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Healthcare Branding Week: Complexities of Healthcare Advertising Online

Part 4 of 5

Despite a down economy, online advertising in 2009 saw steady growth according to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers published in April 2010. “Search revenue accounted for 47 percent of 2009 revenues, up from the 45 percent reported in 2008. Display advertising also showed solid growth, accounting for 35 percent of 2009 revenue up from 33 percent in 2008. Digital video, which is a component of display advertising, increased 38 percent from 2008 to 2009.” (PWC 2010) But along with this phenomenal growth come phenomenal complexities.

Following and targeting consumers online is challenging in the healthcare industry. Consumers commonly search for information on heathcare sites such as WebMD. However, they are also increasingly turning to user-generated health content such as blogs, chat groups and physician and hospital rankings. Many user-generated sites contain health information that is incorrect or misleading.

Behavioral targeting becomes useful to track information about an individual’s web-browsing behavior by identifying pages visited and searches made. Select ads can then be specifically targeted to the individual and placed on reputable sites.

Further, retargeting offers a powerful tool to reach a consumer by displaying multiple impressions of the same ad to the same user, based on behavior. For example: a newly diagnosed patient comes home from the doctor and searches for “diabetes treatments.” After browsing through a few sites, the patient moves on to another site such as the New York Times to read the news. At this point, an ad for the diabetes treatment product (from the previous site visited) will appear.

According to a recent study by the Network Advertising Initiative, conversion rates for retargeted ads are 6.8% compared to 2.8% for non-targeted ads (NAI 2010). However, privacy is an issue.
In a post earlier this week, “Consumers Go Online For Healthcare Answers,” we discussed the growing trend of consumers becoming increasingly proactive online, with some not wishing to publicly identify with certain healthcare brands or social networks. Other consumers may be concerned about privacy online, and choose not to participate in the various health communities available.

While some consumer advocacy groups have expressed concern over behaviorally targeted ads, others point out that it is simply a means of displaying relevant content to users. Users are tracked via cookies on their computers, and no names or other personal information is collected. Additionally, most ad platforms don’t allow users to be targeted based on anything they have read relating to mental or sexual health.

So far, the FDA has been silent on the issue of guidelines for online advertising, referring questions to longstanding policies governing traditional forms of advertising and promotion. Pharmaceutical companies, in particular, are struggling with how to incorporate fair balance information into their online endeavors.

“Consumers’ demand is clear. We want the best health information possible to live healthier lives,” said John Bell, a Word of Mouth Marketing Association board member. “Thirty-six percent of people who gathered information about a health condition online subsequently spoke to their doctors as a result, and 21% made a change to their lifestyle because of the information they found. That information comes from professional health sources, healthcare companies and our peers. We need to protect consumers while making it easier for health care companies to use digital and social media to serve their patients and customers better.”

Sources:
PricewaterhouseCoopers. “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report.” Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) April 2010

NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) “Study Finds Behaviorally-Targeted Ads More Than Twice As Valuable, Twice As Effective As Non-Targeted Online Ads.“ 24 March 2010.

Smith, Kristen. “Word of Mouth Marketing Association Urges FDA to Provide Social Media Guidelines for Health Care and Pharma Companies.” Word of Mouth Marketing Association 9 March 2010.

Healthcare Branding Week: Where does Social Media fit in?

Part 3 of 5

Security risks, privacy concerns, possible HIPAA violations… its easy to see why health care organizations might be frightened by social media. Then, there are those who just wonder if it is all a waste of time and resources.

In spite of these concerns, the number of hospitals and healthcare entities with an online social media presence is growing by leaps and bounds. In May 2010, an estimated 730 hospitals had social media accounts—compared to 370 eight months ago. Chris Boyer, Senior Manager of Digital Communications at Inova Health Systems says, “Social media is a way to develop mindshare. People don’t think about hospitals until they need one. Social media efforts get them to start caring and helps to build trust and to develop a personal relationship.” (Seegert 2010)

The rise of so-called “e-Patients” creates many opportunities for engagement. e-Patients are defined as those “who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions” (Sharp 2010). E-Patients believe informed self-care is the starting point for good health, and want to be actively involved with doctors and medical centers in shaping health information and services. Many e-Patients are recording their medical conditions online in an effort to track and self-diagnose themselves, within online medical communities such as patientslikeme.com or curetogether.com.

