or CPI (Cost per Installs) for mobile apps. Monitoring these costs over time can help understand factors increasing or decreasing these numbers. They can be affected by various factors, such as landing page optimization, time of the year, and competitors. 

For companies interested in branding and spending over $100,000 on advertising, many digital ad platforms offer a tool called the brand lift study. This study is used to measure the impact on the perception of your brand when running ads. A brand lift study splits a specific audience into two groups. The first group is shown your ads over a specific period of time; the second group sees none of your ads. At the end of the study, users in both groups were shown a survey by the ad platform. The difference between the first and second groups is called the brand lift, or the increase of consumer awareness of your brand due to running advertising.