Health 2.0: Your customers are talking about your brand online. Are you part of the discussion?

Pharmaceutical Marketing Coach (PMC):

I have noticed lately that whenever I buy something online, the company often asks me for either a rating or a comment about the product. Some companies have even been promoting incentives for providing such comments. Some bloggers also promote themselves as ‘product testers’. They try out products and provide comments online about them. Consumer comments are there for the world to see.

These are just a few examples of the new web, Web 2.0. But where does healthcare fit into this? Is it possible for patients to give feedback about prescription drugs that they have used? What about the services that they received from a hospital? Can marketers use Web 2.0 to communicate directly to consumers and patients about their brands? The answer is ‘yes’ to all of the above. Welcome to Health 2.0.

John M. Lee of Digital Growth Strategies is an expert when it comes to Web 2.0 and Health 2.0. We had a chance to talk before the holidays. His expertise on the topic shined through and his passion for moving forward with Health 2.0 was quite apparent.

See John`s comments in the following pages to learn more about Health 2.0 and how pharma companies are getting involved;

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John M. Lee, CEO, Digital Growth Strategies

For over 20 years and through revolutionary changes in marketing communications, John constantly reminds his clients of one thing: it’s still all about the customer. “Regardless of channel, technology or tool, if you put the customer at the center of your thinking, you’re off to a good start.

”Working with leading advertising agencies in both media planning and senior account management positions, John has consistently developed effective, insight driven brand communications programs for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business brands. Over the past four years as Managing Director of Dallas-based advertising agency Calise & Sedei, John was responsible for leading the strategic marketing programs of Virbac, a global veterinary pharmaceutical company based out of Nice, France.Prior to his work at Calise & Sedei, John served for a number of years as Director, Integrated Marketing Communications for Parago, an Internet technology marketing company leading to his understanding of the significant role technology should play in customer communications and engagement.

Based on his intimate understanding of brand communications strategy and the growing power of the Internet to enable efficient communication and collaboration, John recently founded Digital Growth Strategies, a Web 2.0 strategic consulting group.

The mission of Digital Growth Strategies is to help companies drive profitable growth through enhanced relationships enabled by a strategic approach to Web 2.0 and Social Media

You can learn more about John M. Lee’s corporation by visiting DigitalGrowthStrategy.com . You can also join John’s LinkedIn network or follow him on Twitter.

John M. Lee (JML): Web 2.0 consists of a group of web-based communication tools (collectively known as social media), such as blogs and microblogs (Twitter), social networks (FaceBook, LinkedIn), online communities, podcasts and wikis. All these tools have the objective of facilitating information sharing and collaboration amongst users. A subset of Web 2.0 is called Health 2.0. Health 2.0 tools promote collaboration between patients, as well as between patients and their caregivers. Health 2.0 is driving the evolution towards customer-centric care.

JML: Technologies that will facilitate Health 2.0 are those that allow two-way conversations between people and between pharma companies and patients. Blogs, podcasts and online communities are a few examples. Blogging is a great way for companies to talk in a personal tone with their customers. Blogs can be used to provide valuable information and they are also designed to solicit comments from readers. With blogs, there is always an opportunity for customers to respond and marketers to get feedback. Podcasts are downloadable audio or video files that can be accessed from a company website and can provide health tips. These can be provided on a regular basis on a wide range of topics. Online communities, forums and social networks designed around health are proliferating rapidly and provide an unprecedented level of information that will yield great insight for pharma companies.

The one caveat is that these are all tactics; they are one-offs. You have to start with overall business objectives and strategy, and that starts with the customer. You must understand the customers’ needs intimately and know how they use technology to find and share information. Then you can start thinking about tactics.

JML: A recent Pew Internet Project report estimates that 75% of internet users are looking for health information online, and now there are so many more sources for them to go to than just corporate websites In addition, the proliferation of high-speed broadband connections in the home makes it easy to access and download large amounts of information quickly.

Then there are demographic trends. Generation X and Y are starting to age. These groups have the most comfort using the Internet. They have always been online, and as they age, they will start using it more for health information for themselves and for their aging parents. Baby boomers and seniors are also becoming more comfortable online, and since web searching is one of the easiest things to do online, this drives further adoption and usage of blogs and online communities as they start to show up in search results.

Lastly, marketers themselves are innovating and supporting Health 2.0 channels. For example, the American Cancer Society has a major online presence as do many other health organizations. P&G and GSK are starting to experiment with social media as well.

Here are a few links to social media examples in healthcare. Although not all of these are pharma company initiatives, there is a significant opportunity for pharma to get involved at first by just listening to these discussions in order to gain insight and ideas for future endeavours.

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons): Online community
Abbott: YouTube Channel
American Cancer Society: YouTube Channel
Canadian Nurses Association: Online community
GlaxoSmithKlein: Online community for Alli weight loss product
Sanofi Aventis: FaceBook page
ScrippsHealth: Twitter Account

JML: There are plenty of benefits, including deeper customer understanding, humanizing the marketing of medicine, engaging patients in disease prevention and improved corporate communication.