“Social media is here to stay in health care, but it will evolve quickly.” says John Sharp, manager of Research Informatics in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He believes that patient engagement will continue to characterize this change. Customer service, community outreach, education, public relations, crisis communications, recruitment, brand monitoring and service recovery are just a few of the areas that can be addressed by a social media campaign.

The North Shore LIJ Health System (NSLIJ), one of the country’s largest healthcare providers, has had great success using social media to drive fundraising. Donors can text pledges to the foundation via cell phone, or click through from inspirational YouTube videos. Marisa Fedele, associate director of communications for NSLIJ, says her only regret is not integrating social media into the mix sooner.

The bottom line? There are a lot of patients out there looking for information and an opportunity to connect with their health care organizations. Reaching out to them will not only improve communication, it will help build trust and brand recognition. Just make sure you have a social media plan in place to guide the content and quality of information published under your brand’s name, and integrate the effort with other more traditional media for consistent communication.

Sources:
Sharp, John. “Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends.” iHealthBeat. 6 May 2010.

Seegert, Liz. “Hospitals gain community mindshare through social media.” ThinkSocial 11 May 2010.

Healthcare Branding Week: Consumers Go Online For Healthcare Answers

Part 2 of 5

Consumers of all ages are becoming increasingly proactive online when it comes to getting answers about their health. This includes choosing doctors, treatments and healthcare facilities. A study by the Pew Internet Project found that 75-80% of internet users have looked online for health information, and that the internet is ranked second only to physicians when it comes to gathering trustworthy information about health-related topics (Fox 2008).

An even more recent study shows that 40% of hospital or urgent-care center patients report that social media influenced their healthcare choices, with the percentage jumping to over 50% in the 25-34 age bracket (Marketing Charts 2009).

A Nielsen study found that 39% of patients already use an online support group to discuss medications or treatments, and that “the anonymity of the internet affords a comfort level that encourages individuals to share details about their symptoms, treatment history, experiences with their doctors, the efficacy and side effects of medication, the impact of their condition on their own lives and more.” (Davies 2008)

However, depending on the nature and seriousness of various conditions, consumers may not wish to publicly identify with the brand on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. To counteract stigma, some healthcare brands, such as GlaxoSmithKline’s weight loss product, Alli, have overcome stigma by creating their own community where consumers congregate, share personal stories and milestones.

Hospitals can facilitate consumer engagement by offering services and interactivity through their Web sites. A good example is Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Fall, WI. Their home page offerings include an “Ask Our Nurse” service, a baby gallery, a way to send patients e-cards, and a direct link to CarePages.

Some hospitals now post emergency room wait times online as a way to manage patients’ expectations for non life-threatening situations. Such is the case at Liking Memorial Hospital in Newark as reported in April, 2010. According to the chief executive officer of the hospital this effort not only helps the hospital be more transparent, “making this information available was another step in making the community see how we’re doing and how we’re taking care of them as a hospital system.” (Hoholik 2010)

Overall, creating a strong healthcare brand presence online can be challenging. A successful online initiative should integrate carefully with the overall brand strategy and offer new ways of listening, interacting and engaging with consumers. Gaining attention in the crowded electronic field takes special creativity in order to stand out.

Sources:
Fox, Susannah. “The Engaged E-patient Population.” PewInternet.org 26 Aug. 2008.

MarketingCharts.com Berthiaume , Dan. 30 Sept. 2009.

Davies, Melissa. “Listening to Consumers in a Highly Regulated Environment: How Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Can Leverage Consumer-Generated Media.” Nielsen Online August 2008.

Hoholik, Suzanne. “Hosptial in Newark posts ER wait time on Web site.” The Columbus Dispatch 3 April 2010.

Extend the Power of Your Brand

As new technologies offer exciting ways to influence audiences, it is increasingly important to communicate a consistent brand value across multiple-media platforms.

PeakBiety has been utilizing the power of perception® to maximize brand values for more than 20 years. We work hard to be a business-building partner by bringing ideas to the table that work across whatever channels are right for the brand. In this spirit, we’d like to highlight some of our newer services that can powerfully extend your brand communications.

Eblast Campaigns
Email campaigns are a cost-effective way to keep in touch with customers and prospects. We handle everything from project planning to creative concepts, to design, to copywriting. We’ll even execute delivery working with email marketing software, manage databases, schedule programs and track results.

Case Study: Numara
After a complete branding of the Numara Software company, we were asked to help promote their newest version of Track-It,® a help desk and asset management solution. What made Track-It® different? It provided optimal customization for multi-users’ functions within an organization. So, we developed an Eblast campaign highlighting the idea of a personalized solution by contrasting two completely different users with different needs. Our client’s product is the most widely installed help desk and asset management solution in the world.

