Ockham’s Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate; “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.” The principle gives precedence to simplicity; of two competing theories, the simplest explanation of an entity is to be preferred. (via Encyclopedia Brittanica).

In the past few weeks, I’ve had the same question from a few different people, so I figured I’d try to answer it here as well. It’s deceptively simple question, but one that has a few marketing traps which anyone could fall into. Here’s the basic question…I’ll paraphrase:

“We have this new drug coming out that’s not yet approved, how can we use social media to build awareness for it prior to launch?”

Short answer: you can’t.

Medium answer: maybe, if…

Long answer: [see the rest of this post]

What I’m not going to address in this post are the legalities of whether or not there’s a legal way to do this. Clearly, promoting a drug before it’s approved is a huge violation and one that’s really easy to enforce. Yes, there are ways you can tell people the new drug name (but not what it does). And you can tell people about a new treatment coming for a certain condition (sort of). I’m not here today to discuss how you can do this without getting into trouble. I try not to give legal advice here on Dose of Digital…I’ve got enough problems without creating more for you.

So, for the sake of this post, let’s assume that you can tell people that your company is about to release a new drug for a certain condition. You can’t say the name and the condition together, but you can tell people more about the condition. For example,this is the message you want to get out via social media: “Company X is about to release the first new treatment for asthma in 10 years.” (It’s a scenario, not real life, so play along).

At this point, you’re probably coming up with a million ways to do this via social media. You’ll seed discussion groups, contact influential bloggers, get something going on Sermo to reach physicians, maybe start a Twitter account to talk about asthma issues, a Facebook page for people with asthma, and so on.

All of these may be perfectly fine. Some of them may even work. But, to be sure, it won’t be simple. Because it’s social media, expect that your regulatory group is going to make it extra tough on you (recall that you haven’t launched yet). Despite the hundreds of examples of pharma and healthcare companies using social media, you know it’s going to be a long battle. But maybe social media is a good approach. You might find some people who are open to your message and perhaps it’s compelling enough for them to send to others.

But is there a better, simpler alternative?

Instead of the immediate jump to social media, how about going with something simpler? Something that you know hasn’t been a problem to get approved in the past. Something that already has a built-in audience of people open to your messages. Where would you find this? Apply the Ockham’s Razor principle and you’ll get your answer. Email.

Yes, good old-fashioned email. It’s not as sexy as social media, but it’s certainly the simplest and probably most effective first step. Why email? With email, you can control the message quite a bit more. By this I mean that you aren’t constrained to a set number of characters. You can also add whatever media you want and as much information as you think is appropriate. With many social media channels, the person would have to clickthrough in order to get a lot of the details. With email, you can put it all right in front of them in the way you want. Email is even shareable. Recall the forward button…that’s sharing. It may not spread virally like you might (assuming you’re very fortunate) hope for in social media, but the sharing is more targeted. That is, if you choose to forward an email to someone, you likely think that it contains some information that’s very applicable to their situation. In social media, you share very broadly (i.e., to everyone) without thinking about the applicability to each and everyone in your network. In other words, email allows for “targeted sharing.” I’ve professed my “affection” for using email marketing in pharma in the past (Pharma Can Use Email Marketing to Improve…Everything) and I’m doing it again. In keeping with the Ockham’s Razor theme, the simplest solution is oftenwhat should be preferred.

But who are you going to email? With social media, you might already have a built in audience of hundreds or maybe thousands of followers. But where to start with email? Perhaps a good place is your giant opt-in database where you probably have millions.

Nearly every single pharma company program I’ve seen online has as part of their sign-up language (or a specific opt in) something about receiving future communications from the company about new developments that “might interest me.” Here are just a few:

GSK includes the opt-in for related information within the rest of the standard opt in language.

For Pfizer and AZ, there’s a separate opt in for additional communications:

Amgen goes another step further and asks for which conditions you might want other information.

Bottom line: your database is full of people who have opted in to receive new information from you. There might be hundreds of thousands or even millions…far more than your social media following. In some cases, they’ve opted in to specifically hear about new products. Why wouldn’t you start with these folks to get the word out about your new product? Why not target all the people in your database with asthma to tell them about your new asthma product? Since these people have already opted in to receive information from you, there are two things that you already know. First, they must trust you and be open to hearing from you otherwise they wouldn’t have supplied this personal  information to you in the first place. Second, you know that they are people who are fairly engaged in their own healthcare (or someone else’s for whom they care for). When you combine these two factors, you have a group of people who are the most open to your message. They are likely to be your biggest advocates and least likely to ignore what you send them. This is especially true when you compare them to a list of “followers” in social media who may have limited engagement with you and who may follow you, but would prefer that you don’t follow them. This is what you get with social media. Your audience is of much more questionable value. And yes, while all the people you email may not be candidates for your new product, the same could certainly be said about any social media effort you undertake.

One final plus for email marketing in this case: measurement and analytics. While you can measure the impact of your social media efforts (if you set it up correctly), you’ll find it far easier to track the impact of your email campaign. So, for all of you who are always demanding some “ROI” information, email is probably your better bet.

Maybe social media could be a good tactic to get the word out about our soon-to-be approved asthma product, but does it really make sense to be the place to start? The simplest solution should always be preferred mainly because it’s often the best one. Keep that in mind for all your digital marketing and you’ll likely find yourself with more hits than misses.

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