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Three Tips For Writing High-Performing Pharmaceutical SEM Ad Copy

Forbes Agency Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Larry Gurreri

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From a search engine marketing (SEM) perspective, writing effective Google ads for pharmaceutical products poses unique challenges. Not only do these ads need to follow the most up-to-date SEM best practices, but they must also comply with strict regulatory requirements from the FDA, company legal teams and Google’s own rules for the vertical. Being caught in violation of these regulations can result in an agency and its client being suspended from the market, likely resulting in a huge loss of credibility.

Throughout my 15 years of working in pharma SEM for many clients, I have evolved my approaches to incorporate the newest SEM tools and features as they become available. Nonetheless, the underlying principles of my strategies have stood the test of time by consistently helping my agency assist its clients in meeting their marketing objectives.

Below are three tips and strategies for writing ads for pharma that have the performance potential of ads in other, less-regulated verticals and can also help safeguard against breaking industry regulations. Before using any of the strategies, be sure your client and their legal review teams fully understand and approve of them. Additionally, be sure to familiarize yourself with all the regulations that pertain to pharmaceutical advertising.

Fair Balance

This is probably the most over-arching rule across different pharma products and advertising channels. It states that the presentation of a drug's benefits must be similar in scope to the presentation of its risks. Since paid search ads don’t have nearly enough space to include all this information, they cannot include both a drug name and its benefits. For example, an ad for a drug that can treat high cholesterol cannot contain both the ad’s brand name as well as text discussing cholesterol or anything else relating to its indicated condition because the ad will never be able to contain all the drug’s risk information. Fair balance applies to all visible sections of the ad, including ad extensions and display URLs, which complicates their implementation and management.

To avoid breaking this rule by accidentally showing a brand name or indication in an ad extension, separate branded and non-branded ads into different campaigns and then implement their extensions on the campaign or ad group level. Implementing extensions on the account level makes it much easier for an extension with a brand name to slip through the cracks and appear in an ad containing the condition and vice versa. Additionally, from a best-practices standpoint, implementing ad extensions at the campaign or ad group level enables the display of ads that more effectively target the queries that trigger them.

Regarding display URLs, nothing in SEM feels worse than writing a whole new batch of branded pharmaceutical ad copy and then realizing it cannot be enabled because a client’s domain name contains the indication. Fortunately, Google recognizes this dilemma and offers several text options to display in lieu of the default display URL, such as “prescription product website,” “prescription treatment website,” “prescription vaccine website” and several others. To access these options, reach out to the Google AdWords support team.

Black Box Drugs

Not only does everything above pertain to this special class of pharmaceutical products, but branded black box ads also must contain a request to the audience to read the drug’s prescribing information and boxed warning. This request, commonly written as, “read PI & boxed warning,” is 24 characters, which would take up an entire headline or over one-quarter of available description characters in Google’s expanded text ad format. This leaves far less wiggle room for an ad to include valuable information such as dosing or financial support information. Therefore, it is very important to utilize all available characters and ad extensions for these ads, including site links, call-outs and paths. Additionally, non-branded ads are especially useful for black box drugs because they don’t need to contain the black box warning request, meaning that they have relatively far more descriptive potential for driving disease-related queries to product landing pages.

Separate Campaigns By Audience

How a campaign is structured is crucial in determining ad performance as well as ensuring legality. In the end, the structure is determined by a client’s individual goals, budget, site structure and audience size. However, the following framework has worked well for many of my colleagues and for me, as a starting point.

To begin, brand and non-brand campaigns for both healthcare professional (HCP) and direct-to-patient (DTP) ads should be separate to ensure that brand names and indications never appear in the same ad. Separating these campaigns also enables the targeting of branded searches and disease-related searches with more specifically tailored messaging.

Next, build out separate HCP & DTP campaigns so keywords and ads can be specialized to target these different audiences. For example, a patient would be turned away by an ad that says, “official physician website,” while an HCP would be far less likely to click on your ad if it says, “official patient website,” than if it says, “official physician website.” This also allows for HCPs and patients be more completely directed to their respective landing pages.

Within HCP campaigns, it is often beneficial to separate branded and generic keywords into different campaigns because science-driven HCPs may know the chemical name of a product but could be unfamiliar with the brand. Therefore, showing a branded ad to match their generic query will build brand awareness. Although generic ads will likely drive lower click-through rates and overall engagement than branded ones, many of those initial generic searches will be followed up by branded searches as brand awareness builds.

As stated in the beginning of this article, it is important to become familiar with all regulations that pertain to pharmaceutical advertising. Additionally, become certified in Google AdWords and other Google and SEM tools that you may need to use so that your knowledge of best practices is up to date. Good luck and happy advertising!

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