Marketing programs are often made of disparate parts

I’ve been preaching the importance of looking at biotech and pharma social media as part of an integrated marketing plan.  Often times this isn’t the case.  Part of that is because social media is still a fringe marketing tactic, and as such, tends to take root in isolation at the fringes of a company.  In addition, some marketers are lulled into thinking that social media is easy and devoid of strategy because of its ad hoc nature.  Effective social media engagements acknowledge that it is only one piece of the market puzzle and must be run in concert with those pieces—not in isolation.

Chief among those integral marketing tactics is boosting your performance in organic search results.  Want proof?  eMarketer today released the results of a study indicating 95% of organic search referrals to a Website come from the first page of search results.  What does that mean?  If your Website, or at least a piece of content from your Website, does not appear on the first page of search results it’s highly unlikely a person will find your page naturally.  If you consider that 80% of online sessions begin with search, that’s a chance you should not dare to take.

Does that mean you should drop everything and pour your entire available budget into boosting organic search results?  Of course not.  I point to this study as an illustration of two points:

1. Despite the frequency with which I write about social media—it is not the only game in town.  It is important, but without a full marketing plan that includes search engine optimization; it is useless.
2. More importantly, marketers need to not only be aware of other portions of the marketing mix, but incorporate them into their strategy.  Knowing that 95% of organic search referrals come from the first page of results should have a significant impact on your social media strategy.  Have you analyzed the keywords that are most relevant to your audience and incorporated them into your content creation efforts?  Does your social media content drive people back to its intended destination?  By answering some of these questions, you can ensure that your social media efforts align and bolster the SEO strategy.

It’s all well and good to talk about an integrated marketing plan and the importance of a coherent strategy.  But an integrated marketing plan doesn’t mean a “consistent brand message.”  That might be a small slice of the pie but the most crucial piece is evaluating how each tactic influences and augments the other.  This is not done frequently enough in social media efforts.  Social media can have a profound impact on SEO, PR, brand engagement and awareness and customer support.  Marketers first need to start linking these efforts together rather than allowing them to persist in isolation.

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