Part two of two…read part one first or this isn’t going to make much sense.

As a quick recap, a couple weeks ago, I gave you all a survey to find out what you would do if there were no rules in pharma digital marketing (read original post and see the survey here). Not just social media, anything digital. Here were the choices: Community on brand website, addition of user generated content, ratings and reviews, unbranded community, “enhanced” product claims, branded Twitter page, expanded search optimization, expanded disease state information, branded Facebook page, or brand blog. I also gave you a blank field if you wanted to put in your own idea.

With about 50 responses or so, here are the results (percentages represent the number of mentions opposite total mentions, each respondent could select up to three items):

Yesterday, I covered the biggest vote getters: community on brand website, addition of user generated content, ratings and reviews, unbranded community, and brand blog. Today, I’ll tackle the rest: “enhanced” product claims, branded Twitter page, expanded search optimization, expanded disease state information, and branded Facebook page.

First, “enhanced” product claims. While I didn’t explain exactly what I meant by this, I think everyone got the point. I was thinking, since there were no rules and no one to formally punish you for breaking them, you could simply say your product worked a little better than it actually does or maybe you could use that clinical trial of five people that showed a 100% response rate with your drug. You know, “enhance.” Of course, in a world where there are rules, the penalties for getting caught doing this are pretty stiff, as Pfizer found out this week with their $2.3 billion fine. No need to worry though, there’s no one to fine you in our imaginary world. Here’s the problem though. Over time, physicians and patients figure out the truth. They figure it out on their own and your competitors give them a helping hand (and rightfully so). Just like exaggerated claims in any market, eventually they are rejected and the companies that foisted them upon the public pay for it for a long time; not just in fines, but in credibility and trust. Without these two in healthcare, you’re pretty much done. No, no one is going to outright stop using Pfizer’s products tomorrow, but are they going to think twice? Are they going to lean in another direction? Probably. So, not to make this a lecture, but I think everyone here knows that “enhancing” your product claims isn’t a winning strategy. So, I’m pleased to say that this selection finished dead last in the survey with only a couple votes. You know who you are.

A branded Facebook page came in with 9% of the total votes, just behind brand blog. Here’s the thing, there already are branded pharma Facebook pages. So, what’s stopping you? There are brand pages for at least four brands including Nasonex (and their Don’t Blow It application), Reclast’s “On the Go Women” from Novartis, Marcia Strassman-Patient Advocate for Zometa (also Novartis), and the biggest of them all, with more than 100,000 fans, Gardasil’s Take a Step Against Cervical Cancer. There you go. Precedent. Tell your regulatory teams and legal staff. Of course, you might be thinking that you could make an even more branded page with all the features of Facebook activated. This might include the Wall and user generated videos and pictures. Are you sure you want to do that?

Of course, I’m an advocate for ensuring that whenever you borrow a platform like Facebook, you try to preserve all the functionality of the platform. I call it Expected Visitor Experience (or E.V.E.). Disabling the Wall on Facebook technically violates this principle because people expect the Wall to be active no matter whose page they visit on Facebook. Having said that, there are exceptions to every rule. Each of the branded pharma examples I mentioned have features like the Wall disabled. Maybe that’s okay. The two reasons why it’s disabled are, first, to avoid people posting reportable adverse events (even if they likely wouldn’t), but also because you can’t control what people write. Again, I’m not advocating that you ever censor negative, but fair, comments, but do you censor the rants against your company? Do you censor opinions about your products even if people haven’t tried them? Where do you draw the line? The pharma industry isn’t the only industry that disables the Wall. Check out all the brand or corporate pages you’re a fan of and see how many allow the Wall and other features to be used completely openly. Perhaps soliciting comments in other ways is better. You can moderate certain comments and then post them after making your policy clear. This can work for comments, pictures, and videos. Moderating is okay as long as you’re open and up front about it. Facebook is no exception.

Oh, and another thing, don’t just use Facebook because everyone else is or because it’s the hot thing. Like any marketing tactic, have an objective. Critically evaluate that objective and figure out if Facebook really is the right choice. If you’ve got a brand new product and are worried about building awareness, for example, Facebook might not work for you. No one is going to “fan” a page of a product they’ve never heard of. Just think about it before you jump in.

Next, with 8% of the votes, was “expanded” disease state information. In this case, by”expanded” I meant more in-depth, more detailed, etc. As a result…more valuable to everyone. I suppose I wonder why this didn’t do better in the survey. As best I can figure, this is one that you all figured you could do any way, rules or no rules. And, you’re right. If you truly keep the site unbranded (i.e., not mentioning a product), you can cover a wide range of information about a certain disease. Of course, many marketers (and not just pharma ones) feel like they have to mention the product in order to be successful. However, this isn’t always true. In cases where you’re the market leader, you can grow the market by educating people about the incidence and treatment options for your market. You know that if this effort gets more people to seek treatment, you’ll get a disproportionate share as the market leader. This was the strategy behind the unbranded educational site our company created for Ethicon Endo-Surgery called BariatricEdge. We knew that if we could get more people to investigate, and ultimately have, bariatric (weight loss) surgery, Ethicon Endo-Surgery would benefit the most, as they had a dominant share of the devices used for this surgery. If more appropriate candidates sought treatment, the company would meet its objectives. It worked.

What if you’re not the market leader? In that case, you’ve got to rely on a concept our company calls Marketing with Meaning. It’s a simple concept that I’ve talked about before. Basically, you all create products that are meaningful to people, but we argue that the marketing of these products should also be meaningful. Check out the site for a bunch of examples and more detail. One of the ways you can create marketing with meaning is by educating people. Educating someone about a topic that will improve their health is, of course, highly meaningful. You don’t have to mention your brand every other word for it to yield business results either. People are pretty smart and will go out of their way to figure out who brings them useful information. They’ll reward you for it. Physicians know who is doing the most to support educating patients and, with all other things being equal, will lean towards these companies’ products.

