Use data to paint the complete picture

Jun/09/2008 03:18 Filed in: DTC Environment
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There is a lot of great information on the Web concerning social media demographics but don’t take the data for face value unless you can look social media through your audiences eyes. The most recent information comes by way of eMarketer which posted demographics of baby boomers who use social media. A DTC marketer may look at this data and validation of not addressing this channel but that would be a huge mistake.


eMarketer does release some great information and has some great reports for sale but like I have said many times before be careful that you don’t use one source to make key decisions to reach your audience. According to the pie chart below 53% of baby boomers do not use social media. While this maybe true for general social media like Twitter of Facebook it does not mean that they are not blogging.

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If we look at more data, this time from Forrester, you can indeed see that boomers who have been diagnosed with a condition are indeed using social media. This falls right in-line with their beliefs of “not trusting the establishment” and wanting to be more empowered in their health choices. When boomers are diagnosed or want to learn more about various health problems they trust and turn to each other a lot more. They will go to sites like Web MD, Mayo Clinic and dot org sites but they will also listen to what others have to say about your product, physicians and hospitals and may even give that more weight.


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We also have to be careful when we talk about social networking via social media. Social networking can mean sites like Twitter, Facebook and You Tube while social media sites can also include BLOGS and VLOGS. There is a direct correlation between age and social networking in that the younger the audience the more likely they are to engage in social networking. Any DTC marketer who has gone to a message board on a disease can easily see that a majority of these people are in fact boomers.


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Use data from eMarketer, Forrester & Manhattan Research as pieces of the puzzle. Only when you use them all together can they paint a complete picture as to what is happening and why, especially on the Web.

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