Preparing for a sports game against your biggest rival requires analysis of your opponents’ strategies and previous tactics in order to develop a winning game plan. Unlike preparing for a sports match, search engine marketing (SEM) teams in the pharmaceutical space face the challenge of limited information about their competitors and a fragmented view of the competitive landscape in the Google auction. 

The pharmaceutical industry is a highly competitive market and barriers such as strict privacy regulations and prescription treatment website ads that mask advertiser names on generic searches, make it even harder to manage your performance. 

In this blog, we will explore how Adthena can help you by providing full visibility into your competitive landscape, optimizing advertising spend for Lone Ranger terms, and identifying gaps in paid and organic strategies.

1. Competitive intelligence: unveiling the complete picture

Challenge: Finding accurate information about your competitors is often challenging, with limited intel from Google and a sense of uncertainty.

Adthena Solution: Adthena’s Whole Market View technology offers a holistic view of your competitive landscape. You must know: 

  • It’s accurate – our data is collected by running queries for search terms that you are on and even terms that you are not on but your competitors are, between 12-24 times per day which is more than any other tool. This high scrape frequency assures that you can trust what you are seeing and the data is accurate. 
  • It’s actionable – the data you are seeing is as up to date as yesterday. 

It’s especially valuable for your SEM team because our data collection process is able to identify what companies are behind the “Prescription Treatment Website” privacy blocker on unbranded searches and automatically incorporates into the data you are seeing. 

This can be especially helpful if you’re asking questions such as: 

  • How does our performance compare to competitors?
  • How much are my competitors spending compared to me? 
  • What percentage of spend are my competitors devoting to brand vs generics?
  • How much market share am I losing to my competitors? 
  • What competitor factors contribute to campaign fluctuations?
  • What search terms are competitors appearing for but I’m not? 

2. Identifying wasted spend: maximizing ROI

Have you ever wondered why you’re paying for clicks when you’re the only bidder in the top organic position? The choice to bid or not bid on your brand can be tricky. 

Challenge: Paying for clicks when you already hold the top organic position can be inefficient as you risk overspending, while not bidding on your brand leaves room for competitors to steal market share.

Adthena Solution: Adthena’s Brand Activator tool offers a solution that combines the best of both worlds. By monitoring search queries up to five times per hour, it determines when to bid or not. 

Are you the only paid ad appearing in the top organic position? Brand Activator removes you from the auction, saving advertising costs. And if a competitor enters the auction? You’re automatically re-entered, ensuring optimal visibility.

For pharmaceutical companies, the issue arises when their DTC and HCP sites appear without competitors. This leads to two problems: they may pay for clicks that could have been free organically, and the presence of both sites competing against each other drives up CPC. Brand Activator’s Whitelisting feature resolves this issue, so if your brand’s DTC and HCP ads appear without competitors while ranking organically, both sites are automatically removed, capturing free organic traffic. You can then reinvest those savings into more competitive campaigns, boosting market share.

3. Identify gaps in paid and organic strategy

Challenge: Identifying areas where competitors appear but you don’t is crucial for an effective SEM strategy

Adthena Solution: Adthena offers multiple tools to identify gaps and opportunities.

The Head to Head comparison tool reveals searches where competitors are present but you are not, enabling full market coverage. Additionally, our Paid and SEO Alignment report identifies conquesting opportunities and highlights areas where relying on paid presence is necessary due to weak organic performance.

4. Ad Copy compliance: ensuring regulatory compliance

Challenge: SEM teams face the unique challenge of adhering to regulations that prohibit using their brand or drug names against unbranded queries. In a Responsive Search Ad (RSA) world and where broad match isn’t broad match any more, making sure that your ads are in compliance and even policing competitor’s ads can be impossible outside of running manual searches. 

Adthena Solution: Adthena will catch and alert you to instances where you or your competitors’ ads are against regulations, allowing you to take action accordingly. 

In the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry, Adthena’s search intelligence can take your performance to the next level by providing a complete view of your competitive landscape.

Want to learn more?

Request a free Brand Activator test today.