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Marketing Application of Social Media Listening – ROF Engagement-Voyeurship Matrix

Our evidence-based marketing approach provides us with a unique lens to view and comment on pharmaceutical industry news and client experiences. Please note that any similarities of the events and insights provided here to your current brand situation are PURELY INTENTIONAL and should NOT be considered coincidental at all.

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February 5, 2012

Marketing Application of Social Media Listening – ROF Engagement-Voyeurship Matrix

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Social Media,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 9:29 pm

The democratization of social media listening in healthcare has been accelerated by the availability of relatively cheap tools that allow pharmaceutical and biotechnology marketers the ability to garner more data . . . but that’s all it is – DATA!

Marketers need information that is by definition ‘interpreted data.’ At ROF our focus with our Sentiment Analysis service is consistent with our level of evidence philosophy and is designed to elevate social media listening to marketing application. The ROF Engagement-Voyeurship Matrix is just one illustration of how we elevate social media listening to marketing application.

ROF Engagment-Voyeurship MatrixThe matrix examines two core components. First, the Engagement Index looks at the volume of discussion relative to the prevalence of the condition. Second, the Voyeurship rate looks at the ratio of post views to the number of actual posters. By plotting these two indices on a grid, brand marketers are able to objectively examine the opportunity within their particular disease state.

This is just one of the ways that Return on Focus elevates social media monitoring to actual marketing application. If you’re a pharmaceutical or biotechnology marketer looking to get more than just data from your current monitoring work, let me show you how we can put the data to work for you, so that you have information to feed, support, and augment your marketing investments.

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January 29, 2012

You’re so Vain, You Really Thought My Blog Post Was About You!

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Professional Marketing,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 8:06 pm

The Client outpouring regarding last week’s blog post – Conjunction(s) Are the Death Knell of Pharmaceutical Brand Positioning was swift and immediate. No less than a half a dozen Clients called me inquiring, not so subtlety I may add, whether the genesis for the blog post was their brand. My answer? It was and it wasn’t.

As listed in the masthead of the EVIDENCE bLOG, “similarities of the events and insights provided here to your current brand situation are purely intentional.” Think of it as the anti-Law and Order disclaimer. Over the course of fielding these calls, I came up with four likely, although not mutually exclusive, culprits for unfocused positioning efforts.

  1. Misguidedly Seeking Differentiation – obviously if you string enough attributes and/or benefits together with conjunctions, you’ll arrive at something for which your brand is the “first and only.” Although, it may provide comfort from the fact that it’s exclusively yours, it also may not resonate with your audience.
  2. Divorcing Positioning Development from Messaging – positioning is where you want to go and messaging is the path to help you get there. Testing only where you want to go, not only leads to testing flights of fancy and unsupported inspirational statements, but also leads to shoehorning un-validated messages into the positioning statement.
  3. Letting the Customer Be the Marketer – letting your customers design and develop your brand story is tantamount to admitting that your product isn’t innovative. It also indicates that you believe the potential promise of your brand falls within current, conventional thinking, as customers, specifically physicians, are bound by their current thinking and perceptions.
  4. Avoiding the Proverbial Gunshot – a “don’t shoot the messenger” mentality is often at play with positioning development. Most biotechnology and pharmaceutical marketers are reticent to communicate to their organization and to customers that their product isn’t for everyone. The reality is revealed later, after launch, when the market has voted through lack of prescriptions.

I usually end with, “let me know your thoughts”, but our blog audience isn’t that shy.

You don’t post. You just pick up the phone. And, you know where to find me.

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January 22, 2012

Conjunction(s) Are the Death Knell of Pharmaceutical Brand Positioning

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Professional Marketing,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 11:16 pm

After five years of intensive focus on pharmaceutical brand positioning, I stepped away from the discipline in 2006 to start Return on Focus. With the clarity of a five-year sabbatical and a renewed focus on increasing the level of evidence behind communication platform development (positioning + message hierarchy), I’ve found the primary culprit to poor positioning . . .
the conjunction!

Conjunction JunctionIf you can’t immediately recall the School House Rock Song, Conjunction Junction, conjunctions are connector words like AND and OR, and they’re used for “hookin’ up words and phrases and clauses,” thus allowing the ability to combine two or more thoughts or ideas in a sentence. So you see the problem with conjunctions and positioning, right?

