HealthEd Blog

What’s Up At SES? A Lot Of Measurement

Recently, HealthEd sent an intrepid team to SES New York 2012, one of the leading conferences for search, social media, and digital marketing. Here’s what they heard:

Megan Beardsley:          

Avinash Kaushik’s talk was excellent.  Google’s digital marketing evangelist spent a lot of time talking about how to measure attribution (assigning credit for which marketing tactics cause conversion) and how flawed our measurements have been.  He said we spend a lot of time giving credit to the last click, when in fact most consumers may have a long conversion journey with multiple touchpoints.

Sarah Scalet:                     

Avinash was the best. He proved that you can turn an 18,000-row Microsoft Excel document into something visually appealing, useful, and even (his word) “sexy.” He said that marketing vendors need to move beyond “data puking” and offer metrics in a more visually appealing way.

Megan Beardsley:          

The other interesting tidbit I heard was from Richard Kosinski, SVP, Sales at Quantcast. He spoke about the resurgence of banner ads and said online display spending looks set to catch up to paid search by 2015!

Sarah Scalet:                     

He also talked about the job skills that are needed by marketers in today’s data-driven landscape. Richard said, “If you’re going to a math competition—which this is—then you’d better bring mathematicians.” A key takeaway is that there’s a lot of data to make sense of, and we need mathematically-minded people to help make it accessible to the rest of us.

Luis Perez:                         

One big takeaway for me is that there is no magic bullet for success in search. Most of the advice around scoring better on search engines was simply, “Be better.” Avoid mistakes like making your site difficult for a search engine to read. Get other sites to link to yours by reaching out with an e-mail or phone call, and just explaining your offering and requesting a link. It’s part of what some presenters were calling “social muscle.” People trust people, not machines, and so more and more we want to know the person behind the product. It certainly explains the evolution to a more social Internet. 

Dominika Samojlik:         

With so many new social media tools out there, we have to pick channels wisely and interact meaningfully, rather than spreading ourselves too thin. We should not feel that we have to be on every social media outlet. Instead, our needs should dictate the channels we use. A social media strategy is critical, which starts with business goals and requires constant evaluation as you learn.

 

Megan Beardsley

VP, Creative Strategist, Digital
HealthEd

 

 

Sarah Scalet
Content Director, HealthEd OnDemand
HealthEd

 

 

 

Luis Perez
Technical Lead, HealthEd OnDemand
HealthEd

 

 

 

Dominika Samojik
Community Manager, SurroundHealth
HealthEd

 

 

Mobile Healtherati Convene in New Jersey; Pharma Forgets to RSVP

At last week’s mHealthcon, the soon-to-be-annual event that brings together mobile health entrepreneurs, marketers, patients, and investors to talk shop in New Brunswick, NJ, I couldn’t help but think, “Where is pharma?”

Yes, there were a couple of representatives from manufacturers like Bristol-Myers Squibb. But they were vastly outnumbered by their healthcare peers:

• Managed care organizations
• Large healthcare providers
• Physicians and researchers

Mobile is potentially the greatest opportunity for pharma to break out of its innovation funk. And “The Healthcare City,” as New Brunswick bills itself, would have been a great place for pharma to stoke its creative fires—right in the industry’s backyard.

It’s not as if patients aren’t asking for mobile solutions …

“We have the opportunity to drive an ‘Arab Spring’ in healthcare,” said blogger Casey Quinlan, author of Cancer for Christmas and an outspoken patient advocate. Quinlan, diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, said there were not enough tools available to help her manage her disease and treatment side effects.

“If there had been an app that would have helped me manage my neutropenia (low white blood cell count) and anemia (low red or total blood cell count),” Quinlan told the audience, “I would have easily paid a couple hundred dollars for it.”

Amy Gurowitz, who is launching a learning community for people with MS, said she surveyed her beta testers about their use of tracker apps. Only one person reported using one. “They didn’t even know that these tools are out there,” Gurowitz said, suggesting there is a market for such tools if they can be promoted effectively to patients.

It’s not as if pharma companies are ignoring mobile opportunities…

To be fair, pharma has produced a growing number of mobile apps and tools. (Quick plug: You can read about some mobile pharma case studies in an earlier blog post I co-wrote with digital buddy Megan Beardsley). Some have been built for patients, while most target healthcare providers. 

Still, I’m not convinced that pharma is fully prepared for the coming mobile onslaught. And I’m not the only one.