Having said all that, don’t recreate something that already exists. You could instead focus on aggregating information from a number of credible sources. Putting all the information a patient might need in a single place could be very useful and save them hours or days of searching. Get past the “not invented here” attitude and borrow from the best (with proper credit of course).

Next in the survey results was “expanded” search optimization with 7% of the votes. I’m hoping that this is another case where you all thought you could do this now, so why waste a vote in our no rules world when you could get away with so much more? Fair enough. I do hope that this doesn’t signal that search isn’t important to you. I’m not going to recount all the reasons why I think this is, well, crazy, as I’ve done it before, but suffice it to say, if you’re not using organic search optimization, you are missing a giant opportunity. Check out all of my posts on this topic here and here and here. The fact is that pharma brand sites routinely show up distantly, if at all, in search engine results for key search terms related to their disease states. Millions of people searching for answers are getting them from every source but you. So, I’m going to assume that this choice didn’t do well in the survey because you are on top of this and not because you think that building a branded Facebook page is more important and likely to have a bigger impact on product sales. Please tell me I’m right.

Last, but not least, is the branded Twitter page. Once again, why wait until there are no rules? You can do it right now. A lot of pharma companies have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon already. Some have done it with distinction and others have sort of given up already (like many new Twitter users). There’s even been one intrepid company who tried out the first pharma branded Twitter account, NovoNordisk, for their diabetes treatment Levemir. And here’s the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) tweet:

If you’re interested, you can follow @racewithinsulin now and see what else they’ve got to say. The two differing views on this are from the IgniteBlog and  John Mack at Pharma Marketing News. You can decide if this tweet represents “a historic day” or “sleazy Twitter spam.” I’m personally not a fan of this only because I don’t think any real person would talk like this. Yes, they might talk about what prescription drug they are taking (maybe), but they wouldn’t add in the fair balance. It’s just way too forced for my taste, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Recently, the folks at Kru Research decided to find out how effective branded pharma tweeting might be. Definitely read their findings if you haven’t already. As a quick bottom line, they found that you could get as high as a 14% response rate using Twitter. Compare that to the response you’re getting from business reply cards (BRCs) or other opt in vehicles. I’m willing to bet it’s not this high. Kru followed people who tweeted about insomnia (read the report to see why) and 14% followed them back. The 14% represents people who followed back. Essentially, following back is like saying, “yes, I’m interested in what you have to say. Tell me more.” An opt in. Some of these were probably auto-follows, but many were people who decided that they would follow this account. Kru tested several iterations and found that a fellow insomniac (i.e., “patient opinion leader”) who had an unbranded insomnia website listed in her profile had the best response.

They did a lot of rigorous work to figure this out and it was only for academic purposes (and to provide better service to their clients too). So, my challenge to all of you is this: are you using the same amount of rigor when it comes to your actual brand, in real life, on Twitter? There’s a lot more at stake, so you should be testing with at least the same amount of detail as Kru Research did. You would in any other channel, so make sure you do it with Twitter as well.

I don’t think that Twitter for pharma brands is a non-starter, but I think it’s a tactic looking for a purpose. What’s the reason I’d follow you? What value could you bring to me? If we can’t answer that, then it’s not going to work. Using Twitter as a broadcast medium with no interaction with brand isn’t a long-term strategy. That’s not going to get more people to ask about or ultimately take your product.

So there it is, all the things you’d like to do if there were no rules. What I tried to show with this post and yesterday’s is that you can already do many of the things you would do if there were no rules. Companies have already tried them. For many of the other ideas, I wondered why you’d ever want to do them (like a community on your brand site). My point with all of this has been simple: the rules (or lack of clear ones) shouldn’t be a barrier to the programs you want to do within digital marketing.

Yesterday, I mentioned the McKinsey report, How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0, to show that brand blogs were the “Web 2.0″ channel that most often showed at least one measurable benefit. There was one other very  important finding from this study that I’ll use as my close (and probably talk a lot more about in the future). Here it is, the “most important practices for successfully using Web 2.0 technologies:”

I’ll call your attention to the middle column, “customer-related purposes.” So, here’s my question, are you doing this? According to McKinsey, when it comes to successfully using Web 2.0 technologies, forget about incentives (which you can’t provide anymore anyway). Great news (I’m looking at you e-detailing). You can even place less emphasis on marketing your “Web 2.0″ initiatives to customers. In other words, you shouldn’t necessarily go out and market your new digital program itself (e.g., tell the world about your great new YouTube channel). Instead, the thing they found most important success factor was “integrating Web 2.0 with other modes of customer interaction.” That means  integrating your digital marketing with your offline marketing. How often do you include your company Twitter account in your DTC TV commercial? Are your sales reps mentioning your Facebook page? Does your print ad direct people to your YouTube channel? Do your sales aids show off your unbranded disease education site? From what I’ve seen, they don’t. However, that’s what apparently works best and it makes sense if you think about it. You’re not supposed to be marketing a program (e.g., your new Facebook page), you’re supposed to be marketing your products. A single marketing channel or tactic shouldn’t stand on its own, it’s supposed to be connected to every other tactic (or at least most of them). Essentially, you need to think about your leading edge digital programs just a bit more “traditionally” for a moment and ask fundamental questions about how it fits with your other promotional efforts. That’ll increase the chances that your program does what you’ve always dreamed it would.

I guess it’s all right to dream after all.

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