News roundup

Watch our discussion about the relevant stories of the week. From left to right in the video:

Anuk Karunaratne: Senior Analyst
Greg Rutherford: SVP, Marketing
Brad Einarsen: Director of Digital Insight

Physicians using social media for professional networking: Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!?!

This story was a complete surprise, but it looks real. A study of 2,790 HCPs by AMN Healthcare (a healthcare recruitment agency) shows that they are using social media in greater numbers for professional networking. The real surprise was the use of YouTube:

• 41% use Facebook
• 29% use YouTube
• 23% use LinkedIn

The use of “consumer” social tools for professional networking is a phenomenon not limited to HCPs, but the placement of YouTube above LinkedIn was a shocker. The AMA article proposes a few theories about why doctors may use these channels.

Ralph Henderson, president of health care staffing for AMN Healthcare, said he was surprised to see YouTube ranked so high for networking. But he said YouTube has a couple of strengths that can help make it worthwhile for such a task. YouTube is easily searchable, becoming one of the most-used search engines, second only to the one operated by its parent company, Google. Also, videos let people feel more of a connection to someone else, he said.

Source: AMA News

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LinkedIn introduces Targeted Status Updates

You can now target your company posts on LinkedIn to a more specific audience. The expectation is that this more selected audience will give better results than a broadcast message. The tool allows the page administrator to target by:

• Company size
• Industry
• Function
• Seniority
• Geography

Targeting your messages may actually reduce the volume of interactions, but should increase the quality of those interactions. Also, it’s not stated in the LinkedIn information, but the hope is that targeted posts will get a higher ranking than untargeted ones.
Source: BrandChannel

Microsoft enters tablet market with Surface

The tablet market is getting a new competitor from Microsoft. They aren’t known for making hardware, mice, keyboards, and x-box notwithstanding, but presumably they became weary of waiting for the PC manufacturers to release anything good. The two dominant players currently are the Apple iPad and the Amazon Kindle Fire (running Google Android). With a launch not scheduled until the fall, there is still plenty of time for the fast-moving tablet market to shift before launch.

From a healthcare marketing perspective this does not seem to be a threat to the iPad’s dominance with physicians and pharmaceutical reps.
Source: C|Net

Duane Reade using Facebook to generate charity buzz

The drugstore chain, Duane Reade, is promoting itself on Facebook by giving $5 (up to $600,000) to six different charities. Users who like the brand can vote to determine which charity should get the most money. This is another example of cause-based marketing. See our latest blog post on this trend.
Source: Facebook

Digital getting larger slice of US pharma marketing

Digital marketing is growing in pharmaceuticals for multiple reasons:
Costs: digital marketing typically has lower cost and better measurability than old media.
Drugs: many of the blockbuster drugs are losing patent protection and the newer drugs are for rarer conditions. Digital marketing is well suited to find and speak to these smaller audiences.

Physicians: the HCPs are moving online and reducing their acceptance of in-person rep visits.
Source: eMarketer

Get Old – Pfizer’s community site for thoughts on aging

Pfizer has a new unbranded, multi-condition website to help people talk about the sensitive topic of getting old. The site is titled, appropriately enough, “Get Old”. Users can leave comments but as of this writing the Facebook sign in was not working. Comments do not show up immediately so are probably being moderated for unacceptable content before being posted.

Compare the site “Get Old” with another Pfizer initiative, “More than Medication“.
Source: PharmaLive

Email benchmarks

The folks over at Epsilon issue quarterly updates on the state of email marketing and they break their numbers out by industry. For pharmaceutical marketing the numbers in Q1 2012 were:

• 89.9% delivered (lowest of all industries, possibly due to drug names and spam filters)
• 29.0% open rate (middle of the pack)
• 4.7% click rate (middle of the pack)
• 16.3% click to open rate (middle of the pack)

For emails that are triggered by the user, the rates always look better because the user has requested the email:

• 92.4% delivered
• 58.3% open rate (+101.1%)
• 13.5% click rate (+186.6%)

Remember, before comparing your numbers to these industry averages you need to understand the specifics of your audience and your message. The results of any given campaign are affected by many variables.
Source: Epsilon & Email Experience Council (registration required to get PDF)

Mobile is still top of mind for global marketers – IBM study

A study of 354 global marketers reveal trends for 2012. Note these are all industries, not just healthcare.

More than a third (34%) of companies say they plan to launch mobile ad campaigns within the next 12 months, according to IBM “State of Marketing 2012″ report released Thursday. That marks the highest planned adoption rate for a new marketing tactic in the five-year history of the annual survey of 350 marketing professionals globally.

• 41% say the #1 challenge is the growth of channel and device choices by consumers
• 21% currently run mobile campaigns
• 46% have their website mobile-enabled, +30% plan to in 2012
• 45% have created mobile applications (really? this seems high), +31% plan to in 2012
• 33% have created mobile versions of email, +33% plan to in 2012

In related news, 54% of tablet users prefer free, ad-supported apps to paid ones. Source: AdAge Media News.
Source: Online Media Daily

Sharecare founders buy clinical decision support company

The assumption is that the Sharecare founders will use PKC, a clinical decision support company, to fuel tools on the social platform.

The sale adds PKC’s clinical knowledge management technology to Sharecare’s interactive health and wellness platform for clinicians and consumers alike. Sharecare, which has partnerships with the likes of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, Remark Media, Sony Pictures Television, and Discovery Communications, will use the PKC technology to, among other things, help physicians meet some of the requirements for “meaningful use” of electronic health records by producing care plans and offering relevant patient educational material, PKC CEO Howard Pierce said in an interview.

Source: Information Week Healthcare

Facebook sponsored stories proving their worth

Facebook Sponsored Stories and Post Ads perform significantly better than Social or Web Ads when measured by click-through rate (CTR), according to June 2012 research from Kenshoo Social and Resolution Media. With high CTRs contributing to lower cost-per-clicks (CPCs), Post Ads have the lowest CPC rates, though Sponsored Stories easily lead in a new metric measuring targeted reach.

Source: Marketing Charts

FDA Roundup

• An untitled letter was issued against Watson Pharmaceuticals for a journal ad about Nulecit™ that made unsubstantiated claims about drug effects and hospital cost savings.
• An untitled letter was issued against Quintiles Inc., a promotional agency working on behalf of U.S. Agent for Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB. This is an unusual case where the agent for the manufacturer has received the warning letter rather than the manufacturer itself. The website has been taken down, but the ISI shown in the example provided by the FDA is completely inadequate. It is surprising that a company that specializes in pharmaceutical marketing could make this kind of error.
• A warning letter was sent to Advocate Health Care for not obtaining proper consent from emergency room patients before enrolling them in a clinical study. See also a story in PharmaLive on the letter. “Dr. Michael Carome, a former associate director for regulatory affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Human Research Protections, said the decision to go ahead with the study without obtaining patient consent was mind-boggling.”
• A new study is announced to determine whether mixing condition information with branded drug information is confusing for consumers. For a discussion of the announcement, see Pharmalot.