“Signal to Noise” refers to the ratio between the desired signal – music for example – to noise like static and hiss. On your iPod, you want more signal and less noise.
And according Brian Roy, president and founder of Cosinity a firm creating communications applications Social Media is suffering from a lot of noise.
He suggests that some of this noise is attributable to the two groups who benefit: Marketers and the Monitors.
- Marketers – looking for a more cost-effective way to achieve “reach”, the estimated number of the potential customers it is possible to reach through a an advertising medium or a promotional campaign
- Monitors – listening for statements of interest in a brand and which has spawned an industry of social media metrics and buzz monitoring
Roy believes that social media is not really so much “new” as much as an extension of the fundamental human desire to communicate with one other. As such, it is best seen as a technological extension and enablement of that desire. Nothing more. And at some point, the hype will by necessity be replaced by a focus on financial fundamentals.
7 Predictions for the Future of Social Media Marketing
In a well reasoned argument, Roy offers up seven predictions:
- Social Media will NOT change corporate culture, but corporate culture will change the heck out of Social Media.
- When Social Media fails to deliver on the hype, experts will blame companies for “doing it wrong”.
- Deriving real benefit from Social Media will be hard – there is no “purple pill”. (funny metaphor considering he doesn’t work in pharma)
- Companies will focus on the “low hanging fruit” – They will do what has immediate, tangible benefit.
- Social Media will become a Customer Service/Support mechanism – and you won’t like it one bit.
- Social Media usage will become ubiquitous - [remember] when almost no one used email…
- Every company will make use of Social Media – Not as a change agent, but as a mechanism to do what they already need to do better and cheaper.
What Would J.P. Do?
All of this reminds me of the quote attributed to J.P. Morgan:
“when even the shoeshine boys are offering stock tips, it’s time to get out.”
I don’t think it’s time to get out. But I do think it’s time to hold projects accountable for revenue generation. Pharmaceutical, biotech and device marketers charged with online communications might consider separating the hype from noise by asking themselves these questions:
- Do customers really want to see us on Facebook? It depends upon the therapeutic category.
- Is twittering going to drive sales? Probably not. Will monitoring what others are saying about your brand help protect you from Motrin-Mom-Madness? Yes.
- Can you start small and grow the project based upon favorable results? Absolutely.
Health care reform is imminent. Follow the 80/20 rule and focus on the fundamentals.
Patients and physicians are increasingly relying upon digital word of mouth – Twitter, YouTube, Facebook – for their peer-to-peer information. Separating buzzwords from actionable data is a daunting task. Eularis, a pharmaceutical analytics consultancy focusing on “data-driven decisions” has announced a new report on eMarketing in the age of social media.
Key content includes:
- Pharma Internet Marketing Today, Past and Present
- Creating an Effective On-line Strategy
- Building a Trusted On-line Pharmaceutical Brand
- Where it All Began: Web sites
- Where it Moved: eDetailing and eLearning
- Where We Are Now: Social Media and New Technologies
- Using Social Media As An On-Line Community for Marketing
- Maximising the Use of Blogs
- Maximising the Use of Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn
- Maximising the Use of Twitter
- Maximising the Use of YouTube
- Maximising the Use of Other New Media Tools
- Maximising the Use of Google
- Maximising the Use of Multi-Channel and Closed-Loop Marketing
- Measurement of On-line Activities
- Tying it All Together: Social Media and Business
- Getting Started with Social Media and Web 2.0
The report can be purchased for £997 from Network Pharma.
It’s not easy for a health care marketer making the leap from broadcast to broadband. As reported by Jacob Goldstein in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, Johnson & Johnson received an FDA warning letter which prompted the removal of an online video for Ultram ER from the PainAwareness.org site.
What strikes me as interesting is that PainAwareness is a site intended for health care practitioners and goes so far as to offer CME. Would this have been different had the site required registration? Hard to say as the guidelines are so antiquated (who uses diskettes for distribution anymore?)
Until FDA issues usable, contemporary guidelines for online media, marketers would be well advised to leverage technology like YouTube’s Video Annotations in their online media. This technology enables pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device marketers to embed hyperlinks to relevant information at key points in the video. For example:
- Add background information about the video
- Link to related YouTube videos or channels
- Link (and track) search results from within a video
The cautious among us – which includes me – would use it to keep the full PI literally “just one click away.” Better safe than sorry. Or on the receiving end of a DDMAC letter.
Were you impressed by Pfizer’s announcement last week that the company would give away 70 of its most widely prescribed drugs to those who lost jobs? Sure, the program — called MAINTAIN, or Medicines Assistance for Those who Are in Need — has caveats. To receive the drugs, individuals must show:
- That they have been unemployed since Jan. 1
- That they no longer have prescription drug insurance
- Must prove that they cannot pay for their medications, and
- That they were taking a medication listed under the program for at least three months prior to losing their jobs
You should be impressed. As Dorothy Wetzel, former VP-consumer marketing at Pfizer and now a co-founding partner of health-care ad agency, Extrovertic said in Advertising Age (registration required):
It’s probably worth more than $100 million in free advertising… Think of the goodwill, think of the brand advocates they’re creating by providing these medicines. You have somebody who’s going to say ‘I lost my job but I can still get my Lipitor for free? I’m going to tell everybody.’
It’s brilliant public relations and the beginning of a pro-Pfizer grassroots initiative in my opinion. As reported in Medical Marketing & Media, Pfizer has just hired onetime Gore advisor Gregory Simon to head its global policy efforts, the man Nature Magazine named “Ten People To Watch” citing him as one of “a handful of influential people who quietly keep the wheels of biomedical science turning.”
Given that the old scare tactics like “Harry and Louise” [link to original commercial] from the 1984 attempt at health care reform won’t work today, getting out in front of public opinion just makes sense. And demonstrates that you don’t have to have “Twitter” in the headline to make big news.
The Search Engine Strategies for Pharmaceutical Marketing Conference held a great kick-off workshop led by Rebecca Murtagh of Karner Blue Marketing. In the audience were senior pharmaceutical marketers with active projects, so their questions tended to be insightful and interesting. Here are the top 3 discussions from that day’s workshop.
Give Your Site The Common Sense Test
Search activity is driven by:
- Problem – keywords around user’s understanding of problem
- Solution – keywords around user’s perception of possible solutions. Further along the buying track.
- Value Proposition – ready to buy. User is looking for best value.
You can perform a quick reality check on your own site by reading a few random pages. What is the general tone? If it matches problem–& solution–& value proposition then you are doing a great job.
Understanding Search Can Protect You When Provoked
What should you do when you see too many search results about your company or brand that are negative of unfair? You cannot change the way search engines rank results. But you can create new content following best practices that overshadows and diminishes the impact of the negative publicity. You rise in the ranks and they fall.
What You Should Know About Your Search Agency
Several members of the audience pointed out that search engine optimization (SEO) required different skills than Pay Per Click (PPC).
- SEO focuses on organic improvements which are fundamental to long term success but which takes 6 months or longer to produce significant results.
- PPC on the other hand is budget driven. The greater the budget the more extensive your buy can be.
- SEO agencies need to be incentivized differently than PPC agencies.