If positioning is supposed to be a single-minded concept or perceptual unit, it shouldn’t have any conjunctions at all! Exhibit A is the oft used positioning statement catch-all – Product X is the best balance of efficacy, safety, AND tolerability.

My definition of positioning after being away from the space for a little while remains the same – Positioning is the art of sacrifice. Pull out your positioning statement, count the number of conjunctions, and then give me a call for a strong dose of sacrificial thinking!

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January 16, 2012

Ride the Hype Cycle

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Social Media,Uncategorized,What We Think — amanning @ 10:21 am

You may have just recently sensitized your organization to the need to understand and analyze what patients are saying online about your brand prior to, during, and after launch. At Return on Focus, we’ve been helping to answer this question for brands by conducting social media monitoring or what we call Sentiment Analyses for almost six years now.

During this time, we have observed a distinctive pattern to consumer sentiment toward new product launches in biopharma, and it turns out that these patterns are similar, whether the product is the latest cutting-edge biotechnology product or the next evolution in primary care. This established pattern of new product sentiment can be easily explained and illustrated through the hype cycle.

The hype cycle is an established phenomenon that shows how consumer sentiment for a new product reaches its heights during the development and peri-launch phases prior to widespread consumer experience with the product. This is know as the ‘peak of inflated expectations.’ As consumers gain or hear of real world experiences with the new product, they invariably fail to live up to their initially unrealistic hopes and expectations. This causes consumer sentiment to drop significantly as consumers confront product realities (e.g. side effects, lack of efficacy, etc.). This second phase is aptly named the ‘trough of disillusionment.’

Eventually, sentiment rebounds and normalizes through the slope of enlightenment, as consumers accept that although your product may not match their initial hopes or hype, it is recognized as an improvement on what was previously available. This is known as the ‘real world product reality’ stage.

Hype Cycle
*Adapted from Jackie Fenn, “When to Leap on the Hype Cycle,” Gartner Group, January 1, 1995

After analyzing over sixty products a year in all stages of product launch, we have been able to apply the hype cycle consistently. It turns out that the hype cycle is such a natural part of human behavior that it affects new products in all industries from fitness to pharma. Understanding and making marketing decisions based on new product sentiment truly depends on where you brand is within the hype cycle.

So, now that you know what to expect with regard to sentiment for your new product, what do you do about it? Give us a call, and let us help you ride the hype cycle for your brand.

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December 11, 2011

Achieving Scale in 2012 – Understanding Brooks’ Law

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 10:56 pm

In response to last week’s blog post where I christened 2012 – The Year of Scale in BioPharma Marketing, I was asked to provide some additional evidence supporting my assertions. Specifically, the feeling that we have too many people, doing too many tactics while placing their own spin on the communicative elements along the way.

In response to this request, I’ll focus on the ‘people’ portion of the equation to illustrate how scale can quickly and rapidly evaporate. When there is a large amount of work to be accomplished, the natural reaction is to request additional people to help do the work. Getting those 3 extra team members should help, right? Well, in order to answer that question, let me introduce Brook’s Law.

Brooks’ Law states that adding people to a late project tends to make it run later still. Mathematically the equation is (n2-n)/2 where n is the number of people involved and the result is the number of connections that must be managed.

The launch Brand Team of the late 90’s averaged 3 marketers resulting in the need to actively manage 3 connections ((3*3-3)/2)). Today’s Brand Team of 6 marketers requires management of 15 connections ((6*6-6)/2)). This shift to larger teams seems like a positive change, but in reality, it not only inhibits scale but speed and focus.

Expanding the application of Brooks’ Law beyond just people to include tactics and strategic suppliers, you wind up with a very large number of connections that quantify the frustrations many Brand Directors feel but can’t quite illustrate.

How many connections are you managing? Here are a few simple questions that can help you solve for n:

  • How many FTEs are part of my Brand Team for 2012?
  • How many genres of positioning are contained within my brand’s positioning?
  • How many segments am I targeting within the professional and consumer markets?
  • How many tactics am I developing and/or maintaining in 2012?
  • How many suppliers am I managing in the development and maintenance of those tactics?

Now that you have your number, it’s time to determine how many are actually helping and how many are standing in the way of you achieving scale. It may sound like a daunting task, but it just might make all the difference for the success of your Brand in 2012.

N.B. Brooks’ Law illustration adapted from J. Spolsky, “How Hard Could it Be?”, INC. February 2011.

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