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Read up on our latest pharmaceutical marketing strategy recommendations to optimize your marketing plan and convert more customers over the next 12 months

Take stock heading into 2021 after what has been a challenging year for pharmaceutical marketers, healthcare, medical and high-science marketers, and all who work in the industry. The strategic evaluation and forecasting season that comes with year-end means many of you are scanning, benchmarking, and prioritizing to strengthen your pharmaceutical marketing strategies for the coming year. When getting ready for 2021, before even looking at your strategy it's essential to revisit your planning framework. So, let's quickly take a whistlestop tour of why the RACE Framework is the key to setting up your pharmaceutical marketing strategy for success.

Using the RACE Framework to plan your pharmaceutical marketing strategy

The RACE Framework is a practical framework to help manage and improve results from your digital marketing. When planning your overall marketing strategies,…

What are the essential parts of a digital transformation plan?

A digital transformation plan is a strategic, long-term plan focusing on integrated digital media channels, implementation of new technologies, and smart, digital ways of working. The purpose of a digital transformation plan is to define how to compete more effectively with digital marketing. The scope of a digital marketing plan is typically annual, but a digital transformation plan will typically be longer since this involves creating long-term digital roadmaps. Since creating awareness and achieving conversion still commonly involve offline channels such as a call-centre or in-store, digital marketing plans need to define integration between channels using techniques like customer journey mapping.

Your omnichannel digital transformation plan

Digital or online marketing is any form of marketing that involves using online channels for goals of acquisition and retention. It also includes digital technology and the use of data to target audiences more precisely with personalized messages. Understand…

Digital transformation strategy to grow your business: Our recommended planning frameworks to implement your successful digital transformation

More marketers than ever are fueling growth through digital transformation. But with the stakes so high, we want to make sure you get your digital transformation strategy right, first time. That's we're here to guide you through it. Discover the success factors for creating a digital transformation strategy to grow your business, read-up on the implementation process for your digital transformation next steps, and explore our latest digital transformation research.

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Why create a digital transformation strategy?

Our research shows that today many businesses are realizing the imperative for digital transformation; to compete in digital marketing data and technology, a structured process of digital transformation is needed. The need for transformation is particularly strong in larger, international brands and organisations that…

The latest results from the CMO Survey, a special COVID-19 edition, give a fascinating insight into our fellow marketers' business strategy and planning to drive growth this year.

Digital Marketing Strategy during COVID-19

84% of marketers confirm they have ‘improvised to generate new marketing strategies during the pandemic’ according to the CMO Special Covid-19 report in June 2020. So what did they do? And what can we learn about managing business growth right now? “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” - Albert Einstein So, by Einstein’s prognosis, 2020 has been a very intelligent year for marketers. While for some of us, the changes have been less grand, others have witnessed a complete transformation in less than half a year. Naturally, there are fluctuations by industry, so for more detailed data about your industry, check out this special …

There comes a time in every business when scalability takes front and center. As difficult as the beginning stages were, achieving a scalable business can be just as challenging

You’ve succeeded in proving that your business is viable, but now you have to make sure you achieve steady growth. Scale too quickly and you can suffer from not being prepared. Scale slowly or unevenly and you may get stuck with employees you hired that you don’t need anymore. Overall, you need to ensure that the rate of your growth doesn’t hurt you in the long run. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/] How can you do that? By coming prepared. There are certain elements you can integrate into your business now that will ensure a seamless scaling process in the future and will also help if you…

How to define an appropriate budget for digital transformation - one that’s realistic yet takes into consideration the aspirations of and opportunities available to your organization

This a difficult balancing act, and never more so than for digital transformation projects. Here, we share some tips to deliver you a budget that effectively serves your transformation aims, helping you maximize the impact of your initiatives. With so many different moving parts, digital transformation projects require a rock-solid foundation from which to build - including a budget that accurately reflects the scale and complexity of the initiative, while remaining achievable and realistic. However defining such a budget - not to mention getting it signed off - can be challenging. We’ve all heard the horror stories of projects going over budget, stalling, or even being abandoned altogether. If you’re currently in the early stages of your digital transformation journey and want to avoid a similar fate, this…

Chart of the Day: How popular are Digital Transformation programmes?

Our Managing Digital Marketing research (a free download) reveals many challenges for how digital marketing is run by companies today. Problems included a lack of focus on integrated strategy, testing and optimization and structural issues, such as teams working in silos or lack of skills in integrated communications. To counter these types of problems and to make the most of the opportunities for growing a business through digital marketing, many businesses are now putting a digital transformation programme in place. The chart shows how many businesses are active in transformation. You can see that over a third (35%) of businesses already have a transformation programme in place, which is an increase from the 34% who last year had a programme set up. On top of this, 31% are looking to launch…

Businesses will always need specialist digital skills

So, Mark Ritson believes it’s time to shut down digital marketing teams for good. I disagree. Why? For the simple reason that for businesses to compete, digital marketing demands excellence in specific digital skills, which are integrated throughout marketing. For me, larger businesses need a core digital team or Digital Marketing Centre of  Excellence to ensure that digital marketing investments are prioritized and the latest techniques are used to ensure businesses can compete through digital marketing platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn, which influence so many purchases today. [si_guide_block id="84595" title="Download Free resource –Integrated marketing megatrends" description="Learn about the 10 megatrends that have already helped leading companies future-proof their strategies by ensuring all aspects of marketing are integrated."/] I'm not saying that marketing roles aren't important, far-from-it. Marketing directors, brand, product, and campaign managers are at least as important to…

The best digital marketing research across marketing channels - including SEO, PPC, CRO, social, mobile, martech, email, e-commerce, and UX - to help inform your 2019 marketing strategy

Because the state of digital marketing is always evolving, it is important to keep up-to-date with the latest research in your industry or marketing channel in order to stay ahead of your competition. However, it can be difficult to find the digital marketing research you need to help inform your digital strategy. We first curated these stats in 2017, but during 2018 and 2019, we've been committed to updating this article using the best digital marketing research data sources, which the team at Smart Insights have found helpful and informative throughout the year. Hopefully, this will help you too! [si_blog_banner_cta]

SEO statistics 2019

Total site visits produced by organic search…

Aspiration for better digital experiences is never the problem but buy-in and execution can be.

Aspiration for better digital experiences is never the problem but buy-in and execution can be. Faced with rising digital expectations, B2B marketers and their IT colleagues know something must be done but often have too many internal roadblocks to get there. Episerver recently surveyed 700 global B2B decision-makers and has provided insights into what professionals want to do today, tomorrow and in the future to fix the customer-centricity gap between what their customers want and what they actually deliver. [si_blog_banner_cta]

Digital experience today

A large percentage of marketers and technology professionals say their website delivers an exceptional customer experience and follows industry best practices. According to Episerver’s research, 86% of professionals surveyed said they deliver industry-leading websites and 84% said they deliver exceptional customer experiences online. This confidence reverses, however, when marketers and technology professionals were asked…