One of the most interesting aspects of working in digital marketing is that the pace of innovation often overtakes conventional wisdom. By the time the white papers are written and an approach congeals across the industry, the recommendations therein may have been superseded by advances in technology. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the lemming-like rush to “mobile” that is migrating from consumer marketing into the pharma industry.
The conventional wisdom in this area is that there are two possible approaches: native apps and dedicated mobile-optimized websites. But there is a groundswell of contrary opinion (a contrariness to which I adhere) that either approach is largely a waste of our time and our clients’ money.
The best practice when considering technology recommendations is to examine the past, be sure to understand the present, and extrapolate from these two data points the future. As digital marketers in the highly regulated pharma industry, this extrapolation is especially important, as we must allow for legal, medical, and even federal regulatory approvals, all of which can contribute to a long lag time between any project’s approval and delivery. And in striving to future-proof our solutions, we must also allow for any post-launch updates.