The first thing that companies need to do is to listen to their customers. As Stephen Covey says “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. Start putting out some listening posts and understand what patients are saying about your company and your brands. Identify the big influencers and their networks.

Blogs and social networks have the ability to humanize marketing. Pharma marketing is perceived as cold and impersonal. A blog gives a pharma firm the opportunity to put a human face on their communication. It allows them to engage with customers on a personal basis. Social networks and communities also bring a personal touch to communication by facilitating and enabling discussions and information sharing. Additionally, with the rise of these peer to peer, non-professional communities, there is the risk of misinformation being disseminated throughout the community. This provides pharma companies a great opportunity to engage with the community to provide the right information.

These days, much of the focus is on what happens after a patient gets sick. Costs are continuing to escalate so there needs to be a shift towards preventive care and wellness. Pharma companies should engage the community and motivate them to lead healthier lives. Social media can facilitate these types of discussions.

Thinking outside the box, there is also huge opportunity for Web 2.0 inside the firewall. This is referred to as Enterprise 2.0. With thousands of pharma employees dispersed around the world, there is a significant knowledge management problem. Learning, sharing and collaboration processes are not particularly efficient. Plus, when people leave the organisation, they take their knowledge with them. With social media for the enterprise, there is now the opportunity to deploy tools like blogs, online communities and collaborative project management Wikis inside the organization with the objective of improving communication and collaboration. This could also be the company’s way of getting to better understand the benefits, risks and procedures involved in social media marketing before deploying similar programs externally.

JML: It would be irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with social media marketing for pharma companies. While many pharma companies are interested in engaging in Health 2.0, the regulatory environment can be paralyzing. Once you are out there on the social web, you are completely open to comments and feedback, some of which will be positive and others negative. You are giving up a good deal of control to your customers and patients. Pharma companies have to be prepared to deal with the good and the bad.

Another big risk is monitoring discussions and hearing a comment which suggests an adverse event for a drug. What is the pharma companies’ responsibility to report the adverse event? How do they know if this has already been reported through another channel? There are no guidelines developed yet on how to manage this. Additionally, many of the posts by consumers are anonymous or under a username that does not identify the individual per se. Does this mean that the pharma company is responsible for hunting the post writer down? At what point does investigating this situation become an invasion of privacy or violation of HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules? What responsibility does the company have to provide fair balance if all community comments about a drug are positive? If the author of the comment suggestive of an adverse event lives in another country, what is the responsibility of the pharma company in this situation? These are serious ethical questions that need to be answered. In the US, there are no FDA guidelines on social media participation by pharma companies at the time of this interview.

There is always the risk that a competitor may be intentionally misleading site visitors by providing a false comment about your brand, or trying to squeeze in a positive comment about their own brand as an alternative.

The Internet enables patients to obtain information from thousands of people who are in a similar health situation. They are sharing information and experiences about their treatment, supporting each other and giving each other advice. Patients are doing this on their own. Simultaneously, they are providing insights on products, services and treatments that they have used and/or heard about. What should healthcare and pharma companies do about this? This group of consumers represents a 24/7 focus group for pharma brands, therefore pharma companies should take interest in communicating or just listening to these consumers. A pharma company can choose to engage or ignore social media and associated comments from consumers, but social media is not going away.

JML: Think big, but take small steps, one at a time. Start figuring out the landscape and applications within social media, and develop a few scenarios.

1st step is education. There are individuals within organizations that are innovators who are looking for new ideas to promote their brands. These individuals need to put together a case study for social media to present to their senior management team. The case study should explain what social media is, how customers are using it, how it affects business, what are some opportunities as well as threats, and what are competitors doing. Senior managers and regulatory groups will need to review and provide feedback on the idea.

2nd step is figuring out how ready the company is for social media. There may be things that they are already doing that are not classified as social media, but may actually be social media. On the other hand, there may be companies who have not stepped outside of traditional marketing. This type of company may benefit from reviewing case studies or creating positive and negative scenarios to better understand the pros and cons of a social media strategy.

3rd step is to test a few things, such as trying social media communications inside the organization with a corporate blog or a collaborative Wiki. This gives the company a platform to understand the application and determine applicability for rolling it out to their customers.

4th step is to be flexible. You have to be ready to move in a different direction if customer feedback is not what you had anticipated.

“With Health 1.0 it was all about a static, one-way website. Essentially an online brochure. What Health 2.0 provides (which is where we are now) is content plus community. People are online in unprecedented numbers talking about and sharing health related information. The opportunity for pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies is to begin formulating a strategy of how best to engage in this new environment. This path is certainly not free of risk, but there are certainly baby steps that can be taken to begin the learning process.”

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