Medical Monday: When Marketing Health Online, Remember the Old Adage, “Location, Location, Location”

With pharma carving out a greater presence online, marketers are seeing the importance of having a social presence to reach their audiences. And with over a third of adults reporting using social media to find health information¹ it’s no wonder why.

As Marshall McLuhan said 46 years ago, “the medium is the message.”  While McLuhan was discussin television and radio, the same holds true with marketing on social media.  Not all social media channels are the same, and with marketers eager to get online, it’s important to consider the right platforms for a product and/or campaign.

For example, while Facebook may have reached over 500 million users, that doesn’t mean a Facebook fan page is the best place for every pharmaceutical product. The key is to finding where thetarget audience is, what channels they use, and where conversations about the category are taking place. People aren’t likely to “fan” a product or condition on Facebook - associating themselves to their entire online network which could include friends, family and coworkers - that has a high “ick-factor” or could be considered embarrassing.

As well, just because a person may not want to associate themselves with a product or disease publically doesn’t mean they aren’t apt to participate in online discussions about it online. The lap-band gastric weight loss surgery is a great example.

A few, scattered “lap-band” Facebook pages exist, with a couple hundred members - not a high number by current standards. However, a deeper dive reveals a very active community regularly using forums and chat rooms to communicate to one another. For anonymity, the groups are often password protected and/or allow their participants to use made-up usernames. Often as users get more comfortable, and develop sub-communities of their own, we see these usernames give way to real names, and even scheduling of in person meet-ups of the community’s members.

The key to making the decision of where and how to market a product online is listening. By researching and evaluating where a target audience is active online, a marketer can develop a targeted campaign that is more likely to succeed and deliver the return on investment the company is looking for in executing such an initiative or campaign.

Sources:

1. iHealthReports. The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media. April 2008

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