PRforPharma

Discussions about social media, PR and marketing for pharmaceutical companies

Posts Tagged ‘Return on Health’

Regulatory Concerns Should Not Dominate Pharma Social Media

February 4th, 2010

Social media focused on regulatory concerns only does not line up

Those of you that have read this blog more than once know that I have been beating the Return on Health (ROH) mantra lately when it comes to pharmaceutical social media. The thought is that far too many social media programs start by considering how they will extract value and not how they can add value.

That’s a misaligned process. Instead, marketers need to start by focusing on the patient with an eye toward how their interactions will enable access to more information and better health outcomes. That’s the value you bring to the able as a pharma marketer. That doesn’t mean you ignore your ultimate goal of building a brand that drives more revenue. But instead of starting off with that at the forefront, you rely on a marketing principle that fosters long-term and authentic engagement. It’s a significant shift in thinking but one that is critical if social media ever hopes to gain widespread adoption by pharmaceutical companies.

That shift in thinking is needed across the board and includes things like our fixation with adverse events and off-label usage. I am as guilty as the next guy when it comes to spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to handle these very important issues in pharmaceutical marketing. And we should continue to give careful consideration to where they fit into a social engagement strategy. Dismissing AEs and off-label usage discussion as non issues demonstrates a clear lack of perspective. These topics remain at the forefront of every pharmaceutical legal, compliance and regulatory department, and thus should remain a part of our conversation.

But we shouldn’t limit our discussion to solely focus on how to navigate the issues of adverse events and off-label usage in social media. Why? Because focusing the conversation in this area relegates the patient to the sidelines. How many patients know what an adverse event is and even realize they are discussing off-label uses for a particular drug? I would venture to guess is it a very small minority. These types of issues, though important, are really geared at how a company can limit its liability with regulatory bodies. It’s a necessary step and a conversation that needs to occur, but perhaps not at “stage one.”

The better approach would be to work from the patient out. As pharmaceutical marketers, first ask yourself if there is a concrete reason for you to be engaged in social media. If the answer is no—stop there. Go no further. Starting off the discussion focused on adverse events and off-label usage reverse engineers the process. It starts with a company-centric point of view and eventually finds its way to the patient.

Successful engagements will start with the patient in mind and incorporate regulatory planning only if the first criterion is met.

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Posted in FDA and Pharma Social Media, Pharmaceutical Online Marketing, Pharmaceutical Social Media, Return on Health

Defining Value in Pharma Social Media

January 29th, 2010

In my last post, I attempted to make the case that pharma social media is nothing new—just a form of relationship marketing using a different channel. In essence, sales reps have been making a living for decades based mostly on their ability to cultivate relationships. Those relationships are developed based on an exchange of value—the docs get access to information (and sometimes incentives) and the reps get a hefty commission. Without some sort of exchange of value, no relationship can function. In that sense, sales reps and social media programs are not all that different. Right?

Sort of. While the basic tenants of building a relationship are the same, one key difference does exist—the definition of value. In the more traditional form of relationship building, value can be defined a number of different ways. Value can be access to information. Value can be key clinical trial data. Value can be providing access to a drug that widens a doctor’s treatment options. Those are all good things. But the problem is: value in this world can also be defined by expensive lunches, putting doctors on payroll and fancy country clubs. This type of value should not dictate the subscribing patterns of doctors. And while there are a lot of great sales reps out there that provide a very admirable and needed service, there are also those that fight tooth and nail for every sale by resorting to whatever it takes. This type of relationship building is still predicated on an exchange of value.