At a conference break, I caught the attention of Paulo Machado, a leading voice in pharma innovation and the former Innovation Director at AstraZeneca. During our conversation, Paulo really helped crystallize pharma’s conundrum.

In essence, he said, pharma companies are manufacturers. And it’s much harder for manufacturers to evolve away from a product-centric mindset than it is for service providers—your payers, hospitals, clinics, and most other health organizations.

Paulo said that healthcare reform is driving service companies away from the fee-for-service model. “They actually have to run profitable businesses now,” he observed.

Translation: Payers, not pharma, may end up leading the charge into mobile health.

Any tool that helps patients improve outcomes and lower costs will be mission-critical

Sure enough, later in the day Michael Monson, SVP Performance & Innovation at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), encouraged mobile health entrepreneurs to bring him innovative ideas… like, now.

Headquartered in Manhattan, VNSNY is the country’s largest not-for-profit home healthcare service. It is both a provider and a payer. Monson explained that innovation is a large component of the company’s strategic approach. As healthcare evolves in the US, mobile seems to be a major way forward.

 “We really like using behavioral science,” Monson said, referencing partner Welldoc, which is running a mobile adherence pilot for VNSNY with diabetes patients. Welldoc was in the news recently when Ford announced a beta test in which diabetic drivers could “ask” their cars to check their blood glucose levels. The Ford beta is being powered by a Welldoc wireless health monitoring platform.

It’s innovations like these—“software devices that enhance consumers’ lives,” Monson said—that are going to power the future of mobile health.

Mobilization can work for pharma too

The economic rewards for innovation certainly favor companies like Monson’s. But I believe pharma also needs to stand up and put the industry’s significant weight behind mobile health initiatives. Apps would be the logical place to start—they are the most “product-like” side of mobile—and the FDA already issued guidance for health apps this summer.

For pharma innovators interested in going mobile, some next steps should include:

• Familiarizing yourself with the FDA mobile app guidelines
• Getting outside the pharma space
  • Download and use some of the mobile tools that other healthcare organizations have built
  • Look for parallels that could be applicable to branded/unbranded product marketing

Finally, challenge your agencies to think blue sky—have them bring their strongest ideas for mobile to the table, and explore opportunities to pilot in 2012.

Jeff Greene
Director, Digital Strategy
HealthEd

 

 

Is your marketing direct and relevant?

According to organizers, nearly 10,000 people attended the DMA 2010 conference in San Francisco. Direct marketing (DM) titans such as Howard Draft (of Draftfcb) and Rance Crain (of Ad Age) were inducted into the DMA Hall of Fame for their pioneering work. None other than Lester Wunderman (widely regarded as the inventor of modern-day direct marketing) introduced Draft and Crain to the audience.

The conference reinforced the association’s relevance in a changing marketing paradigm. Direct marketing started at a time when mass advertising was king. To this day, most big-brand marketers continue to regard DM as a “below-the-line” marketing expense. However, it is more widely used than most people realize. Apart from e-mail and paper mail campaigns, there is a proliferation of marketing strategies that continue to employ the foundations of direct marketing. Marketers always strive to locate the coordinates of the 4-D marketing axes—audience, message, time, and place. DM definitely brings marketers closer to pinpointing those coordinates. Here are a few tactics that can be classified as DM:

Web personalization—The World Wide Web was founded on the belief that a global information system could be home based. Web personalization enables marketers to communicate with an individual on the customer’s terms. DMA 2010 attracted a few vendors working on the innovative front in this realm. I met with the founder of Optini (a provider of Web personalization marketing), who works with clients to create customized browser add-ons that can revolutionize the Web experience. Optini’s solution tailors the brand experience for customers via targeted display and search placements not just on the company.com but across every major Web property launched from that particular computer and browser.

 
Mobile marketing—While smart phones and apps have generated a lot of buzz since the mid-2000s, only 1 of 4 mobile users has a smart phone today. So, apps and mobile sites cannot be accessed by the remainder of the mobile audience. Text/SMS marketing continues to be the mobile marketer’s best friend. Peter Johnson from MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) presented a SMS marketing campaign case study by Jiffy Lube that increased new-to-brand opt-in leads by 50% and produced larger-than-previous conversion rates.

Search marketing—Keyword searches and content overload provide the direct marketer with a rich insight into the customer’s educational needs, product wants, and decision triggers. Companies such as Google and Amazon have pioneered the personalization approach and make recommendations on content and product based on usage and consumption patterns.

