Team Spotlight: Paid Search

At PHM, we re-imagine media for health and wellness everyday—but how does that play out in the day to day lives of our employees?

To answer this question, PHM presents the Team Spotlight, highlighting a different team each month and detailing not only the work they do, but how they make PHM a great place to work.

This month: Paid Search, through the lens of Kevin Zabel, Paid Search Manager.

If you had to think of one of the most annoying forms of online advertisements, what would it be? Is it a forced social media ad, a YouTube pre-roll, or something else entirely? Well, an article published by Search Engine Journal surfaced a study meant to determine which types of digital ads annoy people the most. A whopping 42% of all respondents said that Paid Search ads were annoying. At PHM, I’m the one writing those annoying ads. I won’t apologize though.

Paid Search plays a vital role in the patient journey, and a unique one at that. If a person sees an ad for a medication, whether it be on TV, Instagram, or in their doctor’s office, Paid Search has the ability to be front and center when that person searches on Google (or Bing, if you’re my dad). Paid Search can help answer someone’s question at the moment they’re asking it. And if you’re like my pre-PHM self wondering who the heck clicks on Paid Search ads, well let me tell you that quite a lot of people do. In fact, Paid Search is typically one of the largest drivers of users to any given website.

So a lot of people click on Paid Search ads. At the end of the day, the client wants to know how successful our efforts are. Clicks and impressions are great indicators of success, but how can you measure the success of a Paid Search ad in Pharma, when the ultimate goal is to connect a patient with the treatment they need? That’s a great question without a clear-cut answer.

In any other e-commerce industry, it’s quite easy to see the customer’s journey from click to purchase by tracking their behavior on a site. In Pharma, it’s a much longer journey from the moment someone clicks on an ad until the moment they’re prescribed the medicine they need. Some very smart people came together and collaborated on how exactly to track this. Using inputs from many different data sources, the client has a good idea of how many people were driven to Health Care Professional (HCP) visits and how many people ultimately were prescribed treatment, all from a simple click on a Paid Search ad.

So why did I choose Paid Search, and why did I choose PHM? My path specifically to digital marketing began when I took a “Digital Marketing and Analytics” class my junior year at Temple University. I didn’t realize that advertising could be so mathematically and statistically focused, and I kinda liked it. Once I realized that digital marketing was an interesting option for me, I started talking to my professors about how to break into the industry. One thing led to another, and I found myself in an SEO/Paid Search internship at another Philly-based digital marketing agency, and then I interned at a large pharmaceutical company. As graduation neared in December 2019, I saw an open role for a Paid Search Associate at PHM—a perfect combination of my previous two internships. Next thing I know, it’s two and a half years later and I’m writing this blog post as a Paid Search Manager.

I could have done Paid Search anywhere (hypothetically), so why did I choose PHM? To put it plainly, PHM is a company with a great industry reputation that offers a lot of early career growth and opportunity to learn. PHM also has something of a New York agency culture with a Philly agency vibe—with countless resources to access, but intimate team settings. Ultimately, PHM is widely known as a company that gets it done, and gets it done right.

In today’s crazy world, I am constantly reminded of how lucky I am to work at PHM. There is something comforting and reassuring about working for a progressive, thought-leading company like PHM. I always feel supported by those around me, no matter what level of seniority that person has. When it comes down to it, we are all just people trying to get through this little experience called life, and PHM has always encouraged me to live that life to the fullest.

Interested in the Paid Search team? Check out our open job postings here.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn.

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