Interactive Media & Flash
Flash and interactive presentations can help bring your product or service to life with audience involvement as well as animation, motion and sound. We strategize, concept, storyboard and script presentations. We also execute and produce the media using a host of software applications such as Flash, After Effects and Camtasia—all with extendibility in mind to get the most out of your budget.

Case Study: Persystent

Persystent Software, a company making business-level PC recovery software, sought to significantly improve awareness of its unique products. They wanted to communicate how they help PC users remain productive and work ready at all times—whether on or off a network. After alternative creative concepts were developed and tested, a “graphic novel” execution was selected. Among other pieces of a larger campaign, this animated flash banner was developed for Persystent’s homepage to quickly communicate the product benefits in a dramatic and engaging way, and direct viewers to download a demo. Inquiries elevated to record levels.

Online Media Planning & Buying
With limited ad budgets, relevant and targeted advertising is essential. We’ve taken our 20 years of media-buying savvy and adapted to the online world, developing efficient and effective plans utilizing new technologies. Our experience with geotargeting and retargeting has provided proven results.

Case Study: Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program™

The Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program™ educates the public about best practices to conserve and protect water resources. After a season of unprecedented freezes, they wanted to reach homeowners in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties with information about cold-tolerant plants and methods of replanting which reduce the need for water, fertilizer and pesticides. We geographically and behaviorally targeted Web banners to reach homeowners in a three-county area, interested in gardening and landscaping. Over a two-month period, the landing page logged almost 3,000 unique hits, with approximately 24% of them resulting from click-throughs on the banner ads.

Search Engine Marketing
Also known as SEM, this form of internet marketing promotes Web sites by increasing visibility within search engine results. The many forms of SEM include paid placement, contextual advertising, paid inclusion and search engine optimization (SEO).

Case Study: TECO

Tampa Electric works hard to balance growing demands for electricity with environmental responsibility. For their new Energy PlannerSM program, we developed a campaign encouraging customers to save energy, lower the cost of electric bills and help the environment. Web banners ran on multiple local sites including TBO.com and TampaBay.com. Geographic targeting was used to reach only those consumers in the Tampa Electric service area. Recently, a search engine marketing component was added to reach consumers expressing an interest in greening their homes or lowering their electric bills. From April through May, 2010, Tampa Electric benefited from an amazing 1.3% clickthrough rate which is well above the accepted national average of 0.02-0.04%.

Social Media Development
A social media campaign, like any medium, needs a clearly defined strategy in sync with the overall brand strategy. What you are trying to accomplish—sales, awareness, discussion or even goodwill—will determine which social networks make sense and how to utilize them. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and blogs can build consumer dialogue and promote a brand or product message.

Case Study: Cancer Research Alliance

Home to nine Nobel Prize winners, Cancer Research Alliance (CRA) member centers have a long history of groundbreaking achievements in cancer research. PeakBiety developed a cause marketing campaign around the theme, “The infinite power of one.” An integrated campaign involving email marketing, Web banner ads, radio spots and a Web-aired video explained that if everyone gave just one dollar and pasted the message on to their friends, cancer research would be pushed ahead. In addition to giving a dollar, donors were invited to add their photos to a cure mosaic on the site to “change the face of cancer”. Within weeks, the site went viral as word spread through social networks about being part of such a worthy cause.

Web Design
Our strategic process of developing Web sites starts with identifying goals, audiences, and brand considerations. Once objectives are defined, we develop architecture, write copy, design graphics, create layouts and orchestrate programming. Our Web sites come with built-in search engine optimization features.

Case Study: Tampa Bay Water

Tampa Bay Water develops and delivers high-quality drinking water for the region. Having produced several effective annual reports for them, they knew we had a good understanding of their business. They needed a Web site that would allow them to communicate to the public their mission, as well as new projects and developments. The site, TampaBayWater.org, is now ranked in the top 24% of all Web sites for traffic by Alexa (a service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet), and has an excellent score of 91 from grader.com.

Web Banners & Videos
Banner ads are the most common form of Web advertising and can be very effective when targeted appropriately. Video content enhances Web banners with more graphic content and special effects. And once produced, video content can be cost-effectively repurposed for a multitude of uses.

