Online advertising is offering pharmaceutical brands exciting possibilities.

Pharmaceutical advertisements are no longer confined to placements in billboards, television, and magazines by ambiguous regulations. Today, pharma ads can reach healthcare providers and patients as they seek answers through the internet.

However, how can you create pharma ads that perform?

Define Pharma Brand Core Competencies

Before launching any type of ad campaign, you must have clear objectives and goals.

The objectives should be specific and measurable, while overarching goals can be non-tangible and general. Refine these goals into objectives.

Use the SMART acronym to achieve well-planned objectives. The acronym stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant or Realistic
  • Timebound

Develop Your Analytics Plan

A few companies in the healthcare sector are still relying on qualitative data when determining what impact their spend on marketing will have, instead of quantitative data. However, building an effective advertising strategy using a pharma creative banner requires an analytics plan that measures KPIs quantitatively against the business goals.

The plan should be based on the user metrics and actions measured and recorded during running your campaign. Analytics provide you with tools to understand campaign performance.

Plus, analytics also help you gather information about your audience, including:

  • Demographics
  • Geography
  • Behavior
  • Interests

This data is critical for uncovering important insights into your target audience, enabling you to create pharma banner ads that resonate with healthcare providers and patients.

Have an Audience Persona

Your audience persona is the hypothesis of how your ideal customer looks like and how pharma products support their needs. The persona is a fictional representation of your best customer, but it involves using real psychographic and demographic data for a realistic view.

Basic components of the audience persona include age, sex, location, motivations, and frustrations. With a clear audience persona, the marketing team is in a better position to craft a pharma banner design that resonates with customers while building affinity with a brand and inspiring patients to take action.

Map Out the Customer Journey

Caregivers, healthcare providers, and patients all have separate goals during their interactions with pharma brands. These goals evolve, which reflects where each customer is in the healthcare roadmap.

Take your time to map out the actions, emotions, and thoughts that your target experiences throughout the journey to becoming a customer. Remember to consider touch points where they will interact with content and properties you want them to achieve.

Choose the Advertising Platform

Mapping out the persona’s journey also provides you with information on where you can find them online. Use these opportunities to connect.

Advertising platforms include:

  • Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook
  • Image and video sharing platforms like YouTube and Instagram
  • Content sharing platforms such as Reddit and Tumblr
  • Search engines like Bing and Google

However, each ad platform has its unique formatting requirements, so make sure your pharma banner addresses them.

Set a Timeline

A timeline ensures you, your content team, and external agencies have a baseline to scope the project. The schedule must cover researching and planning, creating accounts, implementing analytics, the creative development phase, quality assurance, and analysis.

Conclusion

When done well, pharma ads can help you maximize the value patients gain from interacting with a specific pharma company. The best ads are those that speak directly to their requirements.