Case Study
Creating disease state awareness with cost-effective paid search
Inflection Point
A small biotech was preparing to launch an orphan drug for an acute condition with the possibility for rapid progression. With few existing patient resources, and a risk of misdiagnosis, it was critical to create patient awareness about the underlying condition. Because the condition was so rare, any budget for paid media had to be modest.
How We Helped
Applying biomedical communication best practices, we designed and built a simple disease state website that explained the condition in an approachable, patient-friendly way. The website aimed to encourage patient self-advocacy, and help patients recognize the urgency of symptoms without raising undue alarm.
To help us understand the paid media opportunity, we conducted research into existing websites and search engine activity related to the disease. As expected, search volumes for the disease were low, but so was competition, creating an opportunity for a cost-effective paid search campaign.
We created and launched a paid search campaign, initially as a three-month trial. On a monthly basis, we calibrated the campaign to refine targeting, so that media spending was bringing the most relevant visitors to the website.
From my experience in pharma, I thought my budget was too small to even consider paid media. Workomics found a way to deliver highly engaged traffic working with a small fraction of typical media budgets.
— Rare Disease Marketing Executive
Outcomes
The paid search campaign was optimized for engagement — visitors who spent 90 seconds or more on the website. Through careful calibration based on in-market results, we were able to quadruple engaged traffic from our month one baseline, while reducing overall spend. Strong numbers for returning visitors suggested high-quality content that people returned to. Because of the cost-effective results, the paid search campaign was renewed for the following year to support the product launch.
