SUCCESS STORY

Pfizer Consumer Healthcare sees huge jump in Nicorette monthly sales after adopting Yahoo! Search Marketing

Company background
The largest pharmaceutical company in the world, Pfizer Inc develops, produces, and markets some of the most recognised prescription medicines for humans and animals, and many of the world’s best-known consumer brands. The Consumer Healthcare division of Pfizer is the world’s second-largest consumer healthcare company and specialises in an extensive range of market-leading non-prescription healthcare products such as Listerine, Nicorette and Regaine.

Challenge: To increase awareness amongst smokers
Despite increased awareness about the dangers of tobacco use and the growing number of anti-smoking campaigns, smoking continues to be a public health issue in Hong Kong. Nicorette, a market leader in Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), works as a safe and effective aid to help smokers quit the habit. Available without a prescription, Nicorette is a sucrose-free chewing gum that gradually reduces nicotine withdrawal symptoms through its chewing technique.

Because of the highly competitive nature of the prescription market, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare needed to increase the awareness of its Nicorette brand. At the same time, its goal was also to educate the public on the harmful effects of smoking, increase awareness of NRT and correct the misconception that willpower alone helps one quit the smoking habit.

“Smokers think that willpower alone can help them kick the habit. However, that is not true. Generally, only 15 per cent of people who want to quit smoking succeed. Out of this, only three per cent do it through willpower alone,” states Gary Cheung, Product Manager, Consumer Healthcare, Pfizer Corporation HK Limited.

To reach out to their target audience who they knew preferred the Internet to any other media, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare adopted Yahoo! Search Marketing. “People who actively search for quit smoking information are more likely to convert and thereby generating a higher response rate.” said Cheung.

Results: Nicorette monthly sales increase
For Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, careful selection of strategic keywords helped them broaden the potential traffic to their site. In addition to adopting highly related keywords like “smoking” or “quit smoking”, they also included health-related words like “health” and “fitness”, as well as disease-related words like “lung cancer”. They also used their landing page to highlight current anti-smoking news clippings and information. By integrating Yahoo! Search Marketing with conventional advertising mediums like print, the company further reinforced their message.

“I am very pleased with the results of our search marketing campaign. Not long after we implemented the paid search campaign in March 2006, website traffic increased five-fold. In addition, we saw the monthly sales of Nicorette jump by 60 per cent,” beams Cheung.

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