Social media is vastly different in this regard. Value is not defined by pharma companies and doctors, value is defined by the patients—the community. In social media, the idea of value is redefined from past relationship marketing efforts. Because patients are intimately concerned with their health, they have the right to define value in their own communities. This is why pharma companies need to focus on Return on Health (ROH) as a key guiding principle of social media. It allows them to focus their efforts where it counts—on the patient. Of course, just like any relationship, there is always the possibility that it can be exploited. The same types of motivations that drive sales reps could certainly drive marketers to cross ethical boundaries in social media. But the difference is—the social media community won’t allow it to happen. It can’t happen for an extended period of time in social media circles because pharmaceutical companies do not dictate value. While sales reps function in the friendly confines of a doctor’s office, social media takes place in front of a giant spotlight. The patient has decided what value they are seeking and if pharma companies fail to oblige they will be ostracized.

That leaves pharmaceutical companies and the agencies advising them with a choice: get in by understanding the value the patient has dictated or get out.

3 comments »

Posted in Pharmaceutical Online Marketing, Pharmaceutical Social Media

Tags: Pharma social media Pharmaceutical marketing Return on Health Social media for pharma Uncategorized

Listen Closely for the Voice of the Patient

December 21st, 2009

My recent ramblings on pharma social media have been very much focused on bringing the patient to the forefront of our strategic planning. This is where the concept of “Return on Health” (ROH) is particularly useful. It lays the groundwork to make sound decisions based on what is best for the patient. Without question, this should be the primary consideration of almost every pharmaceutical social media engagement.

But how is this different from the marketing strategy followed by many pharmaceutical companies for the past decade? One could easily argue that the patient has always been at the center of the pharmaceutical marketing mix. The advertising campaigns, production of office samples and community outreach efforts were geared toward raising awareness at the patient level. In that sense, the industry has always been laser focused on the patient. Patients ultimately drive revenue and every company enjoys padding the bottom line.

The difference with Return on Health is the idea of Voice of Patient. Past pharmaceutical marketing initiatives that target the patient tend to do so with broad messages aimed at creating a demand spike. It’s an attempt to tell the patient “what they should want.” Many old forms of pharmaceutical marketing don’t take into account the Voice of Patient and instead are one-directional forms of communication. The Voice of Patient concept requires a pharmaceutical company to listen first, market second. Patients are increasingly playing a larger role in their own health decisions. This dynamic requires the pharmaceutical company to listen not only to what patients want, but what they need as well. Voice of Patient asks the pharmaceutical company to engage in a two-way conversation with the patient in an attempt to add valuable information to the mix.

Return on Health implies that health guides the decision-making process of a pharmaceutical company prior to engaging in social media. Voice of Patient is what distinguishes current marketing efforts focused on the patient from previous tactics geared toward the patient.

The patient community wants to have a conversation—but are you listening?

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Return on Health Social media for pharma Uncategorized Voice of Patient

Pharma Social Media: Sea Change or Fad?

December 18th, 2009

There was a period of time in the not-so-distant past that social media for the pharmaceutical industry was considered nothing more than a fad. Skeptics scoffed at the job titles of “social media lead” and “new media director” proclaiming those jobs would be gone in a year. Those same skeptics swore that regulations, monitoring for adverse events and discussion around off-label usage would curtail any useful social media effort for pharma.

“It’s just a fad,” was the common refrain. No more. Social media for pharmaceutical marketing no longer represents a fad—it’s a sea change. Here’s why:

1.) The Pharma Strategy Has Changed

The days when pharmaceutical companies would stubbornly insist on filling their pipelines with blockbuster drugs have come and gone. They still look for that rare blockbuster, but they no longer bet the farm on the one drug that will rake in billions. Part of this is a simple matter of supply and demand. There are just not that many blockbuster drugs left out there. But more than that, medicine has changed from chasing mass-market conditions to disease categories that impact a fewer subset of people. This requires a more personalized approach to treatment. How does this impact marketing? Marketing has been forced to respond to the shifting pharma landscape and match its efforts. In a world of personalized medicine, mass marketing efforts now seem to make less and less sense. Hitting as many eyeballs as possible does little to move the needle on drug sales of an orphan drug targeted at specific disease states. The same can’t be said for social media. Social media marketing programs are designed to engage with the patient at a personal level. By its nature, social media is best suited for a specific audience with similar interests. The beauty is this is a two-way street. Patients are far more likely to be engaged in your marketing efforts if it strikes a personal chord. Personalized medicine necessitates personalized marketing.

