Social Media IS important to pharmaceutical marketers

Forrester’s Segmentation of Web Users

People online are not going to arbitrarily go to social media sites and read and write posts. It has to be relevant to their needs or interests. When it comes to health concerns research clearly shows that people go to social media sites when they have health concerns or are researching a health condition.

Pharma marketers would then say “great I’ll post some ads for my product on the disease state site” but that is not what social media is about or how to leverage CGM. Social media is about asking questions of people who may have been there before and getting answers to questions that are not covered in promotional pharma product sites. Does everyone post a question or experience? No, of course not and according to Forrester only 32% of people publish Web pages or comment on blogs. The challenge however is to reach these 32% of people who can be considered key influencers and engage them in a dialogue (that gasp you just heard were the legal people at pharma companies).

In order to integrate social media into pharmaceutical marketing plans marketers have to take off their DTC hats for two reasons. First, think like a consumer who is researching a health condition. If you could talk to that person for 30 seconds what would you want them to know about your product (without being too promotional) and the disease state. Second, stop thinking about DTC ads and start thinking about a two way conversation with your audience. This requires marketers to stop thinking of the market segments as big entities and more in fragmented small segments that are smarter than your ads, largely because of the Web.

What do we know?

Marketing is an art that many try and turn into a science. Well in science, as a starting point, a lot of people ask “what do we know?”. Well we know that more women surf the Web in search of health information than men. Women also will take preventative measures to stay healthy while men usually go to the doctor when something is wrong.

According to PEW Internet research 80% of patients changed their behavior and reported improved sense of well-being or a better understanding of their conditions. Why in the world wouldn’t pharma marketers want to engage these people?

Percentage of people who use social media

Now I could give you a lot of other statistics and in fact there are some here on this website if you click here but the reality of the situation is that social media is becoming an important channel and if you continue to ignore it at a time of shrinking budgets than you will be wasting precious marketing dollars that could be better spent.

So John, my advice to you is make the social media area of your site more relevant to provide more value and you will see posts going up.