Health: E-Reputation & SEO Advice for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Over the last few years, pharmaceutical companies have come out of the pandemic focused on building trust and connecting with their customer base. Online reputation management has become crucial. With countless forums — review sites, messaging services, endless social media — a single negative comment can quickly tarnish a brand’s image. This makes leveraging local SEO expertise essential to harnessing the power of your brand online.

Proactively optimising Google Business Profiles, generating reviews, creating localised content, and tracking data can help pharma brands improve visibility and engage with consumers at a local level. By implementing location-based reputation strategies, companies can enhance engagement and rankings on search and social.

Managing your Audience

Be Transparent and Address Issues Head-on

People have complicated histories with pharmaceuticals, everyone has a personal relationship with pharma products, and can just as easily become advocates as mobilise and protest a company for any number of reasons (cost, side-effects, availability).

Any past issues or controversies should be openly acknowledged and discussed by pharma brands. Taking accountability and outlining the steps being taken to rectify problems shows integrity. Companies should commit to operating ethically and transparently moving forward. This helps reassure customers and rebuild trust.

Actively Engage on Social Media

Pharmaceutical companies should maintain active social media profiles to directly interact with consumers. At a local or international/ corporate level, it’s important to offer your users a platform where you can intervene directly.

Responding promptly and empathetically to questions or complaints demonstrates commitment. Designating employees as social media ambassadors humanises the brand and fosters engagement. Sharing news of product developments, achievements, and company culture also improves perception.

While it can require a significant amount of attention, investment in social platforms presents an indispensable opportunity to strengthen reputation.

Respond to Reviews

Brands should set up alerts to monitor reviews on key sites like Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor, and Apple Maps. This enables quickly identifying and responding to feedback. Replies should be personalised, professional, and constructive, even for negative criticism.

Reputation management platforms like Partoo streamline this process by centralising interactions. With Partoo, companies can easily incentivise satisfied customers to proactively leave positive reviews with our Review Booster solution.

Claiming Ownership of your Brand

Optimize Google Business Profiles

Completely filling out and updating Google Business Profile listings is essential for local SEO. Details like hours, products/services, and high-quality photos should be optimised for every location.

As with social media presence, enabling and monitoring Q&A and posts also improves engagement. Using structured data markup means profiles display rich snippets in search, increasing clicks.

Generate More Customer Reviews

Actively requesting reviews from customers is key for pharma brands. Platforms can facilitate sending review request emails after purchases and interactions. Providing incentives like discounts, coupons, or giveaways encourages happy customers to leave reviews.

On top of solutions like Partoo’s Review Booster, installing review widgets on websites makes it easy for visitors to share feedback. More reviews generate social proof and improve local rankings.

Create Location-Based Content

Creating localised, city-specific content improves local SEO and builds connections with customers. Blogs, videos, and social posts can be tailored for individual locations. Running hyperlocal PPC and social media campaigns with keywords focused on specific cities also drives localised traffic. Location-based content shows customers your brand is engaged at the local level.

Leveraging an Adapted Digital Strategy

Build Local Links

Gaining mentions and backlinks from local directories, news sites, and organisations boosts local search visibility. Pharma brands should pursue citations on niche directories and city-specific health portals.

Sponsoring local events and nonprofits can also lead to high-value backlinks. Finding partnership opportunities to “guest post” information (opinion articles, news, tutorials) on various healthcare blogs presents a prime opportunity to contribute expert content while acquiring links.

Track Rankings and Metrics

To assess local SEO and reputation efforts, pharma brands must track key metrics. Monitoring local pack rankings for target keywords provides visibility into search performance. Analysing traffic from local landing pages shows content engagement.

Centralised reporting dashboards should display data like reviews, clicks, and conversions. Most experts typically leverage Google Analytics to easily optimise and improve localisation strategies.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, actively managing online reputation and optimising local SEO is crucial for pharmaceutical brands looking to connect with and earn trust from today’s digitally-savvy healthcare consumers.

Implementing a localised, customer-focused digital strategy enables pharma companies to interact directly with customers in key geographical markets on the channels that matter most – search, reviews, social media.

Strategically optimising Google Business Profile listings provides brands an opportunity to completely control how local customers discover and engage with their locations. Generating more online reviews builds social proof while responding to feedback demonstrates commitment to customers.

Creating localised content tailored to specific cities shows customers your brand is invested in their communities. Building local links signals relevance and authority to search engines. Tracking rankings provides insight into how efforts are directly impacting visibility.

Proactively monitoring and managing brand presence on a local level is essential for maintaining a positive reputation, driving local traffic, and ultimately connecting with customers. Partnering with local search and review experts can help develop and execute a comprehensive localisation strategy customised for a brand’s unique business goals and geographical markets.

In the pharmaceutical industry, taking a strategic, metrics-driven approach to online reputation management will only grow in importance as more of the patient journey moves digital. By leveraging the right tools and expertise, brands can turn localisation into an impactful competitive advantage. Interested in learning more about what Partoo can do for you? Get in touch with one of our local experts today.