I came across some interesting statistics recently, and thought I would share them here. Let's start with the big one - 113 million Americans use the Internet to find health-related information, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That's 37% of Americans. Thirty of that 113 million consider the Internet their first source for this type of information. These numbers alone would indicate that pharmaceutical companies would benefit from building their online presence.

In spite of this information, and the explosive growth of social networking and social media online, pharmaceutical companies have been hesitant to market themselves in these online channels. Michael Keriakos, co-founder and president of Waterfront Media, estimates that while companies in other industries are dedicating around 10% of their budgets to social marketing efforts, pharmaceutical companies are, on average, dedicate less than 2%. What's the reason for this? Well as you might guess, it is not just an oversight. Many drug companies are concerned about the strict guidelines enforced by the FDA about how a drug can be marketed and messaged. The FDA's continued message, however, is that they are concerned with how these companies market themselves, not where. So while many companies continue to shy away from this often highly effective form of marketing, some are taking the plunge.

One notable example is AstraZeneca's MyAsthmaStory campaign. They've created a YouTube page of people's success stories with using Symbicort, their asthma controller medicine. So far the page features about ten videos, but they are inviting people to submit their own success stories, and they will continue to add selected videos as they receive them. You will also notice that they have posted full Symbicort safety information in the left sidebar, so that they can unobtrusively follow all FDA regulations. I don't believe this information takes away from the page in any way, and they have created a social campaign that could be quite successful.

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