04 March 2020 | Analysis
Cipla’s digital initiatives in respiratory space can be an exemplar for other leading Indian pharma companies, says GlobalData
Photo credit: Global data
Digital marketing in pharma is gaining increasing importance in recent times and Indian multinational pharmaceutical company Cipla Limited can be termed as a pioneer in this space from the Indian market perspective as it has successfully used a digital strategy to promote disease awareness and grow leadership position in asthma, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
Over the past three years, Cipla launched digital commercial campaigns with an aim to encourage asthma patients to opt for inhalation therapy and lead a life without any restriction.
GlobalData’s ‘Digital Marketing Intelligence’ identified a diverse portfolio of unbranded digital assets from Cipla for patients with respiratory conditions, including asthma – breathfree.com (website), Mybreathefree (mobile app), Breathefree (Facebook and Twitter pages) and breathefreetv (YouTube channel).
GlobalData’s analysis revealed good traffic to the unbranded website, breathefree.com in 2019 with a total of 533.4K visits, of which the highest visits were registered in Q1 2019 and Q4 2019 due to the combined use of high number of organic and paid keywords.
Venkat Kartheek Vale, Pharma Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Cipla, being the market leader with more than two-thirds of the market share in the inhalation respiratory segment in India, successfully used the digital channels to promote inhalers’ use and this can serve as a great example for other Indian companies to promote disease awareness and provide specific recommendations to patients.”
Cipla promoted its campaigns on various digital platforms, including the unbranded website, breathfree.com and on Breathefree’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.
Vale concludes: “Major pharmaceutical firms in the US and Europe are effectively using digital channels to promote disease awareness and treatment-related support to patients. Digital marketing in the Indian pharma market is at nascent stages and companies can derive maximum benefit by proactively developing digital assets that promote their presence in different therapy areas while also educating patients and general people about such diseases resulting in the overall market growth.”