2.) Shrinking Sales Forces in Favor of Targeted Efforts

Following the move away from blockbuster drugs, pharmaceutical companies no longer have a need for the same massive sales forces of yesteryear. The benefits of a solid relationship at the direct sales level will never be eliminated, but the army of salesmen no longer exists. Pharma companies are now scaling back sales efforts in favor of focused outreach efforts. Glad handing is a thing of the past. Now, it’s about leveraging your relationships to offer a product or service of value. How does this impact marketing? Marketing falls directly in line with the philosophy of the new sales model. In the new marketing mix, pharmaceutical marketers prefer to focus their efforts rather than deploy a wide swath of messages. An effective social media program can help the focused efforts of a sales force by creating demand at the patient level and awareness at the physician level. A targeted sales force should be supported by a targeted marketing effort. Social media allows that to happen.

3.) Patients Have More Information and Play a Larger Role in Health Decisions

Doctors spend a lot of money, time and energy earning the right to practice medicine. They are well-educated, smart people that are accustomed to knowing more then the average patient. But in today’s pharmaceutical world, the patient often has access to as much information as the physician regarding diseases, treatment options and alternatives. This doesn’t mean the physician is no longer the expert, but it does mean that patients now play a much larger role in their health decisions than ever before. A doctor no longer has the luxury of being the only person in the exam room that has access to pertinent information. How does this impact marketing? This dynamic probably plays the largest role in influencing the shift in marketing. With patients at the center of every decision concerning their health, pharmaceutical companies need to adopt a philosophy that not only considers Return on Investment, but also Return on Health (ROH). The job of a marketers has changed from pushing information to engaging in a two-way conversation with the patient. Social media efforts for pharmaceutical companies are now focusing on putting more information at the hands of the patient. As mentioned above, this creates demand in the doctor’s office but also helps to create a more educated patient community.

4.) Regulatory Environment is Showing Signs of Life

It’s no secret that concerns around the regulatory environment pose the greatest obstacle to social media engagement for pharmaceutical companies. Between the great work of debunking those myths and the FDA showing a willingness to consider social media as part of the marketer’s toolkit, the hurdle posed by the regulatory environment looks to be smaller every day. How does this impact marketing? The impact here is obvious. Some pharmaceutical marketers have been content to sit on the sidelines purely out of fear. As the FDA loosens its grip on social media, the pharma industry will surely show a greater sense of urgency to begin the social media engagement process.

There are a probably a dozen more reasons that illustrate the idea that social media for the pharmaceutical industry is more of a sea change than a fad. But here’s the main point to take away from all of this. A fad is something that happens in isolation of external forces. A sea change lines up with, and supports external forces. Social media for pharmaceutical companies is supporting the overall industry change—not fighting it.

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Tags: Pharmaceutical marketing Return on Health Social media for pharma Uncategorized

My Advice for Pharma Social Media Programs: Ignore the Consumer

December 4th, 2009

Surprised to read that title? Think I’ve finally gone off the deep end (it’s been a long time coming after all)? I’ve been spending so much time discussing how social media depends on personal interactions, why would I advocate for ignoring the consumer during a social media engagement? Common wisdom suggests that you should listen, respond and interact with the consumer to provide a personal brand experience and to cultivate brand loyalists. Surely, ignoring the consumer isn’t the way to go about building brand loyalty—is it?

Glad you asked.

Tell me: who is the consumer? Is it me, you or the guy in the cube next to you? Go ahead; I’ll wait while you ponder the answer to that question. The reason you are struggling for a response is because “the consumer” doesn’t exist. The consumer is a statistical body that points out buying trends, tendencies and behaviors among a group of people. The consumer is an entity that is extremely important to the advertising industry because it highlights how to reach the most people possible with a single message. Consumers are what motivate companies like Budweiser to buy ad spots on channels like ESPN during football games. Because the consumer is a statistical entity, it is utterly useless when it comes to social media.

