I set up this website as a way of differentiating myself during a job search and to promote my consulting work in healthcare marketing and strategy. But also to learn some additional skills in the digital world. I had set up a website for Gintuit and I was amazed at the difference between a traditional ‘agency do everything from content to design’ which I had employed in the past and the solution we landed on, where an agency built a website frame and I entered, approved, and managed all of the content. The price was in the $20 K range versus $120 K for an agency model, but it did require me to learn the CMS system and the nuances of entering and linking content. You can see the job I did, which I think is quite nice, until June 2014 at www.gintuit.com.
Given this, I thought I could create a more basic website for myself even more cheaply. I got the domain and one year of hosting for a measly $79 and the WordPress CMS was free. Throw in about $50 in royalty free stock photos and you have a perfectly workable website for about $150 a year (my hosting was a promotional rate, but it goes to $129 next year, which is still nothing in the grand scheme of things). I’ve brought in Google analytics, which I knew from Gintuit, for free and I’m still figuring out what else could be bolted on at minimal cost.
So does that make me a digital marketer? It’s an especially valuable question for me because that is a fairly hot job title in pharma these days and I’m looking for a job.
I can see why digital marketing is in demand. Patients and physicians are finding much of their information on the web, just like just about every other human being in the US, Europe, and much of the rest of the world. The ROI on traditional patient media has never been good and it clearly is never going to be as good as targeted online promotion, where the biggest cost – finding the patient – is flipped around since the patient is finding you. Even when I worked in allergy, one of the most common ailments, 90% of the folks that saw our TV or magazine ads were not in the market, whereas 90% of those folks viewing some online advertisements are. The numbers are less compelling for physicians; they are certainly convincing compared to the traditional medical journal advertising, but that has become a secondary consideration compared to peer to peer or direct selling efforts targeted against them.
But what is the difference between a healthcare digital marketer and a healthcare marketer in general? All of us are using online experiences and advertising as part of the marketing mix and we’re certainly all leveraging the digital technology under the broader definition of it which includes technologies used offline. Here are some of the possibilities that came to my mind:
- A digital marketer is someone who has a thorough understanding the dynamics of the internet and reaching people there.
I would argue first that 1) no one does; it’s too big and moving too quickly and 2) if someone does, it’s not going to be a brand director at a big pharma company. Besides, the digital marketing director is going to be working with one or more digital marketing agencies and they will always have the upper hand on ‘getting the internet’.
- Someone who has a strong technical knowledge of programming or digital media.
I’m assuming that if the digital marketer has taken the time to be that immersed in IT to learn to code, he or she is not really doing much marketing (at least in the healthcare space). I know how to program two CMS systems and I expect that is about as much technology as anyone at my level will learn.
- Someone who knows the jargon?
I expect this is about the best definition, as it often is for any position. I really saw a job posted that required knowledge of systems including Omniture, Facebook Insights, YouTube Insights, Google Analytics, HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Social Mention. I have only heard of two of these, but as soon as I read a little bit you know I will be spreading their names all over interviews.
So I guess that makes me a digital marketer. Plus I have my own website.