Press Release

“What’s Your DMI?” TGaS Advisors Launches the First and Only One-Number Digital Marketing Measure

East Norriton, Penn., February 4, 2010 – Imagine measuring digital marketing performance with a single number that’s meaningful, easily understood and keyed to brand strategy and tactical execution. TGaS Advisors, a benchmark and advisory services firm for the pharmaceutical industry, makes that a reality with the launch of the Digital Marketing Index (DMI).

According to the firm’s 2009 Digital & Relationship Marketing benchmark data, a typical brand dedicates 20% of its annual budget, about $10 million or more, on digital marketing each year. “Brand managers and heads of marketing were looking for a simple way to validate their digital marketing performance,” said Donna Wray, who heads TGaS Advisors’ Digital & Relationship Marketing Practice. “They keep asking what ‘good’ looks like in this fast-changing space and how to optimize the digital marketing channel. That was the genesis of the DMI.”

The TGaS Advisors DMI is designed to take into account the full range of disparate digital marketing data and metrics, apply a proprietary equation and generate one simple numerical rating that gives marketing leaders an objective indicator of where they stand. The DMI captures a brand’s internal spending and performance data quarter to quarter, distilling 25 fundamental metrics into a single number between 1 and 100. The DMI gives brand managers a consistent, one-number rating for tracking and reporting a brand’s digital performance internally and ensuring that external agencies and vendors meet expectations. It shows the “big picture” across the brand’s digital performance in relation to a confidential peer-set drawn from 63 brands across 19 leading pharmaceutical companies currently in the benchmark, according to Wray.

The DMI derives from volume and efficiency metrics gathered from the TGaS Advisors Quarterly Performance Benchmark, including such factors as search engine optimization, paid search, banner and display advertising, enrollments, email and other measures. It is updated every quarter so that brand managers can track and report digital marketing performance for themselves and their supervisors, manage agencies against these measures and communicate with other internal and external stakeholders. The DMI also takes into account a brand’s strategy and investment allocations. A brand in launch phase, for example, would have entirely different goals and budget allocations than a product later in its lifecycle. See illustration.

The DMI is available at no cost to current Digital & Relationship Marketing benchmark clients. In addition to the DMI, clients participate in two annual benchmarks, one for Digital and one for Relationship Marketing, evaluating strategies, resources, processes and organizational issues. Clients receive quarterly performance benchmarks, providing a metrics analysis across their online tactics, as well as access to the TGaS Advisors network, database and expertise. Each year clients have the opportunity to participate in an invitation-only Summit with the leading thinkers in digital marketing.

“We delivered our first set of DMI ratings to clients in the fourth quarter of 2009, and the feedback has been very positive,” said Wray. “Clients seem to appreciate how much easier it is to understand and report on their digital and relationship marketing efforts.”

About TGaS^® Advisors

TGaS Advisors, ranked in the top 50 among U.S. Business Products & Services companies by the Inc. 500, is the leader in benchmarking and advisory services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry. The TGaS Advisors roster includes the top 10 and the majority of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies with operations in the U.S. market. The firm’s benchmarking and advisory services suite of solutions, PharmaStance^®, provides clients with a way to measure where they stand with respect to their organizations and answers the question, “How do other pharmaceutical companies do ‘it’?”^® TGaS Advisors is based in East Norriton, Pennsylvania.

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