My advice to pharmaceutical companies seeking to engage in social media: forget about the consumer; focus on the customer (in this case, the patient). Social media at its core is relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is predicated on forming 1:1 relationships with customers and engaging in meaningful conversations. The 1:1 aspect of social media makes dealing with the statistical body that is the consumer nearly impossible.

Marketing programs that are focused on the consumer are inherently set up to hit as many eyeballs as possible. It falls squarely into the realm of traditional marketing techniques. A social media engagement that focuses on the supposed needs of the consumer is doomed to fail because it sets the expectation that a blanket message is appropriate. That won’t fly in any social media circle and it certainly won’t fly when you are dealing with people’s health. Focusing on the consumer is the type of thinking that breeds lazy approaches to PR and social media (think spamming reporters, leaving the same comment in 55 different locations, mass blasting a group of bloggers with the same pitch).

In the case of healthcare, patients are on social networks for a unique experience. It appeals to such a large number of people because each individual gets a different experience. Shaping your engagement based on “the consumer” stomps out that aspect. Pharmaceutical companies need to focus on the customer/patient. This brings social media down to the individual level and provides a greater understanding of what is unique about each individual.

Health is highly personal, social media should be too.

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Tags: Pharmaceutical marketing Return on Health Social media for pharma Uncategorized

Do Patients Want Pharma in Social Media?

December 3rd, 2009

There is a common belief that even if the pharma industry decided to implement social media programs in droves that patients would automatically rebuff their efforts. There is considerable logic to this line of thinking.

For starters, individuals generally don’t join a social network to engage with brands. They participate in social networks to connect with friends, meet new people or expand their knowledge base. You would have to search high and low to find a person that joined a social network with the intent of interacting with a brand. Because of this dynamic, people are predisposed to place more scrutiny on a corporate entity participating in a social media community than an individual. This holds true for any company, but when you consider a pharmaceutical company the effect becomes magnified.

Pharmaceutical companies are in a highly regulated industry where every move they make is placed under the microscope. More so than other industries, customers (in this case patients) pick apart every message and every nuance that comes from a pharmaceutical company. There is little room for slip ups, which makes social media an uncomfortable place for many pharma companies. Finally, the pharma industry has been steadily losing the trust of the general public. People have grown wary of the bombardment of ads and the seemingly veiled communications efforts. When a pharma company decides to become an active participant in social media you can bet a horde of people are watching their every move just hoping for a misstep.

This is the lens that shapes the opinion that pharma is not welcome in social media circles. But the more I talk with people in the industry and with patients, the more it becomes apparent that simply is not the case. Sure, patients are wary of the participation of healthcare companies for all of the aforementioned reasons. But even more so, they are wary because it is their health that we are talking about. This isn’t a decision on which laptop to buy or which new cell phone has the best apps. This is a decision that literally impacts the way you live your life. Patients have every right to be wary of pharmaceutical companies.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t want them to be a part of their communities. Generally speaking, what someone suffering from an illness wants is information. It provides comfort, peace of mind and some semblance of control. Personally, I can tell you that when my Mom was diagnosed with Melanoma I voraciously read everything I could find about living with the disease, the survival rate and courses of treatment. I would have welcomed input from a pharmaceutical company that was pioneering treatment to boil that information down to make it more digestible.

Patients want information. Pharma holds the information. Pharma has a unique ability, in fact a responsibility, to educate patients as much as possible. Why should a little extra scrutiny stand in the way? As a company, if you are there for the right reasons and keep the patient at the center of your decision-making process, you will welcome the added attention.

