Pfizer Current Requirements for Marketing Paper Example

Introduction

Pfizer Inc. is a pharmaceutical company in America that has its main offices in New York City. As one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies with main research offices in Groton, Connecticut, Pfizer is a public profit organization with worldwide services. The organization had 96,500 employees as of 2016. As of 2017, the net income of the organization was US$21.308 billion with a revenue of US$ 52.546 billion (Heller, 2018). Pfizer develops and manufactures both vaccines and medicines for a large variety of medical disciplines such as neurology, endocrinology, cardiology, oncology, and immunology (Heller, 2018). The company majorly serves a B2B market where drugs are supplied to wholesale distributors. Pfizer currently has six subsidiaries, and its main competitors include Novartis, Sanofi, Hoffmann-La Roche, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline (Heller, 2018).

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Pfizer Current Requirements for Marketing

Metrics are measuring systems that are used to quantify characteristics, dynamics, and trends (Farris et al., 2006). Pfizer plays a significant role in the health care market sector, according to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). Marketing teams make use of marketing metrics to illustrate how effective their marketing campaign is across all available channels. As a result, marketing goals can easily be tracked using metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) (Farris et al., 2010). As it stands, Pfizer requires a better online marketing strategy to increase its online presence. For a digital marketing strategy, some important metrics to consider include overall traffic, conversions, bounce rate, search trends, and channel-specific traffic.

To begin with, the total traffic gives a rough idea on where an organization stands. With consistent reviews, one may observe a pattern emerging, which may show you the high seasons and low seasons and this data can be used to the advantage of the organization. A steady increase in traffic is an indicator of growth. The Google Analytics tool is used to determine the overall traffic to the Pfizer website.

Secondly, channel-specific traffic is a metric that determines the channel employed by a user to gain access to the website. Identifying the most common ways in which users access the website allows the company to build a marketing campaign that targets this channel. Additionally, the organization will be able to pinpoint any trends in traffic dips alongside the areas where it tops. Direct channels involve directly typing in Pfizer's website URL or being directed there by the Omnibox after having visited the website before. Referrals are where the website's visitors come from another website (Farris et al., 2010).

The traffic is considered external because the users get to the website through a link provided on a different domain. The organic channel comes into play when users get to the website by clicking a result from a search through a search engine such as Google and Bing. The listing is referred to as organic as it is not paid for. The social channel describes when people reach the company website from a social media platform. Biological and social channels gauge the effectiveness of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) set up for the site. The social channel also acts as a measure of the effectiveness of integrated campaigns, content and social engagement (Farris et al., 2010).

A conversion can be described as happening whenever an individual moves up a step from being a casual user visiting the company website to becoming a paying customer. It has become essential to track customer engagement on company websites and everything that the customers are up to while on the site to engage them further. Conversions can also be considered as the anonymous visitors of the website marketing database who then become known through their records (Kaplan, 2009). The files come up when users complete some actions required in the website such as creating an account, downloading an e-book, document, audio or video by clicking on the download button provided, signing up for trials, or filling out a given form. A small number of conversions may be an illustration of the bad design of the company website, an audience unresponsive and indifferent in the website services or the offers themselves being unappealing to the users. Tracking conversions outline the components that the users actively engage in and those they are disinterested in. Additionally, the information could be depictive of the UX quality. To achieve more conversion rates, investing in making the company more modern as well as making updates to the sales funnel (Kaplan, 2009).

The bounce rate of the company website is the mean number of people who leave the site after only going through the entrance page. Any page on the site can have a different and independent bounce rate compared to the other pages. The determined bounce rate is an indication of whether or not the content placed on the company website is useful and relevant enough and whether the landing page set aside used for any paid campaign is suitable enough. However, the bounce rate is usually relative (Kaplan, 2007). On the one hand, users might leave the site as soon as they visit the entrance page without visiting an additional page due to problems with the design of the website or issues with usability. The users leave without having achieved their objective at all.

On the other hand, a particular page on the site may have a very high bounce rate although the users leave the page after having achieved their objective. If the page provided all the particular information they needed, they might not be interested in venturing into another additional page. Additionally, the page might have the highest number of conversions after visiting that page only (Kaplan, 2009).