Social media—Unlike the digital tactics described above, social media marketing is where customers prefer to converse about the brand with other customers, and not the sellers. Approximately 160 million unique visitors in the United States spend much of their time (more than 5 hours per unique visitor) on social media, according to Nielsen. Ad Age predicts that by 2013, social media marketing allocation will grow over 4-fold, to about $5 billion. Many marketers in the pharma/healthcare spaces are still unsure of how to use this medium to converse with patients and physicians. At the very least, the social media happen to be the ideal place to listen to what your customers think about you.

The proliferation in new marketing techniques has multiplied advertisers’ choices, and advertisers will have to make tough decisions because of increased marketing accountability. From DM’s earliest days, measurement has been the driver of its methodology, and success or failure could easily be demonstrated with the correct accountability plan. With digital being a highly measurable medium, media buying decisions can now be made on an engagement basis (cost per click/conversion/download), as opposed to the classic reach-and-frequency model. It’s no surprise, then, that digital marketing would be direct.

As an advertiser once said, “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted; I just don’t know which half.” Which half will your marketing activity be part of when that tough decision is made? 

Abel Rajan, MS
Director of Strategy and Analytics, Strategic Services
HealthEd

 

What social media can tell us about the patient journey

Those of you who attended our presentation this morning at EXL Digital Pharma West can view our slides courtesy of SlideShare:

ExL Digital Pharma West Presentation June 2010

If you weren't able to attend, here are some key takeaways:

• Quantitative measures of pharma buzz can be misleading
• Using qualitative analysis can provide a robust alternative, particularly when findings are put into the context of the patient journey
• The patient journey has far-reaching usefulness for brands: It can provide the building blocks for all phases of a consumer marketing program
• Key intervention points we found along the rheumatoid arthritis journey included Diagnosis, Transition to Engagement, Treatment Initiation, and Moving Forward Through Setbacks
• Pharma brands can use social media conversations to create their own journeys and identify key intervention points, educational needs, and marketing implications along the way

Jeff Greene
Director of Strategic Services
HealthEd

A New Era of Media Content Sponsored by Pharma?

TLC.com recently launched “A Conception Story”, a Web-only reality series that follows the lives of six “dynamic” young (or young-ish) women in their attempts to conceive. And “the idea came not from producers at the network but rather from First Response, a brand by Church and Dwight that makes pregnancy, ovulation, and fertility kits,” according to an article in the New York Times.

Pharma initiating and sponsoring content creation! I decided to take a closer look, to see how the model held up, whether it benefited its audience and sponsor, and whether the same model could be used by other pharmaceutical marketers. Here’s what I found.

 

A good mix of patient-friendly content, but some sponsorship awkwardness

Videos about its 6 heroines form the core of the series, accompanied by the usual online toolbox: blogs that invite comments, discussion boards, educational resources, expert opinions, and partnerships with credible organizations such as the March of Dimes. Though none of it seems remarkably innovative, the package as a whole is harmonious and convincing, especially because the backdrop of the women’s stories infuses the whole site with empathy and relevance.

Much less successful is the repetition of the same, lengthy sponsorship message that appears before the viewer sees any of the women’s stories. This actually dissuaded me from spending more time watching valuable videos. The series needs to test and refine its balance of content and promotion, or risk losing its audience.

 

A sensible format

Television-based reality series often sensationalize the banal or the grotesque and encourage their subjects to expose themselves to the point of ridicule. Though blogs and vlogs created by “everyday people” may be more sincerely motivated, they can also be distressingly mediocre. The format of “A Conception Story” takes the best of both worlds. The women record their own stories, but professionals do the final editing, presenting the women in their best light. The narrative of the clips is tight; the emotions are sincere.

 

The right medium for the right topic

Infertility, and I speak from experience, is tied in with sexuality, social norms, uncontrollable emotions, hormonal fluctuations, and a frightening awareness of the passage of time. It can impact your behavior toward loved ones and your performance at work (especially when you have to skip out to yet another unexplainable doctor’s appointment). Being able to explore videos and resources from the relative privacy of a computer suits the intimacy of the topic, framing it as a meaningful conversation rather than as a voyeuristic take on another person’s life. Moreover, that empathetic, real-world tone may also encourage women to join the series’ online community.