UPDATE: The good folks over the Path of the Blue Eye Project alerted me to some interesting statistics that highlight the importance of information to e-patients. Keep an eye out for the full report next week.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Return on Health Social media for pharma Uncategorized

Pharmaceutical Social Media: Focus on the Patient and Return on Health

November 13th, 2009

You may have heard; the FDA is holding a public hearing on social media and how it impacts pharmaceutical companies. There have been a number of excellent presentations so far that have moved this conversation forward and closer to a solution.

But one thing has been noticeably absent: the patient.

The entire conversation around social media in pharma has centered on how it can help the marketer. It’s been positioned as yet another tool in a marketer’s bag of tricks. The overwhelming concern before engaging in social media tends to be around how to drive product and brand awareness; and ultimately, revenue. I don’t absolve myself from this dynamic. I certainly have spent my fair share of time discussing how social media can help improve the marketing of a pharmaceutical company and enhance brand loyalty. Hey, we are marketers; our job is to generate leads.

But there has been something missing from the conversation to date that should be the central part of every social media effort in the pharmaceutical industry. Before embarking on a social media journey, every marketer, and every executive should ask one simple question. I know what you are thinking: every executive wants to know the ROI of social media. That’s not it. Some people have started discussing more progressive measures like Return on Reputation (ROR). While that gets closer to the right question it doesn’t get to the heart of why to engage in social media. The question every marketer should ask is: what’s the Return on Health (ROH). If the answer to the question is zero then stop immediately and walk away. Go no further because your involvement in social media will fail and damage the community in the process. Ultimately, the patient has to be at the center of every social media program. If you can’t identify any Return on Health you shouldn’t move forward.

This doesn’t mean you throw out other measures like ROI. I’m a capitalist and like to make money as much as the next guy. But when we are talking about marketing pharmaceutical products, there has to be a higher purpose. Starting from “How do we make money?” and working to how it will impact the patient is a quick route to failure. I promise, if you flip that model and start with the patient—the money will come.

Does this mean that social media efforts can’t focus on building the corporate brand? Of course not. If the patient is at the center of these efforts then those efforts are more likely to achieve success, which has been clearly defined. Take a hypothetical, but common example of a biotech company that is in the midst of an early-stage clinical trial. It’s no secret that it takes enormous amounts of cash to get a drug from discovery to general availability. It’s reasonable to assume then that a biotech’s goal at this stage is to raise money. Without a heaping pile of liquid assets a biotech is doomed. That’s the harsh reality no matter how good the drug in question might be. But raising money doesn’t seem to line up nicely with the needs of the patient in this case.

It should.

Suppose that biotech has developed a small molecule drug that shows promise in treating late-stage cancers. With the patient at the center, this company might seek to engage in social media efforts geared toward educating patients and caregivers on living with late-stage cancer. It might also seek to energize communities on fund raising for cancer research while clearly outlining the staggering impact cancer has on the world. This same company might even share some of its research in scientific communities to advance other research efforts in similar areas. Imagine that. All of these efforts would have a high Return on Health in the long-term if the drug proves to be effective. In the short term, it would help the company by creating mindshare and goodwill with future patients. A biotech that has established that type of awareness before it ever brings a drug to market is a company that will undoubtedly raise more money in financing rounds and have a much more attractive liquidation event. First the patient, then the money. The point? You can make money and generate a Return on Health (ROH), if and only if, the patient is at the center.

It’s simple really: if the patient is the focus of your social media engagement then your interactions will reflect that. Conversely, if profit motivation is your driving force then you are likely to be tempted into making poor decisions such as paying people to post Wikiepedia entries or covertly pushing products on a health chat page. Using Return on Health as the primary measure of a social media program establishes a decision-making framework that won’t lead you astray.

The goal of social media should always be to add more value than you extract. Does measuring ROI tell you if you have accomplished that goal? If you are truly focused on the patient then you will engage transparently, communicate honestly and seek to educate and not exploit.

What’s the Return on Health (ROH) of your social media efforts?

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Tags: FDA Hearing Return on Health Uncategorized