Analyzing the search trends relevant to the pharmaceutical industry may give an insight into the things that the company could control or change. Search trends may be indicative of seasonal changes. Most of the time, search trends tend to show the level of interest of the targeted audience, information gaps that exist within the general population and any misconstrued information or false rumors that may be circulating and negatively affecting business. Additionally, looking at search trends may depict the needs of the population since they will tend to look for what they need most to find out if it is possible or available. Ideas for new drug development or mitigation of symptoms may come from information to do with pharmacological search trends (Farris et al., 2010).

When the search trends are cross-checked with both organic and overall traffic, progress can be checked and comparisons made with similar quarters of different business years. The analyzed data will be an efficient and accurate indicator of whether the most suitable words have been used for the marketing campaign and whether or not the search engine optimization on the organic channel carries the most significant information to pull users to the company website. It is very crucial to keep updating the search engine optimization to match up current trends because as years pass by, words change in popularity and contextual meaning. Staying up-to-date with the trends ensures that the website provides the right answers for the maximum number of audience members possible. Using consistent patterns is also a way to go ahead of the competition and maintain the position. Analyzing trends will enable the company to engage the pharmaceutical and pharmacological industry on a chronological and a global scale in addition to being able to place more focus on smaller regions for more accurate insights.

Some additional metrics that will be important in building and analyzing the effectiveness of a marketing campaign include the number of new and returning visitors. A stable amount of returning visitors indicates whether the company website is useful enough to encourage customers to revisit the site. The number of returning customers also shows how effective any efforts for outreach are. New users can show how effective new marketing campaigns are, based on the channel the users take to get to the website. The number of people using the company website may increase significantly as a result of having being mentioned elsewhere such as press release that is freshly published, a guest blog appearance on a popular site or even an improved paid campaign such as banner advertisements, social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. The use of a new active emailing campaign will work positively to raise the number of repeat customers and conversions. Well-received email campaigns ensure more repeat customers and conversions and an effective marketing strategy (Farris et al., 2006).

Demographics can be an essential factor in determining how to design the marketing strategy for the various drugs manufactured by the company. Some diseases have been found to be predominant in some races, which may affect the demand and distribution of certain drugs. Designing the marketing campaigns in a way that appeals to this factor may bring a more effective change that brings in more sales to the company. In the case of pharmaceuticals, seeing where the users are from might be relevant to the goals set during the marketing campaign and also to ensure that the various demographics have their pharmaceutical needs sufficiently met. Age and gender also play a crucial part in the analysis of the use of manufactured drugs versus the projected needs based on these factors (Baer, 2016).

Potential challenges of using marketing metrics in the consumer discretionary market sector

Alternatively, Pfizer c operations can be looked at from the perspective of the consumer discretionary market sector. Under retailing, direct, internet and multiline retailing, as well as distribution, are a significant operation (Kaplan, 1996). In retail and distribution, marketing metrics face the problem of not being able to effectively measure the effect of marketing campaigns and strategies on the sales made by the company. This problem makes it difficult to find out how any adopted measure or activity is helping improve sales, and the business in turn (Baer, 2016).

Measurement Techniques to Support the Marketing Strategy

The alternative market sector under analysis for Pfizer is the consumer discretionary sector. To support the marketing strategy in the company's retail and distribution, some measuring techniques need to be applied. Some things need to be kept in check when it comes to shipping and retailing. The rate of gross profits, cash rates of sale, rates of sale and share in handlers address the depth of sales (Chavan, 2014). Additionally, measures for distribution and stocks also discuss the management of stocks in trade, optimizing assortment, targeting the right chains and channels, building distribution networks and securing retailer support.

To begin with, marketing dollars per sale are an essential metric for distribution. Any customer that receives any of the designed marketing messages is put down in the CRM (customer relationship management) system of the distributor. The denominator is described by the cost allocated to each customer recipient for each campaign. The numerator is represented by the number of sales achieved for each targeted customer during the period being analyzed. The metric under study is a crucial one in the operations of any company. When the tracking and analysis are done for some time, one can see when the marketing messages sent out to the customers are no longer valid and resonating (Chavan, 2014).

Secondly, the number of new customers for each campaign message sent out is another crucial metric concerning the distribution....