Case Study: Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program™

To educate homeowners on how to manage landscape recovery efforts after extreme cold weather, the Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program™ needed a turn-key communication program. In response, we developed an integrated marketing campaign including direct mail, newspaper, Web banners and a landing page, RightPlant.org. The theme, “Rethink before you replant” carried throughout. Utilizing video in the banners helped capture viewer attention and drive traffic to the landing page for more information. Over a two-month period, the landing page logged almost 3,000 unique hits, with approximately 24% of them resulting from click-throughs on the banner ads.

Getting Started in Social Media

Last month, over 250 marketers and small business owners gathered at the Social Fresh conference in Tampa to hear from 32 nationally recognized social media experts. Here’s some of the most common questions we heard.

What should my brand talk about?
Help your target audience find relevant information—not only about your brand, but about their passions. For Fiskars scissors, that passion is scrapbooking.

Maggie Fox from the Social Media Group in Ontario pointed out that “You can’t just aggregate, you must also curate. Help people find valuable information about your brand. Sites that [put lots of social media feeds about the brand on their homepage], but don’t filter them are useless… I have Google for that.”

How do you know when you’ve achieved social media success?
Its not just about having more followers than your competitors. A social media campaign, like any medium, needs a clearly defined strategy that fits in the overall brand strategy. What you are trying to accomplish with a campaign—sales, awareness, discussion or even just goodwill—should define the end goals of any social media effort. It’s more important to find and develop relationships with 5 people who are really passionate about your brand and what it has to offer than to have 5,000 fans who could really care less.

Whats the next big thing in social media?
Chris Barger, the Social Media Director for GM who is responsible for their early and active involvement in the social media realm had two predictions:

1. Combining SM with location awareness
This is mostly applicable to restaurants and other retail locations. Users “check in” on their mobile phones when they are at a location. The person who checks in to that location the most is named the “mayor”. Some stores are offering discounts, etc to the “mayor” of their stores. You can also leave reviews of the store, and discover where your friends are hanging out. The most popular sites for this are currently FourSquare and Gowalla.

2. Brand integration with SM gaming
Currently, lots of time is being spent on games like FarmVille and MafiaWars that are integrated into social media platforms like Facebook. Why not integrate your brand into these games or develop games around your brand that allow users to interact with their existing social media network?

Social Media isn’t everything.
One thing to remember—90% of word of mouth still happens offline. Use social media to help start conversations and engage with consumers—but don’t let it replace good old fashioned face-to-face interaction and other offline approaches.

Online Brand Identity in SEO Strategy

by Amy Phillips

Good brand management is supported by a strong and strategic brand identity. For a brand to stand out in its field, a brand’s online identity is becoming increasingly important. One of the most essential support systems for strong online brand identity is good search engine optimization (SEO).

To examine a brand online, the obvious first place to start is the brand’s Web site. An optimized site, with page titles, clean URLs, good content, headers, descriptions, alt tags and navigation will help with SEO. A very comprehensive checklist can be found here. But is that enough?

For high search engine ranking, the answer is no.

Paid advertising with media such as Pay-Per-Click through services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, is helpful but can be expensive. Organic SEO costs nothing but the time to build and maintain it. Some knowledge of the ever-changing search engine criteria for ranking algorithms helps.

But are an optimized site and paid advertising enough?

Many organic (as opposed to paid) SEO strategies today call for only 25% of effort given to “on-page” (the website) as opposed to 75% for “off-page” efforts (in-bound links and social media).

Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is composed of three things:

• Concept (art, information, or meme).

• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

• Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

If social media is to be used to help SEO, all “concepts” must be strategic and brand-reinforcing. Anything else could actually be damaging. So, a brand’s social media presence with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others, needs to be carefully crafted, controlled and monitored. Never underestimate the power of perception.®

The social interface component of social media presents the most challenges. What does it entail? Meeting people and talking. Asking questions and answering them. Engaging to add value. So how does a “brand” do this successfully?

The first place to start is to create a voice. A company needs to decide whether to set up separate Twitter accounts or one company account. How do you determine the right voice? For the pros and cons of all to consider, check out “The Right Voice for Your Brand is…”

Once your company’s voice is established, make sure that it is consistent from brand image to brand experience. Make sure that expectations are aligned. Create a strategy. Have a plan. Make goals and create timelines. Involve your advertising agency. Outside consultants can give valuable advice from a “fresh” perspective. Consider an integrated advertising campaign. You can’t pay for the publicity of something that goes viral. The more publicity your brand receives, the higher its search engine ranking is, organically.