 

Viral potential and extended shelf life

I predict “A Conception Story” will make the rounds quickly enough, especially since it will benefit from the already established audience of TLC.com (as opposed to a more obscure brand.com destination). It may even garner repeated visits over a longer time, because it covers a relatively broad range of situations, from conception through prolonged infertility. A woman could come back to the site time and again because she has identified with one of the series’ heroines or because she has moved along in her journey and is looking for different content and different forms of support.

 

Potential pitfalls

The makers of the show will have to navigate the tensions between sponsorship and authenticity. Too much pushing of product and they can lose credibility—and their audience.

Conversely, giving consumers so open a platform presents its own risks, especially with a topic as controversial as reproduction. In her blog, one of the women links to a music video that references abortion. What if she were to take a virulent stance on reproductive rights? What kind of pressure would that create on Church and Dwight?

Finally, committing to a series with real people without knowing where their journey can take them isn’t exactly for the faint of heart. What if one of the women were to remain infertile over a very long haul? Would First Response marketers still want to document her story even if she chose to adopt—and stopped using their products? Or what if the story took an even worse turn? I’ve known marriages that have come undone over the stresses of infertility. Is that also something that the brand would choose to follow? And if not, how would that affect the audience?

Any marketing situation in which consumers are allowed to express themselves directly holds a very real potential for PR disasters as well as victories. It’s best to be prepared…

 

A model for other pharmaceutical marketers?

Overall, I think “A Conception Story” will benefit both its audience and the makers of First Response products (as long as the company fine-tunes its balance of content and sponsorship). But First Response products are OTC. Would the approach be effective for the marketing and education about prescribed products, which require laborious documentation of frightening side effects and necessitate adverse event reporting? Tough to say.

And would content like this even stand a chance of making it through regulatory if it weren't about an OTC product? The recent warning letter issued to Novartis from the FDA indicates it's less likely to than it was two weeks ago when "A Conception Story" was introduced online.

In any case, pharmaceutical marketers will have to be careful if they want to emulate this sponsorship model. They will need to make the decision on a case-by-case basis only, and never lose sight of the interests of their primary constituents. Patients.

 

Megan Beardsley

Digital Creative Director

HealthEd

DTC National: A Storm of Opportunity

I came to DTC National 2010 in Washington expecting to hear about best practices in television advertising, the vital role that print still plays in the marketing mix, and the benefits of portals like WebMD.

Instead, DTC National feels more like a hybrid of ePharma, the Pharmaceutical Relationship Marketing Congress, and a NAMI convention.

Speakers have detailed the intricacies of database-focused marketing, opportunities in social media and word-of-mouth, and the need for partnerships with advocacy groups. In fact, the high winds blowing newspapers around outside of the JW Marriott here may be symbolic. 

Exit: pharma’s past. Enter: a digitally-influenced, behaviorally-focused, and surprisingly optimistic future.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the voluble chief executive of WPP, one of the world’s largest marketing services companies, kicked off the proceedings with a reflection on US healthcare reform. He raised the issue that passage of the healthcare bill has a strong upside for pharma: 30 million new consumers joining the healthcare system.

(This could explain why 66% of the DTC audience voted their “approval” of healthcare reform during an audience-response survey earlier in the day.)

However, Sorrell noted, these previously uncovered consumers will be different than those whom pharma marketers have been pursuing to date. He said they are more likely to be poorer, less educated, younger, non-white, foreign-born, and possessing lower health literacy.

“They learn by watching and listening, not by reading,” Sorrell said, first suggesting that television will continue to be a viable approach, then later noting advances in mobile technology will offer another strong vehicle.

Regardless, Sorrell said: “Healthcare marketers will have to work much harder to reach them.”

Some more highlights:

• Actor/director Joe Pantoliano provided an intimate look at his struggle with depression. Successful yet suicidal in the mid 2000s, Pantoliano (“Ralphie” from The Sopranos) got help and later created No Kidding, Me Too, an advocacy group that aims to “shine the light of Hollywood fame onto the dark corners of diseases like depression.” He echoed comments made earlier in the conference by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean that trending diseases such as obesity may in fact stem from emotional responses to depression. Pantoliano encouraged pharma to help consumers understand the positive benefits treatments can bring, and use their media leverage to continue encouraging diagnosis and treatment
• Michael McCaughan, of Provision Policy, questioned whether the value of pharma brands in the post-recession, post-blockbuster world is in the molecule itself or in the support system created around it. Confirming what many in health education and digital healthcare have assumed, McCaughan said there will be many government dollars available for interventions that lead to better health outcomes. The catch: “You’ve got to be able to show proof”
• Dolly Judge, formerly of Pfizer and now with Hill & Knowlton, was asked what the future held for pharma. Her response: “Compliance, compliance, compliance”
• John Kamp of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, an industry lobbying group, added that the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation is looking for ways to ensure patients adhere to prescribed treatments, as a way to control spiraling healthcare costs
• Amy Cowan, Google’s industry lead for healthcare, shared data showing higher consumer interest in search ads that carry additional risk language. Bayer’s Yaz brand piloted the new ads on Google, where click-through rates were measurably higher than for ads that ran before 14 manufacturers received FDA warning letters last spring. In some cases, the new ad formats with risk language saw click-through lifts as high as 20%, Cowan said
• Mark Miller of Epsilon shared results from a wide-ranging survey the agency conducted to shed light on consumer behaviors in the social media. The most compelling finding: Healthcare conversations are taking place on message boards in much greater volume than on any other social media venue. 49% of respondents said they used message boards to discuss health issues online; only 20% of respondents selected the next-closest venues
• The Great Recession appears to have ended in the marketing services industry. Several agency speakers, including Sorrell, remarked that revenues have recovered in 2010…although he noted downward pricing pressures will continue to hurt big-ticket items (read: print, TV) and support more nimble approaches (read: digital)

Jeff Greene
Director of Strategic Services
HealthEd

Can Google Caffeine lead to improved patient Web usability?

In anticipation of Bing’s launch in late May 2009, Google began to revamp its search algorithm to positively impact the following:

 

Speed

The speed of search results matters to search engine users. If results take too long to download, users will go elsewhere. Why should this matter? Search marketers spend money where they know quality traffic resides. A high abandonment rate of the search engine could lead marketers to believe that quality traffic resides elsewhere. This would motivate marketers to move spend in favor of a quicker alternative.

 
  

Relevance and Accuracy

In my view, these attributes are the most important elements of a search engine’s usefulness.

 

Accuracy: An intelligent search engine should provide in its top results a list that closely matches what was entered into the search bar.

 

Relevance: In late 2009, Google launched a real-time search feature to report breaking news. This is possible because of the creation of newer search technologies and ventures with multiple players, such as Facebook and Twitter.

 

Below are a couple of search engine examples that highlight these attributes:

 

Google Example:

 
  

Bing Example:

 

 

In the example “healthed group” was typed into both Google and Bing; you’ll notice the search engines ranked equally on accuracy with the first listing being the official company website. However, Bing fared better on relevancy, its second listing was HealthEd’s Twitter feed.

 

 

Indexed Volume

Google is expected to increase the volume of indexed Web pages as a result of its recent revamp. This could increase availability of Web pages in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

 

 

 With many of these changes either under way or expected to happen within Google (which owns more than two-thirds of the search engine market share), here are the key areas that Web marketers should focus on in developing a digital strategy for patients (from a search engine perspective):

 

• Web site content—Content that is relevant to the site’s core message is essential. Choice and emphasis of keywords within body and title of pages also are important
• Meta title and description tags—Good ones increase site relevancy and improve standings in SERPs
• Site/page download time—Currently Google places little importance on download time. Caffeine is expected to give more weight to download time. The best digital assets will be those that achieve a compromise between faster download times and better creative delivery
• Fresh and updated text—In the new version of Google, recently updated Web sites will rank higher in the SERPs than those Web sites that haven't been updated for a while. Therefore brand marketers should start thinking about getting additional Web content pre-approved through med/legal, embargoing it, and posting it throughout the year
• Quality links—Web sites that are similar to own-product sites will receive greater weighting, irrespective of Google Page Rank. Example: news article linked to pharmabrand.com in PR Newswire will receive a lower ranking than those linked to pharmabrand.com in, say, Quality Health
• Social media—Thanks to partnerships, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs are being mined by search engines to provide real-time search results. The powers of blogs, search engines, and social media Web sites are finally converging

About.com conducted a study in June 2009 in which patients were surveyed online about their behavior postdiagnosis. Almost 65% of survey participants stated that they would research the disease state, treatment options, and specific pharma brands either via search or specific health Web sites, such as WebMD, Quality Health, and Real Age.

 

An increasing number of pharma brand marketers are now focused on patients and their Web usage. As marketers, let us help our patients be more engaged participants in their treatment process and provide them with up-to-date, relevant information in a medium that is a popular choice for many.

 

Abel Rajan

Director of Strategic Services, Analytics

HealthEd Group